If you ve got a taste for blood and three hours to kill, Grindhouse is for you.
It s an epic homage to 1970s B-movie kitsch from longtime friends Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, who each wrote and directed an entire feature-length film and asked buddies to pitch in with fake trailers in between.
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.
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 recreating genres.
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, zombie-like 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 verbose, it nearly kills all the momentum that had built over the previous two hours.
Kurt Russell simmers menacingly as a grizzled drifter named Stuntman Mike, who likes to stalk women with his muscle car. (Russell, the veteran of such John Carpenter films as Escape From New York and The Thing, also exudes just the right vibe.
) Among his targets are McGowan (again), Rosario Dawson, Tracie Thoms, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and real-life stuntwoman Zoe Bell, who is truly a specimen to behold.
But first his potential victims talk. And talk, and talk.
What Tarantino s trying to do is lull us in place us in a comfort zone with these women through the rhythms of their discussions about sex and romance just to yank us out of it with the film s climactic and truly dazzling car chase, which is a marvel of staging and timing.
Until then, though, it ends up feeling just plain boring an unfortunately inane letdown after such a thrilling buildup.
Nevertheless, Grindhouse is still a must-see.
Just to say you survived it.
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