I missed the heyday of the "grindhouse" movies of the '70s, but I think I see the appeal. For a young man of limited means, buying a single cheap ticket for a gory zombie flick and a girl gang/car chase movie sounds like a pretty good way to kill a lazy Saturday.
Quentin Tarantino ("Kill Bill") and Robert Rodriguez ("Sin City") clearly lost a lot of weekends this way growing up.
"Grindhouse" is a gloriously pointless, aggressively lowbrow love letter to the low-budget trash cinema of the '70s -- before movies were focus-group-tested into slick, clean money-making machines.
It's actually two movies that fetishize the era's schlock aesthetic down to the scratchy film stock, missing reels and movie trailers in between. There are pustule-covered zombies, Nazi werewolf chicks, automotive decapitations, a stripper with a machine gun leg and an exquisitely humiliating cameo from one of the filmmakers.
Rodriguez' "Planet Terror" dares you to sit quietly without groaning, laughing, screaming or retching. Rose MacGowan is ensured cult-film immortality as leader of the counterstrike against a zombie cannibal invasion. Pittsburgh's own grindhouse-era gore guru, Tom Savini, has a cameo.
In Tarantino's "Death Proof," Kurt Russell is Stuntman Mike, who likes to run down young ladies with his reinforced hot rod -- until he runs into some fearless professional stuntwomen.
The highlight of a Tarantino film is his digressive, stiletto-sharp dialogue. But here it just seems talky, with his characters straining against their assigned ethnic and gender cliches. Somehow, Tarantino comes off as both a feminist and a chauvinist -- letting his ultra-empowered female avatars run the show, while also letting the camera linger on their breasts. The trailers by trash-nouveau acolytes Rob Zombie and Eli Roth are hilarious. But it's scary to imagine what lesser filmmakers will do if the grindhouse formula suddenly becomes bankable again.
Additional Information:
Details
'Grindhouse'Rated R for violence, nudity, language;
