Dumb and Dumber costing $88 million.

Rating: 1/10 (24 January 2008)

Now released in Australia and clocking in at a ridiculous too-long 191 minutes, this cynical vicious and boring vanity piece by Hollywood's misogynist violence peddlers seems to believe that their names and some extensive female mutilation and humiliation will once again strike a chord with the sort of 20-somethings who kill classmates in hallways. Fortunately here in Oz GRINDHOUSE was snuck in under the radar into one cinema (yes just one) and met with a nonplussed crit and box office. By virtue of being on one screen only it can report healthy first attendance (70% drop week 2) but that is really the only 'healthy' thing about this wasteful misfire. Here is a supposed double feature of crappy films with crappy trailers in between. It's a good idea and could be fun if it was created and presented as such. In fact it is also an old idea, the film MOVIE- MOVIE from the 70s with George C Scott gave viewers a fake double feature of as if we had gone to the movies in 1933, complete with fake movie trailers, so did Weird Al Yankovic's VIDIOT FROM UHF in the 80s. With GRINDHOUSE we get the abattoir version of 70s drive in flicks up-slashed with seriously vicious female humiliation and mutilation. We get two indulgent directors who do not know when to stop (as opposed to 'cut') and each idea of two 90 minute films is misguided as they are 20 minute ideas. If GRINDHOUSE ran a total of 100 minutes (like MOVIE MOVIE) then it would work better because the curiosity value can only sustain itself for that shorter period. I am again saddened at the horrific cruelty towards women in DEATH PROOF which clearly did not impress the young audience at the opening night session I attended. The film stopped being any sort of fun and really dampened any enthusiasm this crowd of 20 somethings showed. PLANET TERROR is a zombie film and as such alone is disappointing as the poster alludes it being science fiction, not just another boring ugly zombie blast-em 'spectacular'. As a production and a release, GRINDHOUSE is a spectacular financial failure and hopefully will see the real end to this disgusting extreme screen cruelty (as some warped spectacle) that Tarantino and his disciples insist the cinema-goers of the world find interesting. Game over QT. Note: one fake trailer from Eli Roth has a cheerleader getting killed when she does the splits onto a large knife. These film makers display a pathological hatred of women and their inherent beauty as human beings. GRINDHOUSE is all about killing and mutilating the human form. Nothing else. I would love to hear Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell's daughter's reaction at seeing their father participating in this vile cruelty.