| Apr. 9th, 2007 @ 01:08 pm "Grindhouse" Grinds Out Action, Thrills, Spills, & Lots Of Campy '70s Fun |
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Current Mood:  calm
Current Jams: Desperadoes Under The Eaves - Warren Zevon
This past friday night, me and my homie G$ went to see the double feature "Grindhouse" at the local cinema. I've given a thought lately to trying to get into some film criticism, I figured this would be a good place to start.
If you haven't heard, Grindhouse is Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's homage to the '70s films that inspired them. Films that had toured the country and were played in small, sub par theaters that had seen better days, and ended up with scratches, hairs on the film, washed out coloring, and missing scenes by the time they reached your local theater. In between the films, 3 fake trailers, produced by Rob Zombie, Edgar Wright, and Eli Roth, are shown, hyping other '70s insipired flicks. We'll get to those in a minute.
First up though is a fake trailer by Rodriguez for a flick called "Machete", with Danny Trejo, based on his character from the Spy Kids flicks. It fully sets up the whole 70's feel. A gravely voiced announcer, uses dialogue straight from old trailers to hype an ultra violent film about a Mexican assassin who gets double crossed and wants revenge. "If you hire Machete to kill the bad guy, make sure the bad guy isn't YOU!" It is the perfect way to get in the mood for what is to come. Then we get the first of the double feature, Robert Rodriguez's "Planet Terror."
"Planet Terror" starts out introducing us to down on her luck go-go dancer Cherry Darling, played by Rose McGowan. She meets up with an old fling, the mysterious Wray, played by Freddie Rodriguez, in a Texas Barbeque joint, and the two obviously have had a rocky past. Meanwhile, "Lost"'s Naveen Andrews character, a biochemist, is in a deal with a group of military types to sell them a nerve gas. Double crosses happen and the gas is leaked out, infecting people with a disease that turns them into pus oozing, human hungry zombies. A set of doctors, William and Dakota Block, played by Josh Brolin and Marlie Shelton repectively, are working the graveyard shift at the hospital, and Dakota is making a move behind William's back about something mysterious, which he finds out about. Quickly the hospital is overrun by Zombies and Cherry loses a leg to the zombies.
Now Wray, Cherry, Dakota and the Sheriff, as well as those others not infected must fight the zombie terror emerging around them. It is gory, campy fun, just on this side of cheese. For example, Cherry's missing leg is replaced by an M16 machine gun with grenade launcher. Rodriguez keeps the action moving throughout the 80 or 90 minutes the flick runs, although there is only so much zombie killing one can take in one time, and it gets slightly repetative. as well as being a zombie flick, it is also a great throwback to the '70s and '80s B action films in the vein of "Escape From New York". In fact, Wray seems to be a modern interpretation of said film's hero Snake Pilssken. Rodriguez does a great job of keeping with the grindhouse feel. Although he shot the flick with HD Video, he recreates scratches, color fade, the film jumping in the gate, and even a scene where the film is jambed in the projector and is melted, followed by a still saying "Reel Missing". It totally has the '70s B movie feel, as seen in a '70s B Movie Theater. All in all it is not just a great homage, but a great down and dirty, mindless zombie action flick.
Now, during intermission, we get a few old bumpers telling us of the coming attractions. These are great, old vintage clips, probably from Tarantino's collection. First up in the fake trailers is Rob Zombie's "Werewolf Women Of The SS", a funny send up of '70s monster and Nazi soft core, like the infamous "Ilsa, She-Wolf Of The SS". Its funny, campy and complete with the B movie budget saving techniques of combining multiple genres to make a film.
Next is Edgar Wright's, who did "Shaun Of The Dead", offering, "Don't"- a send up of haunted house and suspense horror flicks like "Phantasm", "House On Haunted Hill", and "The Shining". While the other directors try to recreate the old films, this trailer is a great parody. It's voice over starts with statements like, "If you're thinking of going in that house, Don't. If you're thinking of going through that door, Don't" which quickly morphs into a frantic, funny use of the word "Don't" over and over. The images are of freakish, ghoulish haunted house creatures and of frightened people, but due to the overuse of the word, it gets funnier and funnier as it goes on and on.
Finally, we get Eli Roth's tribute to the holiday themed horror flicks, like "Halloween", "April Fools Day", and "Black Christmas". His entry is "Thanksgiving", and it is the goriest of the three. We get images of a mad killer, dressed as a pilgrim, wreaking havoc on teenagers and house wives. A cheerleader is killed while doing a strip tease on a trampoline. Teenagers making out in a car get brutally killed. Roth aged his film and it definately looks like it is 30 years old complete with sctaches, over saturaton of color, and the classic use of a deep gravelly voice over and vintage titles help with the feel as well. It is a funny, shocking, and very violent trailer. It was probably my favorite of the 3 just becasue of the combination of camp and shock value, with Zombie's being a close second.
