~ April Issue ~
 

Grindhouse
By Brittany Crawford, Staff Writer
 

Grindhouse is an homage to exploitation B-movie thrillers that combines two feature-length segments into one double-bill designed to replicate the grindhouse theatergoing experience of the 70s. With their poor production values and often horrifically bad direction and acting, grindhouse movies developed a cult following that reveled in such guilty pleasures. Grindhouse is very daring, partly due to its conception as an entire program complete with two pictures and four tailor-made trailers, but more so because of its stylistic fidelity to its source material. Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror and Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof mean to reproduce the shot-on-the-run look and feel of genuinely down-and-dirty films of 35 years ago, all the way to scratchy prints, missing scenes, and fake trailers.

Planet Terror centers on a zombie apocalypse where the human race is quickly being infected with some sort of toxin that turns them into flesh eating zombies (and thus spreading the disease). The ultra-gooey zombie film is the first and the best of the two. Rodriguez gets the concept better than Tarantino.  Rodriguez’ film is an  all-out action and gore bonanza, revolving around Cherry Darling (Rose McGowan), a go-go dancer who reunites with an old boyfriend, Wray (Freddy Rodriguez), who happens to be a notorious gunslinger. Cherry is attacked by the zombies, resulting in her leg being chewed off. The two set off to survive this crisis and stay alive, which ends with her sporting a machine gun attached to her stump of a leg. Meanwhile, Dr. William Block (Josh Brolin) and his wife, Dakota (Marley Shelton), get an influx of infected patients even as Dakota plans to run off with someone else. On its own, Planet Terror is a great film. Rodriguez takes the cheesy B-movie flavor to the limit from the insane plotline to dust and scratches over the reel (and including missing reels for good humor). Like the films of the era, there is a large victim list and you're not sure who will make it out alive.  Planet Terror gets your blood pumping and adrenaline flowing.

In Death Proof, Kurt Russel plays Stuntman Mike, a serial killer who uses muscle cars instead of knives, axes, or other sharp instruments to prey on women. He tracks four young women, Lee (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a young actress on her first big movie shoot, Abernathy (Rosario Dawson), her makeup artist, Kim (Tracie Thoms), a stunt driver, and Zoe (Zoe Bell), a stuntwoman, to Tennessee. The women have been given a three-day reprieve from filming and decide to take full advantage of it. They sit or drive around, relax, trade stories, and exchange advice. Zoe, though, wants more than talk, she wants action. Spotting an ad in the local paper for a white 1970 Dodge Challenger in mint condition, the four women take to the road, and Stuntman Mike isn't far behind. The last half of Grindhouse is essentially slow. Tarantino's film was tedious, as Planet Terror built up so much adrenaline, and Death Proof followed with an hour of strict table-talk. The last 20 minutes of the film pick back up where Planet Terror left off with one of the best car chase scenes ever.

There's no question that Grindhouse accomplishes what the directors set out to do - open up the exploitation movie experience to a new generation. There's nothing brilliant or groundbreaking about the film, but it is solidly, unabashedly entertaining. Grindhouse is the kind of movie where it's necessary to put aside pretensions and enjoy the product on its terms, with all the sexiness, violence, gore, and camp as part of the whole package.