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By EdwardHavens
March 29th, 2007
Gloriously grotesque, hilariously horrific and exactly the shot in the arm movies have been needing for far too long, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's "Grindhouse," a love-fest for all things trashy in cinema, is helping to make 2007 (or at least the first part of the year) already one of the more enjoyable years in cinema in a very long time
Having seen a number of these movies firsthand, and even being in one of the films name-checked in Tarantino’s contribution, I have very fond memories of my long-lost local theatres that would show practically any film it could get its hands on. One of my personal favorite grindhouse double features was what I remember to be my last grindhouse experience, at the State Theatre in Long Beach, California in 1982: “Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip” and Paul Lynch’s “Humongous,” a cheap and crappy Canadian-made horror film about a big hairy monster of a young man, the product of a rape at a cocktail party, who stalks a group of teens who shipwreck on the island he now calls home. Not exactly the type of films that would go well together within any stretch of the imagination, but that was the epitome of what you might get when you plunked down your hard-earned allowance (or hoarded lunch money) to see whatever you could when you lived in the urban jungle, in the days before megaplexes that showed every new movie that came out.
To be certain, these new approximations would never, in the true definition of grindhouse, be considered grindhouse movies. Grindhouse movies did not have good sized budgets, did not star current A-list or B-list stars, did not have elaborate special effects and were not directed by A-list filmmakers. But that matters not. These films wonderfully capture the essence of what made those sub-classic movies as memorable as they were. (And let’s face it, as stupid fun as movies like “The Blood Spattered Bride” or “The Grave of the Vampire” or “Hot Summer in Barefoot County” may be, they will never compare to the truly iconic films of the same era.) Of the two, Tarantino’s “Death Proof” is closer to the spirit of the grindhouse movie, with its economy of locations (only six, not counting the interiors of the cars), heavy dependence on dialogue to pad out the running time and one hell of an action set piece at the end. Yet, it is Rodriguez’s “Planet Terror” that is the more satisfying film overall.
”Planet Terror,” in true grindhouse fashion, is neither all that terrifying nor takes place on another planet. It’s about Candy (Rose McGowan) a stripper... sorry, an exotic dancer… who finds herself in the middle of a zombie infestation in her town. Well, that’s not exactly correct either. They’re not exactly zombies, you see, since the infected weren’t dead when the… oh, you’re just going to have to trust me on this one. It’s fun. It’s funny. It’s cool and it’s totally awesome. It’s bloody and gory and goopy and disgusting, and it’s got Michael Biehn and Jeff Fahey to boot. Or, if you prefer, it has Fergie from Black Eyed Peas, wearing skimpy outfits that show off her best assets. It’s even got that guy from Lost, who has a penchant for collecting exotic balls, and it’s got Bruce Willis too. And Tarantino. And more exploding heads than the best Cronenberg films. And authentic Texas barbeque. What more do you need from a movie? Okay, a story, which it has in spades.
Which is more than can be said for Tarantino’s “Death Proof.” Not to say that it isn’t a satisfying film, for it ultimately is. It’s just that Tarantino wastes too much time, and too much less-than-stellar dialogue (I still don’t get why so many people consider his barely interesting blabbering to be Earth-shattering when his chats barely registers higher than the tepid traipse that passes for conversation on most television shows) before getting to what is the meat of the film. True, this is the modus operandi of many grindhouse films, which often promised more (by title, by poster and by trailer) than the actual film could ever deliver, and would otherwise run about twenty minutes in length. And while most of the girls in the film are very comely indeed, and we are reminded once again how truly underrated Kurt Russell is in the pantheon of American cinema, we don’t want yadda yadda yadda in our grindhouse movies. We want action. In our car chase movies, we want car chases, not a bunch of half drunk yahoos prattling on about the most inconsequential of topics. But when we finally do get to the money scenes... man, are they about incredible. It’s either brave or really stupid to have your characters name-check “Vanishing Point” and “Gone in 60 Seconds” (the original, not the piece of crap remake) in your movie. Luckily, Tarantino and his team have created the most exciting and memorable car chase sequences committed to celluloid since those… well, “Vanishing Point” and “Gone in 60 Seconds” (again, the original and not the piece of crap remake), which almost makes up for most of the rest of the film, which practically grinds to a crawl. (But it’s nice to know Tarantino feels comfortable cribbing from himself now.)
See, this is the hardest part of writing a review for a film like “Grindhouse.” You want to make sure the reader understands your excitement for the film, the zest that makes it so special, without giving away too much. Suffice to say, if you’ve been missing the good old days of exploitative cinema, when the only thing that was required of the viewer is a willingness to let everything go and just have fun at the movies, your wishes have miraculously come true. You’re gonna walk in to the theatre, and be hit rather quickly by a wave of memories, of hilariously bad trailers, of prints that were scratched up and missing scenes, of soundtracks that has pops and hisses throughout, of more innocent days when all it took to scare the bejesus out of you was the site of a person running down the street covered in a bucket worth of Karo syrup made up to look like blood. You’re going to see trailers for “Machete” and “Don’t” and “Werewolf Women of the S.S.” (“… and Nicolas Cage as Fu Manchu” is alone worth the price of admission) and pray this film is enough a success to warrant future Grindhouse movies with more of the same, or even a double feature with some Troma-esque sex comedy like “The First Turn-On” thrown in with another horror/thriller. Maybe they won’t be directed by Tarantino or Rodriguez. Maybe they’ll be directed by other genre directors like George A. Romero or John Carpenter or Jonathan Kaplan or Lloyd Kaufman. be able to bring back silly fun to the movies like we haven’t seen since the Watergate era. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll go to sleep that night, thanking the Weinsteins for having the guts, and the balls, to put their trust in these two mavericks of moviemaking.
I can‘t wait to see what Joe Bob Briggs is going to think about all this.
Postscript: It should be noted that, outside of the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, the two films will be released separately and in slightly longer versions. At this writing, I am not aware of how much more footage will be in each movie, in which order they will be released in any specific country, when they will be released or which fake trailer will go with which movie (there should be two on each).
My rating: A-