A fine tribute to Austin, strong women, and my uncle Bob

Rating: 9/10 (30 June 2007)

In 1974, my late uncle Robert A. Burns signed on as art director for a film being made by two old friends that he had known since high school: director Tobe Hooper and actor Gunnar Hansen. Together they made the grind-house horror classic "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre". Over the next dozen years, he worked on countless grind-house movies. Most of them were horror films such as "The Hills Have Eyes", "Tourist Trap", "The Howling" and "Re-Animator". However, he also did the Rudy Ray Moore blaxploitation action/comedy "Disco Godfather" and the PG-rated romance "She Came to the Valley". Typically, he was simply the art director, but he also directed "Mongrel" and even played the lead in "Confessions of a Serial Killer".
Mainstream (or at least art-house) success found many of my uncle Bob's colleagues such as Hooper, Wes Craven, Joe Dante, and John Sayles. Other grind-house alumni include the Coen Brothers, Jonathan Demme, Roger Ebert, Sam Raimi, Oliver Stone and Martin Scorsese. Unforunatley, Bob never shared their mainstream success. By the late 1980's, grind-houses had been replaced by Blockbuster Video and my uncle's showbiz career was effectively over. He spent the last 15 years of his life in relative seclusion, trying to downplay his horror-movie past.
But many people today appreciate the sort of films my uncle Bob did during his heyday. They include hot, new directors such as Eli Roth ("Hostel"), Edgar Wright ("Shaun of the Dead"), and Rob Zombie ("House of 1000 Corpses"). And chief among them are 1990's action-movie greats Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino. All of these directors have contributed a portion of their talents to "Grindhouse", a tribute to the low-budget horror and action movies they grew up with. Rodriguez, Roth, Wright and Zombie all contributed fake trailers. Rodriguez and Tarantino each contributed a feature-length segment done in the style of the old films, but set in modern times.
The first segment is "Planet Terror", which is basically an Americanized version of "28 Days Later" (zombies and rapist soldiers), but with the genders of the two lead actors switched, and the female lead (Rose McGowan) having a machine gun where her leg should be. There are also subplots about a family barbecue stand (doubtless a reference to "Texas Chainsaw Massacre") and a married doctor (Marley Shelton) having a lesbian affair with a stripper (Fergie).
The real treat, however is Tarantino's "Death Proof". It starts out with some very attractive ladies in tank tops and short shorts spitting out the same kind of dialog regarding sex and obscure pop music as the guys in black suits did in "Resevoir Dogs". They have planned a day-long crawl of all the Austin hot-spots before heading out to the lake together in their Honda Civic. Eventually, they catch the attention of Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell), who hangs out at the Texas Chili Parlor and tries to impress the ladies with stories of his time in Hollywood back in the '70's & '80's, before CGI cost him his job. He eventually manages to impress Pam (McGowan again) and she agrees to go home with him. That's when she finds out that Mike's car is "death-proof", meaning that the car has been modified for stunt work: The driver is encased in shatter-proof glass and has extra seat-belts so he won't get hurt seriously if the car crashes, but there is no protection at all for the passenger. Mike then reveals himself to be a serial killer using his car as a weapon. He shatters Pam's skull against the protective glass with a quick U-turn and then goes after the remaining girls. The girls all die, and he winds up in the hospital--treated by the same married lesbian doctor from "Planet Terror". The action fast-forwards to rural Tenessee where Mike has found some more comely young women (Rosario Dawson, Tracie Thomas, and real-life stunt-woman Zoe Bell as herself) to prey on. But what he doesn't know is that they are also professional stunt drivers, at least as skilled as he is. The rest of the movie is the best car chases filmed since the original "Dukes of Hazzard" TV series.
I actually preferred this movie to the actual grind-house movies for three main reasons: the acting, the writing, and the portrayal of women. If you have ever seen any actual grind-house movies, you know that typically, the acting is by deservedly unknown amateurs, the writing is silly, and that women are typically portrayed as little more than big-breasted sex objects and/or murder victims. But "Grindhouse" boasts such accomplished actors as Naveen Andrews and Bruce Willis, as well as grind-house vets Michael Biehn and Jeff Fahey, all at top form. The writing in both features is informed by Rodriguez's commitment to non-stop action and Tarantino's ear for dialog and knack for surprising the audience. And in both features, it is strong women who save the day from evil men.
About the only thing I didn't like about "Grindhouse" was the filmmakers' insistence on preserving the feel of watching the films in an actual grind-house theater (scratchy print, shoddy projection, missing reels, etc). I felt that these flourishes distracted from the movie's atmosphere. Fortunately, they were gone by the final car chase in "Death Proof".
My uncle Bob lived just long enough to see the beginning of the current grind-house revival with Tarantino's Shaw Bros. tribute "Kill Bill, Vol 1 & 2" and the 2003 remake of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", the movie that started his career. I do not know what he thought about those movies, or even if he ever saw them (I did not speak to him much during his final years). But if you are a fan of the types of films my uncle Bob made, or even just a film fan in general, you owe it to yourself to see "Grindhouse" in its unabridged form. 9 out of 10.