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Film review

Bad is good in 'Grindhouse' double feature

The Tarantino-Rodriguez production celebrates the underbelly of film houses.

By Steve Persall
Published April 6, 2007

Younger moviegoers may not appreciate what nasty nostalgia co-creators Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez have cooked up in Grindhouse, three hours of epically bad taste.

Grindhouse is a bloody, fender-bending romp down memory lane for those of us who share Tarantino's and Rodriguez's well-spent '60s and '70s youth haunting rundown movie theaters with one screen and zero moral imperatives. There, we learned about sin and cinema, about life and all sorts of unsavory death in the days before downloads and computer-generated effects.

Grindhouse celebrates that era's film exploitation magnificently in Rodriguez's share of the retro double feature and a bit too authentically in Tarantino's half. More about that later, but the kids need to know what they missed.

"Grindhouses" were those sticky-floored shoeboxes where forbidden fantasies flashed through two projectors that an operator might not alternate on time. He could be busy splicing a reel ripped by overuse, or perhaps stealing the juiciest bits for his collection. Film prints were passed around theaters for years, nicking sprockets and losing frames with each crummy engagement.

Dynamic duo

Rodriguez's top half of the double bill, the zombie chiller Planet Terror, perfectly re-creates that ragged effect. The audio track is lousy with pops and the images are scarred by scratches, jumps and side-frame jitters, as if the modern projector is breaking down. Scene changes are too abrupt to appear intended. That imprecision is precisely what Grindhouse is aiming for.

Tarantino's movie, Death Proof, continues the conceit well, and both halves are savvy enough to insert a "Missing reel" card when a tryst or a lap dance is about to steam things up. Those rascally projectionists! Watch Death Proof's opening credits for a nearly subliminal extra, when it appears another title has been subbed for the movie, as crafty distributors often did to resell junk.

Under such circumstances, Rodriguez and Tarantino would insult the art form if their movies were good, or too bad to sit through.

Death Proof comes close to the latter, with two separate quartets of nubile babes wasting too much time with Tarantino's banal dialogue before Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell, so good when he's bad) starts terrorizing them. Take a restroom break when they're gabbing, although the John Hughes vs. Vanishing Point riff is worth hearing.

Stuntman Mike is a pip, though, using his steel-reinforced stunt car as a murder weapon. Russell cut his teeth on tough roles like this and appears just as happy to return as we are to see him. He's almost upstaged by real-life stunt woman Zoe Bell (Uma Thurman's Kill Bill double), who shows how things were done at high speeds before safety harnesses and fly wires. She's a star waiting to happen.

Touching on the past

Rodriguez's Planet Terror is almost too good to be included in Grindhouse. He shames all recent imitators of cannibal zombie terror by taking the genre back to its grubby roots. He also fashions a signature heroine, Rose McGowan as Cherry Darling, a go-go dancer whose dreams of becoming a standup comedian are dashed when a zombie rips off her leg (get it?).

Cherry gets fitted with a prosthetic table leg (careful during the sex scene!) and then a huge automatic weapon she apparently fires by thought. Freddy Rodriguez avoids looking impressed since his bad-rep hero El Wray has nothing in mind after sex except killing the undead.

Meanwhile, we're worried about a doctor and nurse (Josh Brolin, Marley Shelton) with deadly marital problems, an endangered barbecue expert (Jeff Fahey) and a scientist (Naveen Andrews) who claims his shooting of Osama bin Laden started the zombie epidemic. Don't ask, just enjoy picking out sly references to the movies that actually kicked it off (the best is Rodriguez's Dawn of the Dead helicopter gag times 20).

Before and between the shows, Grindhouse pays tribute to preview trailers that hawked these exploitation flicks. Tarantino and Rodriguez recruited three other schlock authorities - Rob Zombie (The Devil's Rejects), Eli Roth (Hostel) and Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead) - to create hilarious peeks at movies any grindhouse fan would want to see. Nicolas Cage as Fu Manchu in a movie about Nazi werewolves? I'm there.

Steve Persall can be reached at (727) 893-8365 or persall@sptimes.com.

REVIEW

Grindhouse

Grade: A-

Directors: Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Eli Roth, Edgar Wright, Rob Zombie

Cast: Kurt Russell, Rose McGowan, Rosario Dawson, Freddy Rodriguez, Josh Brolin, Marley Shelton, Zoe Bell, Michael Parks, Naveen Andrews, Bruce Willis

Screenplay: Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez

Rating: R; graphic violence, harsh profanity, nudity, sexual situations, substance abuse

Running time: 191 min.

[Last modified April 5, 2007, 09:51:16]