grindhouse

i saw grindhouse, the postmodern homage to the experience of 60s b-movies, about a week ago and am still excited about it. grindhouse consists of two feature length films, planet terror (directed by robert rodriguez) and death proof (directed by quentin tarantino) as well as four trailers for non-existent films. two of these trailers come before the first feature, machete (rodriguez) and don’t (edgar wright), and two come before the second feature, thanksgiving (eli roth), and werewolf women of the s.s. (rob zombie). taken all together, these films and trailers are meant to recreate the experience of visiting a seedy grind house theatre during the 60s were exploitation films heavy on sex and violence were screened. rodriguez’s planet terror does exactly this; the plot revolves around a highly contagious virus spreading through a town and creating zombie-like creatures, complete with disgusting bubbling goiters, and rose mcgowan with a machinegun leg. rodriguez captures the feeling of these films including using effects to make the film appear damaged and announcements and apologies for missing reels. while i found planet terror to be a lot of fun and probably a genuine facsimile of exploitation films, i felt that tarantino’s death proof was a far more interesting reinvention of the genre. death proof begins with a group of three girls going out to a bar in texas one night and meeting stuntman mike (kurt russell) who claims to have a car that is ‘death proof’, meaning you cannot be killed while in it, regardless of the damage inflicted. stuntman mike also meets pam (rose mcgowan again) and offers to give her a ride which is when we see him finally turn out to be the creep we can tell he is. after pam’s death, stuntman mikes goes after another group of four girls all working on a film set, and it feels as though an entirely new film is starting. the four girls have the day off and three of them end up taking an old and expensive car for a ‘test drive’ that involves their daredevil australian friend to ride on the hood while holding onto belts attached to the doors. stuntman mike finds them and tries to run them off the road; thus starting the longest and most intense roughly fifteen minute car chase that i was almost certain would end in a disgusting bloody mess, given all of grindhouse that I had seen up until this point. what does end up happening is a complete surprise within the context of the film but not so surprising when you realize tarantino is directing. the final scenes take the typical treatment of women within this genre, i.e. exploitative, and turn them on their head. the women are no longer frightened, nor do they allow themselves to be objectified or taken advantage of. they save themselves from stuntman mike and essentially end up kicking his ass. it only took about five minutes of death proof to realize that it was a quentin tarantino film, right down to the atmosphere and the dialogue-heavy script. i realize a lot of people criticize tarantino for his pretentiousness but i think it’s at least partly earned; he has enough knowledge and understanding of these genres to enable him to not just pay homage to them but to construct and completely re-imagine an exploitation film for an audience in 2007. i’ve been hearing lately that due to grindhouse’s poor performance at the box office, planet terror and death proof may be separated and sold as two different films, albeit in longer cuts of each. and while granted, i’d enjoy seeing longer versions of each, i think it would be counterproductive to the effect that rodriguez and tarantino were hoping to establish; that of a grind house double-bill, something that many of us have never had the opportunity to experience. i think this speaks to the complications in trying to recreate this genre inside a box-office driven multiplex, instead of the grind houses that would have screened them in the past. i think it’s clear that rodriguez and tarantino love and respect these exploitation films and wanted to bring the experience to a younger audience but it just doesn’t quite work within the current structure of north american cinemas.

watch the trailer