What’s this all about?
Grindhouse is a weird “double-feature” film, which packs two films, one (Planet Terror) directed by Robert Rodriguez, and another (Death Proof) directed by Quentin Tarantino. It’s a star-studded affair made as an homage to “grindhouse” films of the 1970’s.
In case you, like me, weren’t really familiar with the term “grindhouse,” I’ll explain it. These films were what I generally referred to as “exploitation” films, typically crime, action, or horror movies that were intentionally salacious, and usually packed with sex and violence, made on razor-thin budgets. Think Blackula, or movies about women in prison, or outlaw biker gangs. They were intentionally outrageous, and occasionally brilliant, but mostly awful. Where I grew up, they typically played at drive-in movie theaters.
Planet Terror is a blood-soaked zombie film that follows a group of survivors in a small town as they try to prevent a global zombie outbreak.
Death Proof tells the story of a washed-up stuntman turned serial killer, and his quest to kill women in the most ridiculous way possible.
Nick isn’t in either of these movies. This is going to be a rough one.
Who is Nick in this one?
Nick plays “Fu Manchu” (yes, that Fu Manchu) in a single scene in the mock trailer for Werewolf Women of the SS that plays between the main films.
Who else is in this one?
<deep breath> Here we go.
Kurt Russel (The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes) plays “Stuntman Mike,” a psychopathic stuntman serial killer.
Rosario Dawson (The Rundown) plays “Abernathy,” a woman with a terrible haircut.
Rose McGowan (The TV Show Charmed) plays both “Pam,” a lady who gets murdered, and “Cherry,” a stripper who survives the zombie apocalypse.
Mary Elizabeth Winstead(Braindead) plays “Lee,” a grown woman dressed as a cheerleader, who literally just gets forgotten.
Josh Brolin (No Country For Old Men) plays “Dr. Block,” a psychopath doctor.
Michael Biehn(Aliens) plays a sheriff.
Bruce Willis (Die Hard) plays a crazy military general.
Danny Trejo (From Dusk Till Dawn) plays a super violent Latino (imagine!).
Cheech Marin (Up in Smoke) plays a priest.
Jeff Fahey (Lawnmower Man) plays a barbecue restaurant operator.
Naveen Andrews (Lost) plays a biochemist.
Fergie (from The Black Eyed Peas) is in two scenes, for some reason.
Michael Parks (North Sea Hijack) plays lawman “Earl McGraw,” a role that he’s reprised in at least three Tarantino-adjacent films. If it’s a joke, I don’t get it.
Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction) plays a bartender in one movie, and a rapist soldier in the other, because of course he does.
Did you see that?
In Planet Terror, we see Dr. Dakota Block, who is attempting to flee both the zombie outbreak and her insane husband, load her son Tony, probably age 10, into the car, along with his absurd belongings. She stops briefly, for a reason I can’t actually remember, and leaves Tony alone in the car. She gives him a revolver, and instructions not to point the revolver at himself, but to shoot anyone but her who approaches the car.
She has barely stepped away from the car when we hear a gunshot. She turns back to the car to find that Tony has managed to shoot himself in the head almost immediately.
As someone who occasionally teaches firearms safety, this felt wildly accurate. I was cringing as she gave the gun to the child, but assumed the scene wouldn’t reach its most likely real-life conclusion. I was wrong. It’s possibly the most interesting death in a film full of bizarre deaths. -Michael
I realize it was the point for this movie to be over the top gross, but it was not for me. Especially, there were way too many gross dick jokes. From bags of testicle spilling like marbles, to gross infected dick pictures in doctor offices, to dicks melting off before Tarintino could rape Rose. It was beyond gross. -Sarah
What were Nick’s best parts?
Nick is literally in one scene in this entire film. In it, a woman rings a gong, and Nick turns around to reveal that he is Fu Manchu, while screaming. The best part of the scene is that Nick is clearly into the wild joke, and plays it up well. -Michael
As Michael pointed out, Nick was only in one scene so it had to go for both best and worst. It was short. He did a good job.He basically did one classic Nicholas Cage scream for a movie promo. He nailed it. -Sarah
What were Nick’s worst parts?
The worst part of that same scene is the fact that Nick is, of course, screaming incoherently. Apparently he’s aware that he does this in film after film, and he chooses to do it. -Michael
See above. -Sarah
How was the movie?
This is a strange film, to say the least. It’s a “double feature” (in quotes, because a true double feature is two films that were independently released, shown back-to-back) stacked with a handful of weird fake trailers directed by unusual people. It was meant as an homage to the cheap, gritty, quickly produced exploitation films of the 70’s, and as such, has a limited audience of people who would appreciate it.
