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, sex is sleazy and gloriously misogynistic, with exploitation scenes that would make any feminist cringe. Women run around half-naked as the bullets fly and the bodies pile up.
Yes, to Tarantino and Rodriguez, these films were the last of the free-spirited B movies that allowed inexperienced directors to experiment with the very techniques that Spielberg and other noted directors use today as a matter of course. It was the marijuana-driven world of the1960s-70s when scripts were thrown out and anything was tried. In filmdom, this era was the wild west of Hollywood.
Interestingly, some of the actors in Planet Terror also appeared in Death Proof, which links the two movies to each other. Thematically, though, each film is a separate entity unto itself. Forget any effort to insure story continuity. Rodriguez was having the time of his life planning each day's gun gags and explosions. Maybe there was a rough outline and storyboard, but this was freeform filmmaking at its best.
Suddenly, Bruce Willis showed up on the set and Rodriguez put him in the movie as an Army zombie killer who has gas that relieves the symptoms of the zombie plague. Rose McGowan portrays a stripper who ends up losing her leg. First, Wray-a secret agent played with scene stealing verve by Freddy Rodriguez-attaches a wooden table leg to Cherry's stump. Then, in a moment of genius, he fits an automatic assault rifle onto her stump and Cherry becomes a lethal weapon, mowing down zombies like a weed-whacker. Her body count is the highest of the group of 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, but it's too late for him. Wray buys the farm in one scene when his head is split in two by a shoulder fired missile. Tarantino plays an Army guard who tries to rape Cherry and gets half of her leg embedded in his eye socket with blood gushing out. These guys must have used 55 gallon drums of fake blood brought in by the truckload. Viewers can just picture Rodriguez and Tarantino jumping for joy as they shot each scene.
Rodriguez had one prime directive: You can never kill enough zombies, they just keep coming. So, the cast of zombies grew with each shoot. Marley Sheldon portrays the tall bitch, Dr. Dakota Block, with syringes in her holsters that she draws like six shooters to zap her prey with lethal drugs. Rodriguez pushes beyond overkill to raise the bloodshed to the nth power as killing zombies becomes part of a daily routine. The survivors must have had an infinite supply of ammo, because they never run out.
The picture has many levels of satire which reference the classic drive-in schlock with zealous disregard for taste or censorship. Viewing this movie is a blast of fresh air in an industry that takes itself much too seriously. "Off with your head, zombie mutant scum!"
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