Cheese.
The word for the day is Cheese.
Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez have teamed up to give us a pair of B-grade flicks full of babes, zombies, killer cars, badasses, guns and…Well, cheese.
Grindhouse is a pair of full length quick and dirty horror flicks and a handful of trailers for movies that don’t exist. The intent is to paid homage to the old grindhouse theaters of the 70s that regularly played the B-grade horror films and exploitation flicks.
To further simulate this, Grindhouse has missing segments and scratchy, often grainy, images.
Robert Rodriguez offers up Planet Terror. Here we have your basic Living Dead-on-the-loose flick. Some questionable activities at a local military base has resulted the nearby residents wandering around, oozing pus and craving the kind of meal that just is not acceptable in modern society.
So we have our nasties, now we need our folks in peril. For them, we have a fun bunch of lowlifes, including Cherry (Rose McGowan) a saucy go-go dancer that ends up with a machinegun in place of a leg, her ex Wray (Freddie Rodiguez), bickering married doctors (Delightfully played byJosh Brolin and Marley Shelton) that you likely don’t want working on you, a pair of identical twin babysitters and the owner of a local BBQ shack.
Mr. Rodriguez delivers gore by the bucketful. He also gives us some sick humor and a trashy film that will draw you in while making you ill.
Quentin Taratino gives us Death Proof. Three gals out on the town for a little fun run into Mike (Kurt Russell), a grizzled, yet charming, stunt man. He offers one of the lasses (McGowan doing double duty) a ride home. Alas, she never makes it there. Mike’s car, a jacked up Dodge Charger, is Death Proof…if you are the driver.
Later, Mike runs into another group of ladies. But this group, taking a break from working on a film set, is not as helpless. This bunch features stuntwoman Zoe (played convincingly by stuntwoman Zoe Bell), who proclaims “There’s no point to living in America unless you drive a Dodge Challenger.”
Not surprisingly, she happens to drive one. Accompanied by Abernathy (Rosario Dawson) and Kim (Tracie Thoms), Zoe soon finds herself in one of the coolest, craziest car duels in the history of films.
Death Proof does indeed have the aforementioned car duel, but it also has some really great dialogue. The racy, frank banter among the girls is first rate. Zoe Bell is a hoot and Kurt Russell does a great job as our villain.
Between the two, I would say that Death Proof rises above Planet Terror. Nothing wrong with PT…at least nothing that was not intentional… but DP has a vibe that makes it special. The dialogue is great, something that Tarantino has always done well, and the chase scenes are breathtaking.
If you have never been a fan of horror films and/or B-grade flicks, this package is not likely to win you over. If you think John Carpenter is awesome, strap yourself in for a lewd and gory ride.
