Two Movies For The Price of One!

Rating: 9/10 (9 March 2008)

Whenever people hear the word "Grindhouse" they think about slaughterhouses. But in movie definition, the term Grindhouse can be describe as paying one admission to see two back-to-back movies involving blood, guts, spit, ass, jiggly breasts, innovated weapons, hot women, crazy characters, crappy dialog, and grizzly scenes to make you cheer or want to vomit.
I wanted to wait until after I saw both movies on Starz! yesterday to start my review. It's really a bloodbath along with shocks coming in all directions. Directors Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino combine everything they have from Rodriguez's Latin culture, love for horror cinema, gruesome gore and everything he can pull in his one man show from Tarantino's love for old classic movies and shows to making references from previous movies he's work on; blaxpliotation films in the 70's and bringing back actors to play the parts they were born to play.
The first film out of the two movies is Planet Terror, directed by Robert Rodriguez. It's really a mix of Night of the Living Dead along with other classic horror movies as well. The film starts in a small part of Texas with Rose McGowan as a stripper name Cherry who plans on being a stand up comedian after not feeling like dancing anymore while meeting with her old boyfriend El Wray, played by Freddy Rodriguez of Six Feet Under, one cool Vato Hombre with a reputation that'll make your hair stand up. Meanwhile, in a part of the same area, Naveen Andrews (of Lost fame) is making a business trade with the military in which the chemicals he has create exposed zombies out of anybody that'll smell the substance. In another subplot, Dr. William Block (Josh Brolin) suspects something suspicious out of his wife/nurse Dakota (Marley Shelton) before finding out at the hospital. All hell is breaking loose in the small city where various victims go to the hospital after being bitten and start carrying infections where within a couple of minutes, they start to become mindless zombies going after everybody, including Cherry where her leg is cut off. Wray along with Cherry and a group of other people including the hard-ass sheriff Hague (Michael Biehn) and his clumsy assistant Tolo (Tom Savini, special effects artist) fight off the hordes of zombies before becoming the victims.
Rodriguez's "Planet Terror" is described as bad-ass and one of the best horror/action segments I've ever seen in recent years. The way the film looks from frame one is an homage to all of the early films in the seventies where specks and spots would be seen not to mention a famous blooper along the way. Other actors include Jeff Fahey as a cook with some of the wittiest catchphrases along with Stacy Ferguson as a smoking hot babe and friend of Dakota before becoming one of the devoured victims; Michael Parks as the famous Earl McGraw, Quentin has a small role as a horned up army soldier who has an eye for Cherry before exposing his parts along with Bruce Willis as the man in charge of the military.
Rodriguez is the master of his domain!
4 out of 4 stars.
The next half is Quentin Tarantino's "Death Proof" where it pays respect to actors who did their own stunts along with slasher movies where the sexy women always died. "Death Proof" takes place just before Planet Terror in Austin, Texas where a group of girls led by Vanessa Ferlito decide to have fun by drinking beers, hearing music and getting high. They meet Stuntman Mike (an eerie Kurt Russell) who is hitting on a blonde girl (Rose McGowan in another performance) before he talks to them. Ferlito's character is spooked of Stuntman Mike by the fact that his black car has been following her since she had gotten out of the apartment. After leaving the bar, Stuntman Mike takes his blonde beauty, Pam (Rose McGowan), hostage just before killing her and killing Ferlito's friends in the process. Fourteen years pass where Stuntman Mike starts his rampage of harassing young women all over again where this time he might meet his match if Rosario Dawson along with Zoe Bell could do something about it.
Overall, "Death Proof" was good but not in the strength of a Tarantino classic nor as bad-ass as "Planet Terror." I loved Tarantino's choice of choosing Kurt Russell as Mike where it's been years since he played a character of tenacious and cool over the past from MacReady in John Carpenter's The Thing, to Snake in the "Escape" movies and Jack O'Neill in Stargate. The stunt scenes with Zoe Bell in a car chase sequence is one of the craziest I've seen in all my life where I closed my eyes. My only complaint had been that Tarantino's dialog and references slowed the pace along with the fact that after the first 56 minutes of the film, the reel look from the 70's was gone.
3 1/2 out of 4 Stars.
Overall, this is just a movie fan's dream come true.