Movie comments: Grindhouse

This movie is fucking awesome. Seriously. I haven't had this much fun in a movie theater in a good long time.

Granted, it's not for everyone. Those who abhor movie violence are probably going to loathe this film, because it's about an eleven on the Mel Gibson Violence-o-Meter. Not only that, but the first feature in this slightly-over-three-hours double-feature is the brilliant and disgusting slime-o-rama known as Planet Terror, which rates sky-high on the gross-out scale. Planet Terror features bloody, snotty pustules which ooze and splatter all over things, especially people's faces; much severing of limbs and heads, with frequent spurting of blood; a diverse and amazing selection of injuries and dismemberments; freaky zombie-ish creatures who rip people apart and eat them; and, just to balance things out, Rose McGowan. She plays Cherry, a young woman who formerly aspired to be a doctor (or something like that), but who ended up working as an exotic dancer. She starts out the feature with two legs, doing a lovely go-go dance number, and finishes with only one leg, the other having been ripped off (and presumably eaten). I kid you not when I say that Cherry gives a new appeal to sexy amputee-women everywhere--and the thing with the machine gun is just plain entertaining. Also featured is the fabulous Marley Shelton, who is not only gorgeous, but who ends up with a disablity of her own for most of the story. As well, her character has a fetish for needles, which is hot (in kind of a sick way).

Basically, Planet Terror has got it all, except for nudity and sex, but, fuck, I honestly did not care. They wouldn't have had time anyway. All in all, it kicks a lot of ass. I'd take my hat off to director Robert Rodriguez, but I don't wear a hat.

The second feature, Death Proof, is quite a switch. At first, it seemed like it was going to be nothing but dialog, and I actually began to wonder what the hell was going on. Then I remembered this was a Tarantino flick, and Tarantino's got to have lots of gritty dialog scenes, because he just loves that shit. And, admittedly, it is pretty good dialog, very realistic. It's just that, after the extremities of the first feature, I was starting to suspect that Death Proof was going to be a big yawn. I was quite wrong, as it turned out.

You see, Death Proof is really all about the cars. And what, pray tell, happens when you put three or four lovely, 1970's-era muscle cars into a movie? Well, they go really fast, make lots of cool noises, engage in many high-risk maneuvers, and get smashed up a lot. It's all very magnificent and exciting, and includes what must be one of the finest chase sequences in the history of cinema.

Death Proof is almost two seperate movies in its own right, the only things tying the two halves together being the car theme, and Kurt Russell's character, Stuntman Mike. The first half starts with the aforementioned dialog, and then builds up to a massive bang of an ending--in fact, I just about had to pick my jaw up off the floor. The second half begins with more dialog, which inevitably leads to an absolutely huge action sequence. I would love to describe this...but I would be doing a disservice to reveal much about it at all. Suffice it to say, people in the audience applauded at the end. Cars were involved, as well as some astounding stuntwork by the brilliant Zoe Bell. It was fucking cool.

This is a crowd film, so see it in a theater. No, I am not kidding. This movie isn't going to be half as good on DVD. You need to arrange to go to a prime-time Friday or Saturday night showing, in a high-quality theater, ideally. Myself, I went to an afternoon matinée, and I wish I had waited for the 7:30 show. It would have been worth the extra three dollars, just to see it in a mostly full theater.

The other problem I foresee with DVD viewing is that this movie, even more than most, is absolutely crammed full of lovely little details designed to increase the sense of 1970's-ness for the viewer. The most obvious are the almost constant dings and scratches that have been added in, and the deliberate use of a grainy image to simulate a low-budget, el-cheapo production. Aside from that, though, you're really not going to be able to appreciate the full grotesqueness of the special effects in Planet Terror if you're only watching it on a boring old TV set.

I also think one of the primary benefits of this film is to allow modern viewers to compare their own moviegoing experiences to the sort of bullshit that people often had to put up with in the 1970's: scratchy films that had been played to the point of wearing out, including being respliced in many places where the film had broken; cheesy advertisements; cheap production quality; projector jam-ups and misalignments; and even entire reels of the film gone missing (presumably due to projectionists stealing whichever reels contained the sex scenes). These, and others, are all used as effects in Grindhouse, and, personally, I enjoyed them all the more knowing that I never had to put up with any of them (except for cheesy ads) in a modern, high-quality theater. Would that have been the case sitting in front of a TV set, even a high-definition one? I doubt it.

When the DVD version does come out, there are likely to be some decent bonus features, including the unrated versions of the "trailers." I'm also hoping Rodreguez and Tarantino will do commmentary tracks. But, for the main viewing, you need to see this in a real fucking theater.

(On the other hand, if you're stuck in a place where all the movie theaters suck, then fuck it, just wait for the DVD. Cheap-assed theater chains don't deserve your business, nor the business of anyone else. Save your money. Invite a bunch of friends over for a DVD viewing party, get stocked up on booze and munchies, and accept my sympathies.)