FILM
REVIEW – GRINDHOUSE
Actually two full length films in one, with trailers and adverts added for good measure. The collective title comes from the 1970’s trend for showing exploitation flics as double bills in cheap tawdry non-mainstream US cinemas known as Grindhouses. The two main films here have separate directors, Robert Rodriguez, and Quentin Tarantino, who have both made several films in the spirit of the Grindhouse tradition before.
The first film, and by far the better one, is that by Rodriguez, entitled Zombie Planet, and as such, is essentially a zombie film in the George Romero tradition. It starts with a go-go dancer quitting her job. She drifts on, with no set destination, only to find herself attacked by zombies created by a failed military experiment. A barking mad soldier, Bruce Willis, leads attacks on the zombies. One of the people responsible for spreading the plague that turns people into such creatures is played by Naveen Andrews, best known for his role as the Iraqi soldier in the TV series Lost.
Various misfits and strange characters get caught up in the story, including a demented doctor, (Josh Brolin) and his estranged wife, who has a fixation on her own anaesthetic needles, which are used on her by the doctor, later to half paralyse her. As zombie victims, some of who become zombies themselves swamp the hospital the crisis comes to a head. The Go-Go dancer, having had a leg ripped off by a zombie, finds herself first given a crude wooden leg, and later, a machine gun, rocket launcher false leg with which she helps annihilate zombies in droves as the survivors fight their way to Mexico.
This is an inventive, fun; action packed film, unlike its follow up. Sadly, Tarantino’s Death Proof is actually surprisingly dull. The plot is simple enough; Kurt Russell, as Stuntman Mike, an unemployed stuntman, brother to Stuntman Bob, is a serial killer who picks up girls in his car, and kills them, using the car itself as the murder weapon. The title comes from Mike’s conviction that his car is death proof, in that in being used for stunts, it is specially re-enforced for coping with the impacts of multiple car collisions. He tells this to his first victim; as he rolls the car around to shake her and bounce her against the caged passenger seat, before slamming the brakes on to smash her into the dashboard. It’s a good advertisement for wearing seat belts.
He then goes after her three travelling companions, who have their own car, and rams them off the road, killing them all. He is injured in the collision, but as the girls were drinking, and he puts strong emphasis on being teetotal, he is cleared of all charges, though the cops strongly suspect what he is really like.
He now sets his target on a new set of girls, one of who is a stunt-woman (Zoe Bell, unusually playing herself in an obviously fictitious role). The girls have decided to test drive a car, a Dodge Challenger, that is a match for the one in the classic film Vanishing Point, a film adored by one of the girls. They seduce and bribe the car seller to let them take the car out without him.
Hitting the gas at speed, the girls now decide to play a dangerous game. Zoe shows off her stunt skills by hanging on to the roof and bonnet using the safety belt straps as the driver takes the car to its maximum speed. It is as this stunt goes on that Stuntman Mike makes his attack, ramming the car repeatedly with his own, trying to dislodge Zoe, which he finally achieves, though she survives the attack. The girls shoot Mike, wounding him, leaving him in extreme agony, and then decide to exact further revenge. They chase him, reducing him to sheer panic and further pain in a very spectacular chase, before forcing him to crash. Now the girls cheerfully take it in turns to beat him unconscious or dead as the credits roll.
The premise is a simple one – the woman able to fight back is more likely to survive. The biggest problem with the film is the long introductions of the women who chat and drink and laugh but in no way carry the plot. This happens in the build-ups with both sets of girls who are rarely depicted as remotely interesting. Things only get interesting when Kurt Russell is in shot, which is actually all too rare. After the relentless exhilarating pace of the Rodriguez film, Death Proof drags painfully, though it is worth sticking with for Russell’s scenery and scene chewing performance.
Both films have very 1970’s felt, spoilt by use of references to Bin Laden, and heavy use of mobile phones. The film is deliberately grainy, scratched, and complete with missing reels.
A real treat however is the false ads and trailers (some of which are for films that might yet be seen). The trailer for Rob Zombie’s (he really did direct this too) Werewolf Women Of The SS, featuring Nicholas Cage as Fu Manchu is hysterical. Machete, starring Danny Trejo (of Desperado and From Dusk Till Dawn fame) is about a man seeking revenge while wielding machetes and encouraging an army of friends to do likewise. It looks like a spoof of the old Charles Bronson Death Wish films. Thanksgiving is a trailer for a slasher movie about a killer attacking on America’s important feast day. In the tradition of Prom Night or Friday The 13th. The trailer includes a particularly gruesome sequence where a girl on a trampoline does the splits with her legs as she descends unknowingly onto the killer’s knife, which is cutting up through the sprung canvas.
Though critically acclaimed as a whole, the double feature has done badly at the US box office. Its UK and European release may see each major film released separately, which rather defeats the object of the concept of the film as a whole, however the tedium of Tarantino’s film could bog down the superior Rodriguez project if this isn’t done.
Arthur Chappell
LINK TO THIS PAGE http://arthurchappell.me.uk/film.review-grindhouse.htm
LINKS TO OTHER PEOPLES PAGES E-mail arthur@chappell7300.freeserve.co.uk
UPDATES MYSPACE - http://www.myspace.com/arthurchappell
FACEBOOK - http://profile.to/arthurchappell/
FACEBOOK BLOG http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blogpage.php?blogid=85623
MY BOOKS - http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=952521