Grindhouse

Grindhouse is a generally entertaining movie experience, but it's not for everybody. In fact, it's really grooved for a particularly small slice of the movie-going demographic: those who appreciate exploitation pictures that were shown in the eponymous grindhouses during the sixties and seventies (others may have seen them in drive-ins). Directors Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino are mavens on the subject, and certainly must have enjoyed themselves on this project, but the results for the rest of us are spotty.

Set up as a typical grindhouse double feature, complete with trailers, scratched film, and missing reels, Grindhouse is a long evening, clocking in at over three hours. Each of the two films is 85 minutes, but both have moments that drag, so you're a bit numb by the time you walk out. Rodriguez's effort is Planet Terror, Tarantino's Death Proof. Rodriguez comes closert to the mark in sending up a cheesey, scuzzy horror film, while Tarantino's film comes closer to being brilliant on its own terms.

After a phony trailer for a film called Machete, starring Danny Trejo (a film I would like to see), we see Planet Terror. Rodriquez has chosen to spoof the zombie film, a curious choice considering zombie pictures have been deconstructed every which way the last few years. Set in Austin, a type of gas turns people into flesh-eating monsters, and a tow-truck driver and gunslinger played by Freddy Rodriguez teams up with the local sheriff and his ex-girlfriend, a go-go dancer colorfully name Cherry Darling, played by Rose MacGowan to stop them. She gets her leg chewed off by zombies, and ends up using a machine gun as a prosthetic, which seems like the image that Rodriguez used for his inspiration. Also in the cast are Bruce Willis, Naveen Andrews (Sayid!) and Marley Shelton, who does well as a doctor who has to drive a car while her hands have been anesthetized.

Rodriguez has captured the spirit of the genre, as Planet Terror is funny-dumb. There's some neat, gory violence, and everyone plays their roles with tongues firmly in cheek. It would be a perfect film for Mystery Science Theater 3000.

In between the two features comes three more trailers, directed by Rob Zombie, Edgar Wright, and Eli Roth. Zombie's, for a Nazi werewolf film, isn't very interesting, but the trailer for Don't, directed by Wright, and Thanksgiving, by Roth, are very funny. Thanksgiving is about a serial killer dressed as a pilgrim, and has some memorable scenes, such as a guy in a turkey costume getting decapitated, and a cheerleader doing the splits on a trampoline that has a knife sticking through it.

Then comes Death Proof. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around this film. It's both maddening and brilliant, very much in keeping with Tarantino's ouevre. Ostensibly, it's very long meandering conversations punctuated by a car wreck and then a classic car chase. It contains many elements familiar to Tarantino, such as female bare feet (the very first image of the film), a cool jukebox, and pointless conversations. The cast is almost entirely female, and resounds with strong women (even including stuntwomen Zoe Bell, who doubled for Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, playing herself). The only major male character is Stuntman Mike, played by Kurt Russell, who has a thing for running down girls in cars.

Death Proof, I think I'm safe in saying, is like no other grindhouse film ever made. At times the film actually looks too good, and its aspiration exceeds the limits of the genre. Car fanciers will certainly drool at the vintage Challenger involved in the chase, and there are some stunts (presumably performed by Bell herself) that are spectacular.

I'm still waiting for Tarantino to develop as a filmmaker that was promised in Pulp Fiction. Since then he's been fooling around, riffing on genre films that have built-in limits. It would be nice to see him stretch himself and try to tell stories about the human condition rather than engage in cinematic circle jerks.