Enter the Grindhouse

Rating: 8/10 (21 September 2018)

Robert Rodiguez and Quentin Tarantino make the ultimate partnership. Together they take us back to the old days of cinema with "Grindhouse," two exploitation pictures on a double bill:
Planet Terror: It's about a go-go dancer, Cherry Darling (Rose McGowan) who quits her job and decides to do something more useless. Meanwhile, a group of military officials led by demented, Lt Muldoon (Bruce Willis), tries to make a business deal for mass quantities of a biohazard chemical. Things go seriously wrong when the agent is released into the air and turns the town's residents into deformed man-eating psychopaths. Cherry, along with her ex-boyfriend, El Wray (Freddy Rodriguez) and a small group try to make it out the town alive.
Death Proof: It's about three friends who spend a night in Austin, Texas and are unknowingly followed by a mysterious sociopath, Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) in his 1971 Chevy Nova. Eventually, stuntman kills are three friends with his "death proof" car. Stuntman Mike moves on to Tennessee with a 1969 Dodge Charger and chases after another group of women, only this time, he chases after the wrong women, and they put him to the test.
For the first time, we get to see two movies combined into one, back to back, with fictional trailers of upcoming attractions and in theatre announcements. All directed by talents including Rob Zombie and Edger Wright. I never heard of the Grindhouse theatres before this picture so, I decided to do some research to see where it all began. Grindhouses were a dirty and sleazy theatre house that consisted of specializing in B movies, often exploitation films shown back to back for a very cheap price. They contained high amounts of sex and violence and strange stuff a lot of people didn't want to see. Some of these films dubbed "Sexploitation," a mix of violence, sex, and sadism. They were meager budget, had poor print quality but seemed to attract an audience. Eventually, the Grindhouse theatres went under and by the 1980's they had vanished from significant urban areas such as Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Chicago. To this day, Grindhouse theatres do not exist anymore.
First off, we get a faux trailer for "Machete" about a Mexican Federale who is hired to do hatchet jobs for the U.S. government. Machete is shot and left for dead after a deal gone wrong, and he comes back for revenge. Violence is the principal theme of the trailer and of course Danny Trejo blowing up, shooting and slicing everything in sight. To be honest, it looks like a kickass movie if they ever did make it. It wouldn't surprise me if they did.
I liked "Death Proof" much better than "Planet Terror." It rides high and kicks into overdrive with something brand new, a killer who murders people with his car. Sounds kind of stupid but the way Tarantino creates the concept is fantastic. The problem is that we don't learn anything about Stuntman Mike. He is a fascinating character, but we learn zero, and it's a drag. We don't learn where Mike came from, but I guess that is not overly important. It's exciting complete with a group of lesbians who cross his path. It's very skillful and features an ending involving a highway game between two cars slamming the hell out of each other at high speed.
"Werewolf Women of the SS" is directed by Rob Zombie. It features Nicholas Cage as Fu Manchu in a camp called Death Camp 13. It's a Nazi movie with bizarre humor, and it looks twisted, something Zombie is known for crafting into his films.
"Don't" is directed by Edgar Wright and it's original content is the idea of not doing something that typically would get someone killed in a horror film. Inspired by films like "Don't go into the Woods," "Don't open the window" and "Don't answer the phone." It's got an early 1970's grainy feel to it and stars Jason Issacs, Matthew Macfadyen, and Katie Melua.
"Thanksgiving" is Eli Roth's contribution to the movie. He's the twisted headcase behind "Hostel," and it's a standard slasher complete with over the top violence, decapitations, and cheerleader nudity. The trailers inspiration if from holiday-themed slashers like "Silent Night Deadly Night." It's about a kid who falls in love with his turkey, and his dad kills it, so he kills the entire family and ends up in a hospital only to come back and slaughter the town. Every shot is extreme violence, and it looks pretty stupid. There is nothing special here.
Some screenings of Grindhouse in Canada got a trailer called "Hobo with a shotgun," filmed in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada, and Jason Eisner directs it. The faux movie trailer consists of a vagabond with a 20 gauge shotgun killing people that range from robbers to corrupt cops to a pedophile Santa Clause. I was mildly interested, but it looks violently twisted.
On to "Planet Terror." I didn't care for this picture at all. It recycles the "Zombie Formula" with bloody and gory violence thrown at us. Everything in this picture is a ticking time bomb of gore with heads coming off at every turn and a sequence of helicopter blades and tons of zombies. You can just imagine what happens next on the windows. There is some skill in the makeup and the visuals, and it does have an entertainment factor to it that works. However, It also attempts to be as disgusting as it can be and it succeeds with this. One of the better sequences of the picture is when one of the characters eventually attaches a machine gun to her severed leg to gun down zombies on the back of a motorcycle.
Out of both films, "Death Proof" is the better picture of "Grindhouse" and I would be curious to see what they do with a sequel if Rodriguez and Tarantino decided to make it. I like the concept of seeing the fake trailers as if we were in an actual Grindhouse and this package is a blast to watch for 3 hours and has a lot of love put into it. "Planet Terror" is not a terrible film as it is expected to be what it is: a zombie shoot em' up and to that degree, it succeeds.