The Final Girl Film Club review of Grindhouse!!

And be sure to check out the web series "Ghostella's Haunted Tomb"

Planet Terror

I imagine GRINDHOUSE came about because some guys were watching a trailer compilation and getting high. Since it was Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez it actually made it past a weed influenced idea. For his part in the project, Rodriguez put on his head scarf and decided on a variation of the zombie flick. PLANET TERROR starts with Rose McGowan on stage playing a lousy stripper who hates her job. She fancies herself a "go-go dancer" which apparently means she doesn't get naked. Oh boy, here we go. Can you imagine a Jesus Franco movie made in the golden age of the grindhouse where the actress, who plays a stripper or even a "go-go dancer" doesn't get naked? No, me neither. Maybe Rodriguez didn't wanna make that kind of movie. You'd think a guy who dresses like Richie Sambora in 1988 would, but whatever. So Rose's character, Cherry Darling, quits her job and walks off to bump into the plot. Bruce Willis shows up as an army guy to get the zombie action going which involves some unimportant back story about buying nerve gas from the guy who plays Sayid on Lost. He plays a guy who collects testicles and sells dangerous zombie gas. There's a fight and the zombie gas is released into the atmosphere. We also meet a doctor and his wife who have a shitty marriage and work at the hospital. It's a little more family drama than I need in my zombie movie.

And then we finally meet our main hero, sort of. The tragically miscast Freddy Rodriguez plays Wray or El Wray as a Snake Plissken imitation. Trouble is Freddy just turned fourteen as the movie wrapped and is about five feet tall. He looks exactly like Hal Sparks. He runs into his old flame Cherry Darling and they share their backstory in some lame dialogue about his jacket. They get attacked by zombies and she loses her leg in a tremendous surprise to no one. Wray ends up under arrest by the Sheriff, played by Michael Biehn. Cherry ends up at the hospital where the zombie plague is gonna erupt big time. None of this really matters as the action sequences are fine and the gore scenes are pretty robust, similar to DEAD ALIVE splatstick gore goofiness. Rodriguez tries to imitate John Carpenter's music cues while throwing in his own guitar licks from the Austin School of Guitar Lick Mediocrity. There's a bunch of gory deaths and mayhem as the main group of survivors come together. Bruce Willis reappears and gives a explanation about the gas and Bin Laden and why he needed to start the zombie plague which doesn't make any fucking sense. He doesn't explain why the Sayid guy collects balls. But apparently El Wray is some sorta tiny black Ops bad ass who now drives a tow truck. The whole faux scratchy/ grimy film effect is distracting and just dumb. If they really wanted to get the grindhouse experience they should've had some smelly crackhead in the theather asking "hey, what kinda shoes dem is?". The missing reel segment is during the RED SHOE DIARIES sex scene, which was annoyingly lame anyway and features tasteful side nudity. Not even Maxim level really.

Then QT appears and is just fucking awful as a army guy guy wants to rape Cherry Darling. Just fucking awful. He does his slapstick bit where his balls are melting off and more bad attempts at being funny which does the movie no favors. Elsewhere some army guys are watching the trailer for WOMAN IN CAGES, which made me think, "Holy shit, I could be watching WOMAN IN CAGES too."

Rose gets her machine gun leg, there's a blood squib shootout and the flick ends in Mexico. Not really a planet of terror exactly, more of a southwest of terror. The whole thing would've have worked better if it wasn't so "wink wink, we're making a movie like the schlocky horror movie of yesteryear, isn't it funny?" Too much irony. It's not in the spirit of the films of the grindhouse age at all, way too hip and self conscious. Entertainment Weekly calls it the "slyest genre send up ever made" and that's not what I want for my grindhouse dollar. I want my grindhouse entertainment to leave me thinking that the director's next move may be burying a dead transexual hooker, not doing publicity on The View. Just take a look at something like LAST HOUSE ON DEAD END STREET. Now that fucking thing is a cry for help. Twisted and unsafe and incorrect to the core. I realize I am asking for something that may not have the biggest commercial appeal but they did name the thing GRINDHOUSE after all, so deliver the goods. You said it was gonna be sleazy and yet fucking Entertainment Weekly liked it. Is that grindhouse. No, no it's not. Pussy.

