AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT
GRINDHOUSE
Rated
R. Running time: 191 minutes
PLANET TERROR
Written
and directed by Robert Rodriguez; director of photography, Robert Rodriguez;
edited by Robert Rodriguez and Ethan Maniquis
With:
Rose McGowan, Marley Shelton, Freddy Rodriguez, Josh Brolin, Jeff Fahey,
Michael Biehn, Naveen Andrews, and Stacy Ferguson
DEATH PROOF
Written
and directed by Quentin Tarantino; director of photography, Quentin
Tarantino; edited by Sally Menke
With:
Kurt Russell, Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Vanessa Ferlito, Jordan Ladd, Tracie
Thoms, Rosario Dawson, Zoë Bell, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Rose McGowan, Eli
Roth, and Omar Doom
1/2
Reviewed by Joel Johnson
Directors Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez are good directors who love
bad movies. The bad films that they love are not just films that somehow
don’t work—they love films that were made with no daydreams of Oscar night
adulation and were aimed squarely to appeal to audiences with appetites for
horror, violence, sex, and comedy (though this sometimes is unintentional).
These are called exploitation films because of their willingness to exploit
these morally dubious interests to find an audience. These films were
staples at tawdry theaters in disreputable neighborhoods and at rundown
drive-ins. Tarantino and Rodriguez have spent a lot of time watching these
films, and they now have taken their considerable talents to produce their
very own double-feature night at Bijou Squalor. The evening’s entertainment
includes several trailers of upcoming features at the Squalor complete with
a hackneyed leader familiar to anyone who ever went to a movie theater in
the 1970s. Some of these snippets are among the highlights in the combined
running time of 191 minutes. The features for this evening are Planet
Terror (directed and written by Rodriguez) and Death Proof
(directed and written by Tarantino).
Planet Terror begins at a shady Texas strip joint where we meet Cherry
(Rose McGowan), who is looking to change her life. She runs afoul of a
convoy of trucks, and we are off to the simply named “military base.” This
is where rogue biochemical weapons research headed by Abby (Naveen Andrews)
is happening. Things really go south with the arrival of Bruce Willis and
his troopers (this scene was probably even more funny to me because one of
the “real” previews was for Willis’s latest save-the-world epic Live Free
or Die Hard). The unintended consequence is the release of a gas that
causes healthy people to become—yes, you guessed it—zombies. Thus begins a
propulsive ride of over-the-top violence with zombie feasts and liberal
gunplay mixed with little catch-your-breath character development sequences.
We
learn that wrecker driver Wray (Freddy Rodriguez) and go-go dancer Cherry
have had a failed romance. The Doctors William (Josh Brolin) and Dakota
Block (Marley Shelton) are similarly in the express lane to Splitsville if
they survive the rest of the film. There’s not much subtlety here. Rodriguez
splashes an ocean of fake blood around. The skins of would-be zombies start
bubbling like an egg frying sunny-side up. Then an assortment of hideous
deformities show up, some of which are sickeningly funny. There are
amputations and the prosthetic use of automatic weapons, giving new meaning
to “giving an arm or a leg” to have a gun.
Death Proof is basically a film with four separate sequences. We meet
four girls and follow their saucy chitchat. Then they run afoul of Stuntman
Mike (Kurt Russell) and his death proof stunt car. There’s a spectacular
collision. We meet four new girls, who are all taking a break from their
work on a film. Eventually, they decide to check out a car that some guy is
selling. The stuntwomen Zoë (Zoë Bell) and Kim (Tracie Thoms) decide to take
the car so that they can perform a stunt called “a standing mast.” Abernathy
(Rosario Dawson) convinces the car owner to let them take a test drive by
themselves by leaving the fourth girl, naïve Lee (Mary Elizabeth Winstead),
in his clutches. They drive off. Stuntman Mike swoops in like Baron von
Richthofen. There’s a wild chase sequence, and there’s another chase on top
of that. This ends up quite a bit different from the first one.
Both
filmmakers know how to tell a story—not that these are great stories. They
have an impressive cast of repertory film actors at their disposal. They
have even gotten a couple of A-listers (in addition to Bruce Willis, there’s
Nicolas Cage) to make cameo appearances. While I am not a devotee of the
films that Rodriguez and Tarantino obviously love, I have to admit that I
found several sequences of the film wildly hilarious. More extensive
research (or time misspent), and I may have found even greater amusement.
However, the 191 minutes does start to feel like a long slog, and that is
partly because the pacing of the segments within the second film Death
Proof varies from slowly meandering to heart-pounding sprints. It is
certainly a point of discussion as to whether the two features are better
appreciated together or separately.
When
Grindhouse comes out on DVD (assuming it will be released on DVD as it
was in theaters), the viewer will probably have the opportunity to control
how much is seen at any one time and in which order. (There could even be
multiple versions of these films. Tarantino will be presenting a ten or
fifteen minute longer version of Death Proof at the 2007 Cannes Film
Festival.) Despite some real entertainment value, I found the double feature
overlong and self-indulgent. Master filmmakers inspired by schlock end up
producing more schlock. Since it’s not a vanishing quality, it hardly seems
to be a great leap forward for cinema. It will be interesting to see if
these two filmmakers will find inspiration from more acknowledged artists.
One can certainly hope so.
