Film Review: Grindhouse

The most intriguing three hours I've spent in the past week—other than driving around Route 66 and the Navajo Nation—was in the movie theater this Good Friday afternoon, watching the kinetic faux horrors unfold in Grindhouse, the double feature by Rodiguez and Tarantino. Featuring a number of phony trailers including a zinger titled Werewolf Women of the S.S. by Rob Zombie, all sorts of mechanical glitches occur during this double feature, including melting film, inserted scratches, intentionally awkward cuts and two "missing reels" for which theater management apologizes. I feel transported back to the late 1970s, when my feet stuck to orange soda on the movie theater floor and in the winter I had to wear gloves and a hat because of poor heat in the budget movie theaters. Every sort of subgenre comes back to life, as does one ancient villian; Werewolf features a brief cameo by Nicholas Cage as the fiendish Dr. Fu Manchu.

Speaking of zombies, the storyline of Planet Terror is rather familiar: zombies take over a small Texas town. But Rodriguez injects—quite literally—two squabbling doctors; a deluded lieutenant (Bruce Willis) back from Afghanistan; a BBQ master celebrating 25 years of running an empty restaurant; and the brilliant Rose McGowan as Cherry Darling, who loses her leg to the undead, only to be retrofitted with a machine gun that also lobs grenades. Quite compelling stuff with a haunting soundtrack—not least given the endless references to horror and science fiction films—that ends with a survival colony on the beach in Quintana Roo, hilariously evoking the original Planet of the Apes. Preceding the endless night of the living dead—Planet Terror does go on and on—a charming trailer for the fake movie Machete teaches with its big guns and dozens of knives, wherein Tejanos get pistol-whipped by a Mexican doing a hatchet job, or something like that.

In addition to Zombie's Werewolf Women of the S.S., the trailer for the fake horror film Thanksgiving is rather fascinating, not least given that Zombie's own version of Halloween launches at the end of August. (Hmmm....Tarantino's Thanksgiving comes at Easter; Zombie's Halloween at Labor Day.) In short: evil pilgrim in Plymouth Rock kills—and guess what winds up on grandma's table? The fourth trailer is totally over-the-top, titled Don't, in which the protagonists solely do that which they should not, and suffer the consequences.

Death Proof revives the frenetic action and Tarantino obsession with female assassins that so fueled both parts of Kill Bill, featuring two sets of buxom women who are crossed by a twisted stunt car driver. But the second bunch—stuntwomen busy shooting a movie in rural Tennessee—take on the evildoer, morphing into Russ Meyereseque Faster, Pussycat vixens, again with many subtle and sly references poking fun at Southern 'culture'. (Mixed in are references to everything from the Grapes of Wrath to Dukes of Hazzard.) As per usual, Tarantino inserts fake products (Great White Bites cereal—echoing the Kaboom from Kill Bill 1); fake movie posters (starring Sean Connery); and fake restaurants (Acuña Boys), layering the narrative beyond what any mere mortal can digest during the first viewing.

Tags:   bruce willis, grindhouse, nicholas cage, quentin tarantino, rob zombie, robert rodriguez

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Posted on 4/6/2007 ( Permanent Link )
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