Deathproof

When I first heard of the GRINDHOUSE project I assumed it would involve Tarantino and Rodriguez doing some low budget exploitation pictures involving sex, blood, violence and general sleaziness. Perhaps something along the lines of I DRINK YOUR BLOOD, CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST or ILSA, SHE WOLF OF THE SS. But Tarantino has something else in mind with DEATHPROOF, his half of GRINDHOUSE. QT chose to delve into the forbidden realm of girls talking and nacho eating. DP begins promisingly enough with the music from VILLAGE OF THE GIANTS but then jumps right into the girls driving around talking. One is a sassy black radio DJ and the other two are her skanky friends. They talk about boys and drive around, stopping to get margaritas. There are jump cuts just so we know QT loves Jean Luc Godard. There's a lot more talking and the black girl has arranged for the ugly, thick browed retarded friend to give a table dance to one of her radio listeners for some reason. They decide then to go somewhere else to talk some more.

When QT was hyping his "girls talking about stuff" picture he said that it would be the picture that made Kurt Russell 'bad-ass' again. Like Snake Plissken bad-ass. It's important to remember that.

So finally we get to Kurt Russell eating the hell out of some nachos at the bar where the girls end up . The girls meet some guys, one of whom is Eli Roth, who is of course the director of HOSTEL and a dead ringer for Sylar from the tv show HEROES. He's not portraying himself or Sylar, but a guy who wants to fuck one of the girls. And the bartender is played by QT himself. His performance and the act of watching him makes my facial muscles hurt. More talking and drinking. Also at the bar is the soon to be dead Rose McGowan as a skanky wig wearing blonde that serves no purpose other than she talks a lot also. By now I hate the girls so much that the only way QT can make it up to me is if the Kurt Russell character, Stuntman Mike, actually rapes the girls with his car. At this point, the ugly girl with the chromosome problem does a completely clothed table dance for Stuntman Mike. I guess that's what sends him over the edge. I really don't fucking care just kill something. So Mike and Wig McGowan leave and he kills her in the car by taking a lot of hard turns and locking the brakes up. Why she wasn't naked, I have no fucking idea. The picture is rated R and is called GRINDHOUSE but Rose keeps her fucking shirt on. C'mon QT, you dick. It's Rose McGowan. She went to the MTV Awards with Marilyn Manson naked. How shy can she be? I've sat through it this far, I wanna see her tits. But QT apparently doesn't. So finally he kills the girls by driving his "death proof" car into their car head on. And by finally I mean fifty minutes into it. The actual crash is pretty cool but really not much gorier than a SciFi channel production, just much more well crafted. So we just got rid of the horribly annoying girls, now what? How about a bunch more annoying girls.

Flash forward to a different state and the new girls are driving. A couple of them are stunt girls and one is wearing a cheerleader outfit. To up the tension they buy Vogue magazine at a convenience store. They go to test drive a car so they can basically name drop movies that QT wants you to know that you should like. The cheerleader remains clothed inexplicably. The one stunt girl wants to ride on the hood of the car without a safety harness because QT needs to kill some time before Kurt Russell shows up again and so we can all think "wow, she's really doing that. Without a harness!" Stuntman Mike shows up and there's a chase with him trying to wreck their car while the girl is still on the hood-Without a harness! He eventually gives up and leaves but these girls are pissed so they go find him. There's more car chase and eventually "bad-ass" Kurt is beat to death by some girls. None of this is a surprise, you knew he would get his, but were probably hoping it wouldn't be so lame. Really nothing shocking or sleazy, nothing like something with the title of GRINDHOUSE seems to promise. Just some car chases and a little violence with some nachos.