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Grindhouse, 2007. Directed by Robert Rodriguez
(Planet Terror) and Quentin Tarantino (Death Proof). Rose McGowan, Freddie
Rodriquez, Michael Biehn, Jeff Fahey, Marley Shelton, Josh Brolin, Bruce
Willis, Sydney Poitier, Rosario Dawson, Jordan Ladd, Zoe Bell, Vanessa
Furlito, and Kurt Russell. Synopsis: Directors Rodriquez and Tarantino recreate the grindhouse/drive-in double-feature, complete with bad prints, missing reels, and coming attractions, with each director taking the reigns for a loving homage to the schlock of a bygone era. In Planet Terror, a renegade military project releases a gas that turns people into ravening, flesh-eating zombies. It's up to go-go dancer Cherry Darling and those around her to guide the survivors to a safe haven without being torn to bits. In this she's helped by her old flame, Wray, and hindered by the fact that the zombies have made off with her leg. No problems, though: Wray helpfully fits her with a machine gun in place of her lost gam. Also into the mix is Sherrif Hague and his brother, who bicker over a barbecue recipe, the sinister Dr. Dakota Block, who is cheating on her husband with another woman, and a pair of psychotic babysitters. And Ray, it seems, has a mysterious past. And standing in the way of everyone is Lt. Muldoon and his unit of mercenaries, who have a vested interest in the zombie gas.... In Death Proof, a group of women in Austin, Texas, run affoul of a scarred ex-stuntman named Mike while they contemplate a weekend with or without men. Stuntman Mike has an unusual car, a Chevy Nova that has been "death proofed" for stunt work. Mike uses his "death proof" car to terrorize women: first his passenger, a woman unwise enough to accept a ride home from him, then Jungle Julia and her friends, who Mike murders in a head-on collision. The sherrif and his deputy suspect Mike, who is hospitalized with minor injuries, but can't prove anything. Mike is free to stalk other women. With a new car--this time a 1969 Dodge Charger, Mike moves on to Tennessee, where his choice of victims is another group of women. Unfortunately for him, he's picked a group that knows more than a little about cars and stunts themselves. Zoe, Lee, Marcy, and Abernathy are in town making a movie, and Zoe and Marcy are themselves stunt people. Zoe, from New Zealand, is taking the opportunity to drive a real muscle car, a Dodge Challenger identical to the one in Vanishing Point, her favorite movie, and to play a dangerous game of "ship-masting" on the hood of the car. After a long cat and mouse chase, the women manage to turn the tables on Stuntman Mike... Echo Chamber: The thought I had walking away from Grindhouse as I stretched my legs (the whole thing is a whopping 3 hours and 20 minutes long) was that I might be witnessing the end of cinema. Not in the way that Godard declared it in Week End. More along the lines of pop eating itself. Quentin Tarantino has long maintained that his "homages" were a Robert Rauschenberg-ian collection of found-images, elevated from their original contexts by the re-purposing instincts of a "serious" artist (whether or not this pinciple of "pop" art is a fallacy or not is open to interpretation, it should be said). For the most part, he's gotten away with it because he IS a serious artist with a serious artist's command of the tools of his trade. But he may be a serious artist with nothing new to say. As abstractions, his recent films are impeccable examples of craft. As meat and potatoes movies, though, they leave a LOT to be desired. In Death Proof, Tarantino has succeeded in severing any connection the audience may feel with his characters (something he didn't do even with the very unlikable characters in Kill Bill). Worse still, the plot and incidents of the plot don't seem to arise naturally from these characters, which creates an even larger disconnect. And worst of all, while still raking through decades of fringe cinema for material, Tarantino has started to cannibalize his own movies. In recreating elements from his previous films, he's illuminating their flaws. That dialogue that seemed fresh in Pulp Fiction now seems like a mannerism, his allusions a collection of endorsements for movies that Tarantino loves rather than organic pronouncemnts of characters. It's not a total loss, though. Kurt Russell is terrific as the film's villain. The climactic chase sequence is superb, but it seems to exist in a vacuum. I should probably mention that, while Vanishing Point and Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry hardly qualify as grindhouse movies, given that both were financed and released to hard-top theaters by 20th Century Fox--though at the time, the difference between a hard-top movie and a grindhouse movie was paper thin. Planet Terror is a more likable, though arguably less accomplished, movie. It exists solely for the adrenalin rush. It starts with the creamy flesh of Rose McGowan--never quite losing the flavor of that flesh even as it is mutilated--and racing through absurd plot twist after absurd plot twist. There's nothing new in this approach for Rodriquez. He's been doing this sort of thing since Desperado, sometimes well, sometimes not. The movie has more throw-aways than any recent movie I can think of, as if Rodriguez is conflating several different movies into one over-narrative. What, exactly, are the Doctors Block up to in the film's hospital? What exactly is Wray's past? What exactly is going on between Dr. Dakota and her father? None of this is central to the zombie rampage, and all of these threads are narrative dead ends. The movie has forward motion going for it, except where it throws one of these dead-ends into the road in front of the audience. The biggest of these "what the...?" moments are provided by Rose McGowan's machine-gun leg, a prop and plot device that begs the question of how she is actually firing the weapon every time she shoots it. Like her character, the movie itself seems an arbitrary assemblage of elements that don't exactly fit together well. Coming Attractions: All of which may be the point, it should be said, because the filmmakers have provided a selection of fake trailers: Machete by Rodriguez, starring his longtime favorite character actors, Danny Trejo and Cheech Marin; Werewolf Women of the SS by Rob Zombie, with Udo Kier, Sybil Danning (!), and Nicholas Cage; Don't! by Edgar Wright and his Shaun of the Dead collaborators; and Thanksgiving by Eli Roth. Almost to a one, the trailers are better than the features. As I recall from the bad old days of drive-in theaters (I'm old enough to have witnessed the death throes of their glory years), this is an authentic recreation of the grindhouse/drive-in experience. The trailers often WERE better than the movies. At least one of these trailers, Machete, appears to have inspired the filmmakers to go ahead with the actual movie, which pleases me no end. I've long thought that Danny Trejo was the only actor currently working who could step into the shoes of exploitation bad-ass William Smith. I'd pay money to see Don't and Thanksgiving, too. Thanksgiving provides the entire film with its best line: "Dark meat. White meat. All will be carved on...Thanksgiving." Tarantino scheduled a grindhouse film festival in L.A. in conjunction with this movie, which is laudable. My own grindhouse festival might look something like this: Truck Turner. Isaac Hayes as a bad-ass.
Star Trek's Nichelle Nichols as Mama, foul-mouthed queen of the
prostitutes.
4/26/07
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