A Fond Trip Down Memory Lane

Rating: 8/10 (19 April 2007)

I'll admit 2 things right off the bat: I was a consummate fan of the old 42nd Street grindhouses & drive ins & the fare they showed. I fondly remember skipping school to catch a triple feature. My all time perfect grindhouse experience was skipping school on a rainy lousy day with several friends of mine & kicking back with some lousy wine a few joints & a triple feature of THE WARRIORS, ENTER THE DRAGON and THE AVENGING DISCO GODFATHER.
The other thing I'll admit is that I am total Tarantino fanboy. I enjoy his work even though I really get tired of him. He does stuff that I shouldn't likeie he makes movies about moviesbut I end up loving them. I really detest his clones & after every one of his movies we are inundated with bad copycats. But I have enjoyed each feature film he has made.
So GRINDHOUSE seems to be made just for me! DEATHPROOF, Tarantino's half of GRINDHOUSE demonstrates why he is so far above his peers. He takes a hoary genrethe car chase flick--& infuses it with something new, much like Sergio Leone did with the western back in the 1960s. DEATHPROOF is the best drive in movie never made in 1975. As with RESERVIOUR DOGS he writes the scenes we never got to see in genre flicks, scenes where the characters reveal things about themselves, scenes where they set the action in motion, scenes where we see the aftermath.
DEATHPROOF also contains a car chase scene that is right up there with THE FRENCH CONNECTION & the 7 UPS. The first part of DEATHPROOF is the rapid fire dialogue between the characters & the second part is the rapid fire action of a psychopath & a car of women bent on revenge. Tarantino doesn't just send up or copy the car chase flick of the 1970she makes a really good one. Unlike Ridrigues' half of GRINDHOUSE, Tarantino does not degrade the film's image of scratch the print. DEATHPROOF looks like a brand new 1970s car chase flick right down to the soft focus.
Now about the rest of the film. As I'm sure most of you know, GRINDHOUSE is actually 2 full length (80 minutes) features, plus fake coming attractions. Rodriguez's PLANET TERROR is a mildly amusing send up of a zombie flick. This is the part of GRINDHOUSE where the film is scratched, it hiccups & burns. It's non stop action with no character development& is basically just a new version of a bad old movie. Whereas Tarantino injects a genre with something new Rodriguez simply takes a stroll down memory lane & is every bit as witless as most of the flicks I used to see at the real 42nd Street grindhouses.
The fake trailers are hit or miss. Eli Roth's THANKSGIVING is outrageous & hilarious as is a trailer for a bad 70s Euro horror DON'T.
So is GRINDHOUSE worth seeing? Well I had a great 3 hours & 15 minutes. The only time I got antsy was during the last 10 minutes of Rodriguez's PLANET TERROR. But if you aren't fond of this type of fare & if Tarantino generally leaves you cold then I guess there are better ways to spend 3 hours.
What wasn't so funny was a real trailer that I saw before GRINDHOUSE: apparently Rob Zombie has remade John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN. From the trailer its apparent that this is a non stop gore show & the tagline for the film is "an extreme update of the old classic". So what they've done is take a great old thriller that was heavy on scares but light on actual gore & have stripped it of it's humanity, added gore & torture & have created just another sick millennial stalk, torture & mutilate flick. I've caught both of Zombie's previous celluloid atrocities & found them to be nothing more than bad torture porn.