: Grindhouse
I’ve been eager for this for months. Just the idea of a Tarantino-Rodriguez double feature had me sold, and then the previews looked amazing. And guess what? You get exactly what’s promoted: two full-length features (about 90 minutes each), plus some fake movie trailers in between that are hilarious and practically worth the price of admission alone. The first feature is Rodriguez’ Planet Terror, which takes the zombie flick to a new level. Even for a zombie movie this has got an unbelievable amount of gore and blood. The premise is simple — a military bio-weapon has been released and except for a handful of survivors, everyone’s turning into zombies. Lots of eclectic characters, inventive and gruesome deaths, and pure B-movie adrenaline. Everything climaxes when Cherry, our heroine, who’s lost a leg at the knee, is outfitted with a machine gun for a leg — hilarious! It’s so over the top it’s brilliant. Wonderful. If you like the premise you’ll love the movie. If you don’t like the premise, you won’t. It’s as simple as that. Tarantino’s contribution (other than cameos in both films) is called Death Proof and stars Kurt Russell as a stuntman with a “death-proof” car. Unlike the non-stop Terror, this feature has less action with delicate character building that’s like the lull before the storm. When the action hits, it’s violent and loud and fitting. The story’s elegantly simple: Russell stalks beautiful women and kills him with his car, knowing that he’ll be the only one to survive the crash and no one can prove it wasn’t accidental. But then he picks on the wrong girls — and the tables are turned. This feature had some of the most realistic dialog I’ve ever seen in any movie. The four movie girls’ conversation was amazingly natural and flawlessly acted — it’s really amost too good for the supposed B-nature thrills of Grindhouse.
I liked both movies a lot. I was a bit worried about the cheapo “bad movie print” effects I’d heard, like grainy and scratchy film and missing reels, but there’s just enough of it to be interesting and add dimension without it actually interferring with the film or getting annoying. The only negatives I have is that Death-Proof is a little slow, especially after the frantic chaos of Terror — perhaps the order of the two films should have been reversed? By the third hour you’re really eager for mindless action. The only other negative is that the previews are so detailed that the films have few surprises. Oh, you get what you pay for and expect, which is good, but it felt a little bit like “Yeah, that’s what I expected.” In other words, there was nothing wrong with it but I felt just the tiniest bit of a letdown — probably because all the key set pieces are telegraphed in the trailers. Still, this movie is a blast. It’s very retro, and the sensationalism of the presentation is just brilliant. Two thumbs up.
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