After a funny, vintage cartoon that states that the following film is restricted viewing, Tarantino's "Death Proof" begins. In it, a killer named Stuntman Mike, played by the great Kurt Russell, stalks two groups of girls and, using his suped up cars in place of the traditional knives of other movie killers, hunts them down. Late in the flick the theme shifts into classic car chase and women's revenge genres, and we get what is possibly one of the greatest car chases on film.
The car stuff in the flick is just great. The chase between the Dodge Challenger and the Dodge Charger, two of the baddest muscle cars ever made is incredible. It is done at real speed, with no CGI {save for removing some harness wires} and the cutting of it is not like an MTV music video. You really get a feel for the speed of it all and the immense amount of terrain the two cars cover. The stuff near the beginning with a Chevy Nova is also impressive stunt work, also done practically with CGI used for some things that I won't go into detail about to save some of the suprise.
I really wanted to like this film, especially after the great action of Planet Terror and the rousing trailers, but I feel Tarantino really dropped the ball. He stayed too true to the B movie tradition and the movie really drags due to too much pointless dialogue and slow pacing. I say he stayed too true in that back in the day, when the directors of B movies had such small budgets, they might have only had the money to do 20 or so minutes of pure unbrideled action. 20 minutes of action do not a movie make, and so they were forced to fill time with dialogue and other things to strech the movie.
Taratino falls into this trap and its hard to get out of. While I was into the first group of girls mindless gossip about guys they're sleeping with, where they will score drugs, catty talk about other girls and guys, when the second group of girls comes around and begin to enter the same types of conversations and arguements, it seems like the film is just a sequel to itself. In one scene that drags, the second group of girls, containing Rosario Dawson, and Stuntwoman Zoe Bell, talk in a diner, and Tarantino shoots it exactly like the opening scene of his "Reservoir Dogs". While that movie used the long, slow dialogue to introduce us to the robbers we will be following through the next 2 hours, the scene in "Death Proof" just drags, since we've already had 10 or 15 minutes of the same girls in a car talking too much. The scene almost seems like a fan boy's homage to his hero Tarantino. Even though the conversation in the diner turns to classic car chase movies, which I love and love talking about {I've seen all the movies the girls discuss}, I wanted to shout to the screen to get on with it. Of course after this conversation we go to a farm where the girls go to check out a classic 1970's Dodge Challenger, like the one in "Vanishing Point", and we get 15 or so more minutes of the girls arguing about taking the car out. I wanted to scream at the girls to get on with it. By the time we get to the incredible car chase with the girls and Stuntman Mike, I just wanted him to run the girls down, to stop their incessant arguing. But he doesn't and the girls ban together to get revenge on Mike for his attempted murder of them, which gives us more car chase scenes and a switch to the "Women's Revenge Film" genre too.
While Tarantino has been known for his "brilliant" dialogue for some time, this time it was way too much, like he was trying to out-Tarantino himself. Conversations drag, and try to be too hip. Too much alliteration and too much of a cocky attitude are used, and you may find yourself drumming your fingers on the armrest more that being tuned into what is being said. Tarantino should go back and look at his "Pulp Fiction" and "Jackie Brown" where the dialogue was a good mix of hip and plot related. Also, I may be biased because I only have girls in my family and have heard the same types of dialogue {minus the drug scoring stuff}, at every family get together, every drive up north, every sleep over, and every birthday since I could walk.
The flick also suffers because of the underutilized character of Stuntman Mike. After introducing him as a strangly charming, dare I say-likable, psycho killer, he disappears for almost 40 or so minutes, only to sweep back in when he's needed. While he interacted with the first set of girls before going after them, he never interacts with the second at all and it is missed. The first group of girls are only really there to set up Stuntman Mike for the second, who are more redeemable, i.e. the dichotomy of the carreer-slut, stoner chicks/vs the movie stunt/makeup chicks. Still, it could've been pared down, and used more of Stuntman Mike, and we would've "got it"{credit for these last 2 sentences goes to Toyko Slim, from a forum I belong to, who I discussed the film with}. While its not the worst movie I've ever seen, it was my least favorite Tarantino offering to date, save for the car chases, which saved it from totally failing.
All in all though, I really enjoyed the experience of it all, and it is an experience, not just a double feature. I really wish I could've been alive back in the glory days of the grindhouse/drive-in B flicks, instead of just experiencing them on late night TV, video and DVD. Plus, with movies being so expensive- my ticket cost 9 bucks- getting 2 flicks for the same price was nice, especially since I was not as happy with "Death Proof", and would've been disappointed with spending 9 bucks on it by itself. I still highly recommend checking it out. |
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