‘Grindhouse’ offers throwback thrills
April 9, 2007
Editor’s note: For the double feature “Grindhouse,” directors Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez teamed up to pay homage to sleazy exploitation films from the 1960s and ’70s. The pair enlisted fellow directors Edgar Wright, Eli Roth and Rob Zombie to contribute to an intermission of trailers reflecting the genre’s aesthetics and feel. In this spirit of collaboration, film critics for the Pulse banded together to dissect the films.
Within in a span of a mere three hours, viewers will be treated to disembodied limbs, a vigilante immigrant, Nicolas Cage as Fu Manchu, Cheech Marin as a vengeful priest, a biochemist with a penchant for collecting testicles and a woman with a machinegun for a leg.
Such is the world of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s raucous, ribald and utterly remorseless “Grindhouse.” The film clearly isn’t a Merchant Ivory production and certainly won’t win over the squeamish, but the double bill of “Planet Terror” and “Death Proof” is a throwback to the down and dirty filmmaking of the ’60s and ’70s.
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“Planet Terror”
Directed by Robert Rodriguez
Starring: Freddy Rodriguez, Rose McGowan, Marley Shelton, Michael Biehn
Run time: 1 hour, 30 minutes
Rated: R
Rating: 3 Gus Heads
As with many classic double features, varying genres are presented in “Grindhouse.” Also following standard conventions, the “bigger” director’s film is shown last and headlines the event. Such is the case with “Grindhouse” as Rodriguez’s zombie slaughter-fest “Planet Terror” is followed by Tarantino’s slasher variant “Death Proof.”
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When a sinister paramilitary group unleashes a toxic gas that turns a city’s population into boil-riddled, puss-spewing zombies, go-go dancer Cherry Darling (McGowan), her ex-boyfriend El Rey (Rodriguez), a femme fatale doctor (Shelton) and an assembly of survivors are left to fend off the government-inflicted infection.
In the ensuing carnage, bodies pile up endlessly, heads explode at the click of a shotgun trigger and Cherry mows down the encroaching zombie horde with her iconic machinegun prosthetic.
Rodriguez gives the film a grimy, grainy feel filled with digitally enhanced film scratches, missing cells, damaged color variation and a well-placed missing reel. This is all purely style over substance, however, as the whisper-thin plot is covered up beautifully by over-the-top gore.
While the look of the film is reminiscent of B-movies from decades past, it’s all a bit too calculated and clean. Every nod to real grindhouse cinema is merely modern technology compensating for a substantial budget and legitimate performances. Rodriguez seems to be aping the acknowledged conventions of the genre rather than crafting true grindhouse schlock.
The performances are over the top in all the right ways, with Sheriff Hague (Michael Biehn) and horror legend Tom Savini, as Deputy Tolo, adding doses of depth and humor to the slaughter. The action is a more or less a mindless trip down bloody-zombie-helicopter-decapitation lane.
Many grindhouse films are built on titillating images, but Rodriguez deftly cuts out both the sex and exposition within “Planet Terror” via a missing reel. The film cuts out during a love scene only to return with buildings on fire, characters brutally injured and heavy-handed dialogue being spewed liberally. Presumably any and all plot holes (of which there are many) are explained via this missing reel. It’s all overly convenient and intentionally cheesy, but it works wonderfully.
“Planet Terror” is not a good film by any stretch of the imagination, and that is part of its charm. It’s a movie that knows it’s bad, which makes its self-referential quality all the funnier. “Planet Terror” is a purely visceral film experience. Viewers can’t watch it and think about anything besides the joyous carnage happening in front of them.
Rodriguez has crafted a masterful zombie movie here, but occasionally misses the mark in recreating the classic grindhouse aesthetic. The joyous buckets of blood help to compensate, though.
“Death Proof”
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
Starring: Kurt Russell, Rosario Dawson, Tracie Thoms, Zoe Bell
Run time: 1 hour, 30 minutes
Rated: R
Rating: 3 Gus Heads
While “Planet Terror” is almost nonstop action and relentless violence, Tarantino slows things down with the subdued, psychological “Death Proof.”
In the film, a psycho stunt driver, aptly named Stuntman Mike (Russell), stalks and kills girls using his modified muscle car, which is “death proof,” provided one is sitting in the driver’s seat. “Death Proof” is set almost as two separate films as Stuntman Mike hunts down a group of women in the first half and then gets what’s coming to him courtesy of a group of angry stuntwomen in the second half.
Tarantino provides tremendous (for a B-movie, anyway) buildup and back story as Stuntman Mike is seen stalking his victims. The drawn out dialogue scenes that pepper “Death Proof” are a marked deceleration from “Planet Terror,” but Tarantino uses the pacing to provide an unsettling atmosphere.
The second half of “Death Proof” is dominated by tough-as-nails stuntwoman Zoe (Zoe Bell), Kim (Tracie Thoms), movie makeup artist Abernathy (Rosario Dawson) and actress Lee (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). The serial killer setup exists solely to display a few drawn out dialogue scenes and a car chase that dominates the third act. The film openly references “Vanishing Point” and “Dirty Mary Crazy Larry,” and the chase sequences in “Death Proof” more than live up to such comparisons.
“Death Proof” is a mish-mash of contrivances, but Tarantino provides enough flare to carry the homage. The director is known for pilfering liberally from cinema, but with “Death Proof,” he has successfully stolen from himself.
Viewers know they’ve entered Tarantino land when a “Reservoir Dogs” reference pops up: Four women sitting at a table talking as the camera rotates around them. Thoms even seems to channel Sam Jackson’s Jules Winnfield at various profane moments.
The ending arrives abruptly, but the choppiness of the film is ultimately more endearing than annoying.
“Death Proof” is better than “Planer Terror,” but the film loses the momentum the latter built. After Rodriguez’s zombie apocalypse, “Death Proof” seemed a bit slow, but Tarantino remained faithful to the grindhouse tradition while offering a decidedly old school aesthetic.
THE TRAILERS
During the intermission between “Planet Terror” and “Death Proof,” Edgar Wright, Eli Roth and Rob Zombie provide fictitious trailers to various genre pictures that surely would have been popular during the grindhouse era. With each director tacking a different subgenre, the trailers provide the perfect buffer.
The faux trailers work as a bridge between the two films, and they are visually interesting. The weakest is probably Rob Zombie’s “Werewolf Women of the SS,” which is completely forgettable except for a Nicolas Cage cameo. The trailer treads on bad horror ground, but is choppily edited and awkward.
The best is Eli Roth’s “Thanksgiving,” which has been available online for a while now. Seeing it on the big screen is much better, however. Deeply sick and uproariously funny, it makes you wish that Roth would make “Thanksgiving” instead of “Hostel 2.” Finally, viewers get Edgar Wright’s “Don’t,” a hilariously awesome horror trailer that cannot be described, and must be seen to be believed. Wright encapsulates dozens of horror clich�s wonderfully and balances gore with straightforward camp.
If “Grindhouse” were meant to recreate the feeling of seeing a seedy double bill in a dilapidated theater, the film largely succeeds. Both “Planet Terror” and “Death Proof” are blissful throwbacks to a time when filmmakers relied as much on salacious advertisements and hilarious premises to sell their low budget fare.
It’s tough to imagine who would willingly sit through a hard-boiled three-hour bloodbath, but “Grindhouse” is a treat for B-movie fans longing for lo-fi effects, miniscule budgets and a commitment to the basics of bullets, breasts and blood.
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