The name comes from the fact that theaters would grind out double and triple features of blaxploitation flicks, badly dubbed kung fu movies, salacious sex romps -- the kind of giddy schlock Rodriguez and Tarantino grew up loving and since have made a career of copying.
Whether or not you prefer this particular flavor of cheese, and many film geeks do, it's worth seeing simply because there's nothing else like it.
It's not just a movie, it's an event, one that demands your attention and perseverance.
You can't get up to go to the bathroom or grab a soda in between features. You wouldn't want to anyway -- much of the allure comes from the details, the filler, the scratched-up promos with their dated graphics and warbly sound.
If nothing else, "Grindhouse" transports you to another place and time.
Rodriguez and Tarantino have yet to create a truly original film, but they're masters of re-creating genres. And though they've plowed this ground countless times before between the "El Mariachi" trilogy, "Pulp Fiction" and the "Kill Bill" movies, "Grindhouse" represents the formidable strength of their combined knowledge and abilities.
The movie comes on like absolute gangbusters with the Rodriguez segment, "Planet Terror," about a plague that spreads through a small Texas town, turning people into pus-riddled, blood-spewing, zombielike predators.
Marley Shelton and Josh Brolin (whose rugged looks are perfect for the era) play husband-and-wife doctors trying to stave off the infection at a hospital, while barely bothering to save their marriage.
Meanwhile, a group of vigilantes tries to take back the town, led by Freddy Rodriguez as a gunslinger known as El Wray, and Rose McGowan as a go-go dancer named Cherry Darling (of course), who loses a leg and gets a machine gun in its place.
(McGowan's dramatically sexy features are ideal here; she's a girl who knows she's gorgeous but has enough of a sense of humor to play with her own image.
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"Planet Terror" is a total blast -- funny, gloriously gory and over the top. The intentionally trashed footage and supposedly missing reels add to the authentic charm -- as if we truly are watching a movie that has barely survived being trucked from town to town and unspooled over and over.
Then comes Tarantino's contribution, "Death Proof.
" And it's so typically verbose of him, it nearly kills all the momentum that had built over the previous two hours.
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