Grindhouse
Growing up I used to be a fan of Permanencia Voluntaria, which was an afternoon of poorly performing movies, back to back for as long as you could stand to hang out in the movie theater. Double features and other gimmicks where common too, but on their way out when I was a teenager and are pretty much gone today except in select theaters. So yeah, when I heard about the gory retro double feature that Grindhouse is I was filled with joy. While I know this won’t spark any trends its nice to have a chance to watch two movies in a row, even most festivals these days charge you per movie instead of just letting you loiter all day for one price.
Grindhouse pairs the talents of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez yet again. At the best of times Grindhouse feels like a conversation between two movie buffs raised on low budget exploitation features, but at the worse of times it feels like two adolescents trying to gross each other out with inventive amputations and melting prosthetics.
In the first feature Rodriguez drops us face first into a world that owes much to Peter Jackson’s gonzo horror movies and George Romero’s nihilistic graveyard romps. A paramilitary group lead by Lt. Muldoon (Bruce Willis) is trying to get their hands on an experimental gas that creates undead. Next thing you know the whole countryside is crawling with them and it’s up to a small group of survivors lead by Wray (Freddy Rodriguez) and go-go dancer Cherry Darling (Rose McGowan) to shoot, hack, slash and blow up the forces of evil. The film is intentionally amateurish, with cringe inducing dialog, poor continuity and instances that just make no sense in the context of the movie. It is also hilarious at times, be it through its inventive violence or moments of pure insanity (keep an eye out for a diatribe on the war on terror). If your lunch makes it to the end of the movie still in your stomach, expect to be rewarded with the exhilarating zombie massacre of epic proportions that the trailers have hinted at, as Rose McGowan treats us to a set of assault rifle burlesque.
After some hilarious and spot-on spoof trailers for other Grindhouse features (including works by directors Eli Roth, Edgar Wright, and Rob Zombie) Quentin Tarantino’s feature starts, under the title of “Death Proof”. For somebody with a knack for funny dialog Quentin seems to just take everything too seriously. Death Proof (a movie about fast cars) drags along at a snails pace interrupted only by a memorable quote here and there. Kurt Russell puts in a surprisingly nuanced performance as Stuntman Mike, a Hollywood stunt driver turned serial killer. While the violence is extremely nasty, it is so sparse that you forget why you’re supposed to hate Kurt Russell’s character the next time you see him. In the final act Stuntman Mike has an encounter with a troupe of foxy stunt doubles and actresses attempting a car trick that sane people just don’t do. Stuntman Mike interrupts their outing and makes their stunt even more deadly, leading to a white knuckle car chase that will amaze. Despite the movies cathartic eventual payoff, in retrospect, most people will realize it took just too long to get there in the first place. Maybe if Tarantino spends less time bragging about the movies he’s seen he might be able to get more done next time. On the other hand, if you are in the mood for some great car chase scenes and a whole lot of beautiful women, then you should find Death Proof redeeming on some level like I did.
As an experiment, I think Grindhouse was successful; sure it won’t win any awards or break box office records, but seriously if either of those things happened then it would be safe to assume that the result is not true exploitation cinema.