grounded "Grindhouse"...

Rating: 7/10 (19 September 2007)

I saw this in the theatres twice because I knew it was going to be pulled due to lagging box-office sales. People (especially those born in the early 1980s and up) would not appreciate let alone understand this film as much as a Gen X'er like myself (I saw so many younger people walk out after about a half-an-hour into it), with it being purposely "aged" showing the scratches, cigarette burns, jumpy and rough quick-cuts, garbled soundtrack and so forth to maintain the integrity of the B-movies that I always heard of as a kid but was forbidden to see because of my age at the time. These films crossed over into the straight-to-video category in the late eighties up to today, where these imperfections were next to devoid and the only similar qualities were unknowns and has-beens who were cast and silly dialogue and story to go with.
Robert Rodriguez preserved and emulated the B-movie with the first featurette of the double-bill, "Planet Terror" to a tee, equipt with purposely bad dialogue, bad acting, missing reels, cheesy special effects, stupid storyline and music along with the second vignette, Quentin Tarantino's "Death Proof." "Death Proof" possesses the alternate qualities of the B-movies in the early 1970s, including altered title-cards, un-matching music cues and tedious and extraneous scenes (which always kept you bored and anxious) that built up to a somewhat-reasonable climatic ending.
The best parts of the film were actually the false trailers that were shown at the beginning and in between the features, which consisted of the same ensemble of actors who were used in both vignettes. The acting was so bad, it was good and I would laugh out loud to myself every time they were shown. The trailers were horribly memorable with titles like "Machete" (with the tagline saying: "They Just f*$ked with the wrong Mexican"); "Werewolf Women of the S.S." (with Nicholas Cage); "Don't" and "Thanksgiving" which homage'd films like "Halloween," "Dawn of the Dead" (both originals) and the Hammer Horror series in the U.K..
Suffice to say, because of the fact that this film was not well-received by audiences when released in theatres, the distributors had it "cut" into two feature films with added scenes to lengthen the running time, and keep the picture completely from submerging itself. But doing so has robbed us all from the whole cinematic experience that Rodriguez, Tarantino and team were able to preserve with the help of today's technology. Now with two separate films, die-hard "Grindhouse" fans will never look at "Planet Terror" and "Death Proof" the same way again, and when seeing them apart, I miss this film even more.