Sadly, even with that audience (which I consider myself to be in) it largely misses the mark.
Watching this made me take a moment to think back on a few of my favorite “grindhouse” movies. It occurred to me that what good examples (and bad ones) of the genre have in common are wild premises, over-the-top violence, nudity, and bizarre characters in even more bizarre situations. Attributes that they also share are short-ish runtimes, and “soggy middles” in which the action slows a little in the middle for some exposition or plot revelations (this is sometimes avoided by just forcing the plot forward).
The two directors of Grindhouse handle this formula in very unique ways.
I’d argue that Rodriguez’ Planet Terror does the better job. It’s over-the-top from beginning to end, but it sets up a couple of mysteries and problems that need to be solved.
Who is this tow truck driver who can fight like a devil, and why does the sheriff hate him? What happened to end the relationship between Rose McGowan and the tow truck driver, and will they reconcile? Now that the established survivors have reached the relative safety of the Barbecue joint, what will happen? Who is the biochemist, and what’s he even trying to do?
Rather than slog through the exposition needed to resolve all of this, Rodriguez simply inserts a “Reel Missing” card (in the days of analog film, a movie took three or four reels of physical film. Sometimes, especially with movies that had gone from theater to theater dozens of times, a reel would get damaged or lost, and they’d just skip that bit.). We’re taken back to the barbecue joint, now in flames and overrun by zombies, the sheriff and tow truck driver fighting side by side as allies, and the relationship between the ex-lovers restored.
How did all of this happen? It doesn’t matter, and Rodriguez realized this, and simply sidestepped the “soggy middle” of his story. It was clever, and resulted in a shorter runtime, necessary for this forced “double feature.”
Tarantino went the opposite direction. He spent long, drawn out scene after long drawn out scene establishing the characters and routines of a group of young women on a night out, including their romantic lives, drink preferences, career aspirations, and even their high school behavior.
This was done, presumably, so that the audience would feel appropriately attached to them when they were unceremoniously murdered.
Sadly, Tarantin then stacks scene upon scene of exposition establishing four new young women, who must face the same murderer. Presumably this was done so that when three of the women literally beat Kurt Russel to death while he screams for help, we’ll be happy about it.
It all adds up to what felt like hours of exposition for the payoff of two interesting murders and one excellent car chase.
Clearly, this was meant to mirror car chase movies like Bullit and The Gauntlet. Sadly, those movies succeed by being almost entirely car chase with little exposition, and are not, in any way, “grindhouse” movies.
This whole thing just felt like Tarantino had been carrying around a notepad of “cool ideas” that he’d come up with and he just jammed them all into this movie.
The film is full of Tarantino’s regular “tough women,” who largely just came across as self-obsessed bitches, here. They’re played as cool and sexy, but in reality are just shallow and self-serving. It feels like Tarantino filled the movie with girls from his High School days who were “too cool” to have anything to do with him.
Also, there was a lot of story telling about having sex with film directors, and how some women are only attracted to famous men. This felt creepy in the way Tarantino usually feels a little creepy, but the fact that this was also a Harvey Weinstein production made it worse. It was like Tarantino was winking and saying, “people have no idea how much sex goes on behind the scenes in Hollywood.” We found out, Quentin, and we all agreed that it was gross.
The Death Proof segment goes on and on and on, and ultimately has a very unsatisfying payoff.
In my opinion, if somebody wanted to do a “grindhouse” homage anthology (that’s what this is; not a double feature), it should have had three stories in addition to the fake trailers, and those stories should have been restricted to 45 minutes in length. That would have covered more of the exploitation sub-genres, and kept the stories tighter (or at least shorter).
As it was, it felt like Rodriquez did a pretty good job, and Tarantino didn’t understand the assignment. And in 2007, nobody was going to this to see the Rodriquez picture.
This movie cost about $65 million to make. It made far less than half that at the box office. When released on DVD, the movies were released separately. I think that tells you what you need to know about how successful this concept was. -Michael
I suppose if you were really into grindhouse movies or liked to over analyze film making this might have really been your thing. It probably isn’t a bad movie, it’s just that it’s target audience is so niche. -Sarah
Yeah, but did you like it?
I enjoyed Planet Terror and the car chase in Death Proof was excellent. The rest of it was just Tarantino making a movie for himself. It’s like an Andy Kauffman joke. -Michael
I hated the movie. I had to avert my eyes for much of the film. -Sarah
Where can I watch it?
It’s on the Roku Channel.
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