Grindhouse, directors Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's homage to B-movie double-features, may be around the three-hour mark, but it's probably the craziest and most fun three hours you could get for your money. You are, after all, paying to watch two movies for the price of one, and not just mundane dramas, but rather the over-saturated, near-masturbatory zaniness of two of mainstream Hollywood's more ambitious directors.
First off, one of the elements that makes Grindhouse so much damn fun to watch is just how hard the duo has pushed to recreate the look and the feel of the old grindhouse double-features of the sixties, seventies and eighties. This means replicating the appearance of worn-out film, having scenes missing and creating the impression that the projector is going in and out of focus. Prior to the first feature and in-between the two films is a hilarious set of fake B-movie trailers, directed by Rodriguez, Rob Zombie and Eli Roth. Also thrown in are bunches of other on-screen goodies which are better seen rather than described here.
Featured first is Rodriguez's Planet Terror, an absolutely riot-filled nod to low-budget, tough-guy zombie movies. Rose McGowan plays Cherry, a go-go dancer looking to get out of the business. Unfortunately just as she's quitting her job, across town Naveen Andrews and Bruce Willis are unleashing a storm of the living-dead, ready to wreck havoc. Marley Shelton plays Dr. Dakota Block, a woman who is trying to escape the violent clutches of her husband Dr. William Block, played by the ever-so-sinister Josh Brolin. Shelton is trying to run away with her lesbian lover, but of course her plans are foiled once all sorts of zombie cases start rolling into the hospital where she works. Freddy Rodriguez plays Wray, the hero of the film, who bands together the survivors once the undead start tearing everything to pieces, and from there the movie has a pretty straightforward goal -- crazy and awesome kill scenes.
The gore and the sheer lunacy of this film are its strongest qualities. When McGowan's leg is bitten off by zombies, it's eventually replaced with a high-power machine gun/grenade launcher combo, and that definitely makes for some of the most amazing and best action sequences in the history of killer action sequences. There is a nod to Lucio Fulci's Zombie via an incredible eye-gouging scene, which just complements all the other pus and blood that spews forth from every direction in this film. Look for a particularly gruesome cameo by Tarantino.
Of the two films, Planet Terror is the most mindless to watch, and does a fantastic job winning over those with short attention spans. Rodriguez does a stupendous job paying homage to this genre of B-movie film, better than Tarantino does with his film. Rodriguez's movie feels like a Rodriguez film, but it also definitely feels like a B-movie film, and that's exactly what he wants to recreate. Tarantino's Death Proof on the other hand feels perhaps too much like a Tarantino film, which in the end is one of its drawbacks. Planet Terror is completely silly and incredibly fun to watch, and if you don't enjoy this one, then you're better off leaving before Death Proof starts rolling.
Death Proof is partly a tribute to all the great muscle-car and revenge movies of the seventies, such as Vanishing Point. In fact, if you don't get that it's paying respect to Vanishing Point, don't worry, because Tarantino hammers this into your head over and over again. Death Proof has some fantastic scenes and performances, but a good amount of the movie is weighed down by Tarantino's overuse of his own techniques, such as long scenes of primarily-irrelevant dialogue, and constant references to his inspirations.
All of that negative stuff aside, though, this movie is just as fun as Planet Terror if you can stick it out to the last half. This is where Tarantino gives direct honor to all the stuntmen and stuntwomen of the world by featuring stuntwoman Zoë Bell as one of the leads, performing all her stunts without all that "CGI crap," to quote characters from the film. Bell's stunts steal the show, and make Planet Terror more than just good. The suspense climbs at an incredible rate in the second half, and most of that is propelled forward by the fact that Bell is actually performing all of her death-defying stunts.
Kurt Russell is also brilliant as Stuntman Mike, the homicidal stalker who kills women by running them over with his car. For a film that also tries to display the strength of bad-ass Pam Grier-type women, Tarantino really lets Russell steal this movie. Russell's performance and Bell's stunts together carry this movie beyond the mundane to the excellent, making that last hour stretch worth watching.
