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entertaining u newspaper: your weekly guide to entertainment
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Seen, Heard, Noted & Quoted
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Part 1: Robert Rodriguez’s PLANET TERROR
by rick grant rickgrant01@comcast.net
A Rated R Both films 191 min
For those of us who remember the campy grade B movies exhibited at the drive-in theatres of yesteryear, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s wonderfully over-the-top satire of this genre will evoke continuous guffaws. For both films, with fake trailers in between, Rodriguez and Tarantino collaborated on the scripts and outrageous over-the-top action. The result is the ultimate parody of bad filmmaking, editing, and overkill stunts, but using modern methods and A-list actors who simulated the wooden acting and trite dialogue of these goofy films.
Grindhouse is a homage to Tarantino and Rodriguez’s favorite trashy movies. Rodriguez shot his movie, Planet Terror with digital cameras and editing, but used a special program to simulate the grainy scratched film stock complete with “missing reels” and bad editing. Some of the trailers are better than the two films, especially the fake preview of Machete!
In Planet Terror, Rodriguez shot the wildest and goriest zombie movie ever released. He created caricatures of zombies with puss-filled boils and heads that explode when shot. In this blood-splattered world of “infected” zombies, Bruce Willis is an Army zombie killer who has gas that relieves the symptoms of the zombie plague, Rose McGowan portrays Cherry Darling, a stripper who ends up losing her leg, and the scene-stealing Freddy Rodriguez plays Wray, a secret agent who attaches an automatic assault rifle to her stump.
Cherry becomes a lethal weapon, mowing down zombies like a weed-whacker. Her body count is the highest of the sexy chicks running for their lives to a barbecue joint owned by DJ (Jeff Fahey), where the survivors of the plague would hold their last stand against the zombie terror, and eat some damn fine barbecue to boot.
Josh Brolin portrays a cynical doctor who is treating the infected people, but after so many zombies, he quits. Tarantino plays an Army guard who tries to rape Cherry and comes to a bloody end. These guys must have used 55 gallon drums of fake blood brought in by the truckload. Marley Sheldon portrays Dr. Dakota Block with syringes in her holsters that she draws like six shooters to zap her prey with lethal drugs. As for Wray and the rest of the survivors don’t worry they never run out of ammo. Viewing this movie is a blast of fresh air in an industry that takes itself much too seriously.
Part 2: Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof
by jon bosworth jaxvillain@yahoo.com
B+
After Robert Rodriguez’s action packed gore fest of a zombie film, Planet Terror, the bar was set for Quentin Tarantino’s addition to the Grindhouse double-feature. The “prevues” for horror movies Don’t, Werewolf Women of the SS, and Thanksgiving kept the kitsch-pulse up, but Tarantino slowed the pace. However, the end, as is usually the case in exploitation movies, did justify the means.
I didn’t see Grindhouse in a megaplex, as most people this past weekend did, but rather went to the Playtime Drive-In on Blanding Boulevard to watch the spectacle as it should be seen. The great thing about watching this particular double-feature at the Playtime is that the deplorable and morally depraved people featured on the screen are the same ones that serve you your popcorn. At the drive-in you are living that film. Cherry Darling is in one of those steamed up cars in front of the screen, the ones that flicker intermittently with lighters.
Tarantino’s Death Proof started out true to form. In classic Tarantino style, he brought the Kurt Russell from Escape from New York and Big Trouble in Little China back to the big screen as a tough, albeit somewhat insecure, serial killer named Stuntman Mike. Jungle Julia, a local radio host (played by the legendary Sidney Poitier’s daughter Sydney Tamiia Poitier) brings her friend, Butterfly, out for a night on the town. In the end Rose McGowan gets the mysoginistic end of Kurt Russell’s rage, and ultimately all of them are murdered.
Immediately the viewer is thrown into another group of wild girls out for a night on the town. Again we are dragged into terrific dialogue that slows this camp feature to a standstill, or even worse, an art film, but just wait it out. When Stuntman Mike comes back into the scene the action kicks up and the ideas are equal parts cunning and hysterical. In the end, the movie finishes the way it should. Kurt Russell finds that sometimes being Death Proof isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be.
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