If youre of the right age, Grindhouse will also conjure up the feeling of being a kid dropped off at a movie house for the entire afternoon and just reveling in the event of going to the movies with your friends. Tarantino and Rodriguez are both film geeks who have unabashedly embraced their geekdom and this film is their bloody valentine to the exploitation films they grew up with and loved.
Filmmaker Robert Rodriguez (Miramax)
Rodriguez, who was also at the Comic-Con panel, said, "Before Sin City I was thinking about doing a double feature. I had this old double bill poster for Rock All Night and Drag Strip Girl for inspiration but then I put the idea aside until I went to show Quentin his scene from Sin City, and at his place there was the same double bill poster and I said we gotta make a double feature. And Quentin immediately said yes and we have to call it Grindhouse."
For Tarantino, he wanted to make Grindhouse because he felt sorry for "a generation of kids who grew up never knowing what that experience was like. Everything's a multiplex or a mall theater now," he said, "There isn't that one bad theater in the neighborhood, that ghetto movie theater that showed all the exploitation movies that didn't just come out on video, they opened up for a week at the drive-in or at the grindhouse and they were always double features. I had that experience and Robert had that experience, and the prints looked like crap but that was what was so cool about it. That's part of our idea here to bring that experience to the multiplexes in a big gigantic sort of 3000 release kind of way, to do these cool exploitation films except that one of the things about those exploitation movies is that they always had the greatest posters but the movies often times because they were so cheap couldnt deliver on the posters. But were going to make two sleazy grindhouse movies that will deliver on the poster and beyond. But we wanted to deliver the entire theatrical experience so its not one little movie here, its two movies and the exploitation trailers that go with it and we want the trailers to be so good that if we do a sequel you will demand that we do those grindhouse trailers as the next movie."
Stopping short of griming up the theater floors so your feet stick and placing sleazy patrons in the back row, Grindhouse does deliver on the entire theatrical experience. It makes going to the movies an event. So even if younger audiences don't remember grindhouses or what it was like to go to a double feature, they should revel in this pumped up recreation of the grindhouse experience, complete with bad splices, jump cuts, scratched film and missing scenes. The three-hour plus event packs in two full length feature films -- Planet Terror and Death Proof -- plus four trailers, intermission ads, and a tribute in the end credits to the color test girls (if you dont know what I'm talking about, it should all come back to you when you watch the credits). The quartet of trailers boasts such notable genre filmmakers as Eli Roth ( Hostel ), Rob Zombie ( The Devil's Rejects ) and Edgar Wright ( Shaun of the Dead ) with Rodriguez directing one as well.
Danny Trejo in the trailer for Machete (Miramax)
Grindhouse opens with Rodriguez' trailer for Machete , featuring Danny Trejo. It sets the tone perfectly. It's packed with action, sex, ridiculous plot turns, cheesy dialogue, and bad FX shots. Then we hear the lurid opening chords of Rodriguez Planet Terror as Rose McGowan's go-go dancer Cherry Darling performs on stage. The first film of the double feature wastes little time getting to the action. Cherry quits her job, accidentally hooks up with an old flame, and then is attacked by infected people (as with 28 Days Later this is technically not a zombie movie). She loses her leg, which is initially replaced with a table leg and then fitted with the iconic machine gun. There's a bit of a side story with a pair of married doctors (Josh Brolin and Marley Shelton) who are in the midst of a marital crisis. But the characters, like the folks in Shaun of the Dead , have to learn how to juggle personal problems with looming Armageddon. Needless to say, the cause of the infection comes from that deadly and unsavory mix of the government, the military, and big business.
Stylistically, Rodriguez blends John Carpenter and Lucio Fulci to come up with an oozing, pus-filled romp through gore. In a tip of the hat to the genre, he even casts horror make up and FX artist Tom Savini as a cop who meets a grisly end. He also resurrects Michael Biehn (of Alien ) for a part. He gives the film a Latin flavor by casting Freddy Rodriguez as the mysterious Wray, but then adds an Asian twist as Wray fillets victims with ninja-like skills. When Wray walks up a wall and flips over some infected, it's a delirious homage to Asian action cinema. Tarantino even makes a cameo as a soldier who makes the mistake of thinking Cherry will be a passive victim. In contrast to the real grindhouse films in which women were often the victims, Rodriguez lets Cherry and the female doctor kick some serious ass.
Planet Terror (Miramax)
Planet Terror is fast and furious, a sly riff on the zombie genre. Rodriguez takes special care in mucking up his images with grindhouse evoking scratches, loss of sync, and bad splices. There's even a film meltdown just as the sex starts to get steamy, as if Cherry and Wray's lovemaking was too hot for celluloid. There's a definite sense of fun here, but it's not for the squeamish (or for the snobs). The film captures the spirit of low budget filmmaking -- a mix of inventiveness, fun, and a burning desire to just make a movie.
Following Planet Terror are more trailers. Eli Roth's trailer for a slasher film called Thanksgiving probably has the single most wince-inducing shot of the three-hour evening. It involves a cheerleader, a trampoline and a knife. 'Nuff said. Edgar Wright contributes a trailer for Don't a film that warns the audience not to do anything while Rob Zombie serves up Werewolf Women of the SS . And after all that you're barely past the halfway mark. But not to fear, Tarantino keeps the action speeding along with Death Proof.
Death Proof is his homage to Vanishing Point and the other revved up southern road pictures that usually had a young couple on the lam. But in Tarantino's case he serves up a careening chick flick-turned slasher tale-turned female revenge actioner. In some ways, Death Proof is like two pictures with the first half focusing on a quartet of girls at a bar who meet a stranger who calls himself Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell), and the second half following four women who work in the film industry who take off for a weekend of fun. Tarantino, who shot on film (Rodriguez shot his digitally) goes less for the scratched film look and instead chooses to give his film its period look through his choice of film stock and deliberately mismatched lighting in shots or flat, hot interior lighting that smacks of low budget.
Tarantino seems to be trying harder than Rodriguez to make a real film, and the result is a work in which there's a noticeable drop off in pace during the early goings. But then Tarantino makes up for it with a wicked car crash and then an extended car stunt sequence in which real life stunt woman Zoe Bell plays herself and does some amazing, death-defying work. As with the young Jackie Chan, Bell makes the stunts particularly effective because we can clearly see it's her doing them. As with Chan, there's no blue screen here, just a stunt person pushing the envelope and cranking up the tension by placing himself/herself in real danger. My only regret is that her skills are really only showcased in the set piece car stunt. I was hoping that there might have been a scene on the set in the film-within-a-film where we could see her display some range--maybe a little more fighting like the work she did as Uma Thurman's double in Tarantino's Kill Bills.
Kurt Russell as Stuntman Mike in Death Proof (Miramax)
As Stuntman Mike, Russell gets his nastiest role since Snake Plissken. He comes on with some old school charm at first and then turns creepy as he takes delight in tormenting one victim and obliterating some others. But he goes all whiny when he locks horns with stuntwoman Bell. As with Rodriguez' film, Tarantino's Death Proof offers some badass babes who prove more durable than the men. For two guys known for their macho-infused actioners, Grindhouse serves up a pair of essentially femme-centered stories. Tarantino even pays homage to himself by creating a diner scene in which the chicks get sit around shooting the breeze like the guys did in the diner scene in Reservoir Dogs .
Grindhouse's running time and double bill format may not appeal to everyone. The films are actually going to be split apart and released as two separate features in Europe where the double feature concept received a cold welcome. And based on the missing reel title cards and the absence of some scenes that obviously have been shot but were left out of the final theatrical version of the film, there will surely be a DVD with plenty of bonus features.
Grindhouse will also probably turn off people who like their entertainment a little tamer. But for those who share Tarantino's and Rodriguez' passion and love for exploitation cinema, this film should be a delight. It's over the top, raunchy, and filled with gore but it's also filled with fun. For some reason, people can seem more tolerant of comedies or romances that serve up little more than fun entertainment but be completely intolerant of horror films that do the same. Too bad, because I think horror -- and fun horror -- serve a need and satisfy a particular kind of audience. When I watch Grindhouse, the main thing that comes across, and the most irresistible aspect of the film, is the sheer joy the filmmakers have for their craft; it's an infectious sense that these two guys love working together and love making the kind of films that critics and mainstream America might reject. After all, if everyone liked it, it wouldn't be nearly as cool.
Grindhouse (rated R for language, gore, violence and sexual content) is like finding a time capsule with the grindhouse experience perfectly preserved. In many ways it's smarter and it's definitely better financed than its predecessors but Rodriguez and Tarantino know what elements to keep and which to tweak to make it a high octane ride for contemporary audiences.
Companion viewing: Vanishing Point, Escape from New York, Zombie, Zombies of Sugar Hill, Last House on the Left, Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill ... oh there are just too many to list.
