Review: Grindhouse (2007)

A grindhouse, for those of you who don't know, was a movie theater that showed primarily low-budget action and horror movies, with loads of violence and sex. I say "was" because grindhouses don't exist anymore; nor, for the most part, do the cinematic subgenres they displayed, like urban comedies, kung-fu revenge sagas or Satan-worship monster shows.

Downtown Chicago used to be peppered with once-prestigious movie houses that had evolved (or devolved, depending on your perspective) into grindhouses, with names like the Woods, the United Artists, the Michael Todd, the Oriental and, of course, the Chicago. A couple of these theaters (the Oriental and the Chicago) survive as live-performance venues; the rest were demolished long ago. No great surprise. Many of these theaters were in rough shape, and the late Chicago Tribune/WBBM-TV film critic, Gene Siskel, once showed a dead mouse in the lobby of one of the downtown theaters in a segment on the evening news.

Grindhouse fare also popped up at drive-ins like the Bel-Air on Cicero Avenue in Berwyn, where I saw the likes of Beyond the Door and Race with the Devil, but most of those are gone as well. (A brief Internet search turned up only two operating drive-ins near Chicago: the Cascade Drive-in in West Chicago and the McHenry Outdoor Theatre in McHenry.)

I have more than a little affection for the grindhouse era--it's when I started going to movies, no matter what was showing or where--but Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino obviously have not only affection, but a deep, abiding love for the era. What else could explain Grindhouse, the directors' attempt to re-create the experience of watching a cheap-looking double feature at your neighborhood theater or local drive-in?

Rodriguez helms Planet Terror, the front end of the twin bill. It stars Rose McGowan as Cherry darling, a go-go dancer ("Not a stripper," she explains, "There's a difference") who wants to do something else--maybe become a stand-up comedian, since "everybody tells me I'm funny" except her ex-boyfriend, Wray (Freddy Rodriguez, no relation to the director), who still loves Cherry even though she walked out on him and took his jacket with her.

They don't get much time for witty banter, though, as Cherry is attacked in the dark by roaming, ravenous creatures chew off Cherry's right leg (OW!) and run away with it. Wray rushes Cherry to the local hospital, where all hell is breaking loose: Casualties are pouring in with similar wounds (or worse), overwhelming the staff, which includes Doctor Block (Josh Brolin) and his wife, Dakota (Marley Shelton), who's trying to run off with her ex-girlfriend (Stacey Ferguson, a.k.a. Fergie) when the mayhem starts.

Pretty soon, the whole town is overrun by "sickos"--which are pretty much your basic flesh-eating zombies, but with more personality (if they had a speaking part before becoming infected, anyway) and nasty, puss-filled boils all over their bodies. This whole mess ties back to some nerve-gas nonsense and a mysterious military type (Bruce Willis), but does that really matter? It's all an excuse for some gut-munching, head-'sploding action, with Wray, Cherry (who's outfitted with a table leg and, later, a machine gun in place of her missing limb) and an assortment of colorful characters (played by the likes of Michael Biehn, Tom Savini, Jeff Fahey and Michael Parks, playing Texas Ranger Earl McGraw just as he did in From Dusk Till Dawn and Kill Bill) try to survive the zombie apocalypse long enough to find a cure to the rapidly spreading infection.

Robert Rodriguez in one of the most energetic, exuberant filmmakers working today, and his enthusiasm is hard to resist. He's clearly having fun with the cheesy material and so are his actors--even McGowan, who gives a grueling physical performance not only in the bump-and-grind she does beneath the opening credits, but throughout the rest of Planet Terror, at least half of which she spends bounding about with one leg missing.

Rodriguez mimics the action-horror films of the '70s and '80s well enough, both in terms of content, with visual and plot cues to movies like George Romero's The Crazies, John Carpenter's The Fog and Dan O'Bannon's Return of the Living Dead, but in physical presentation as well, with faux scratches on the film, a "missing reel" and a soundtrack heavy on synthesizers (a direct reference to Carpenter, who, like Rodriguez, often scores his own films).

One of the unfortunate side effects of directorial exuberance, though, is lack of self-control. Rodriguez pours on the gore (sometimes literally) to the point where it stops being funny and is merely gross. (Were the forensic-quality close-ups of chewed up skulls or the popping boils all over the "sickos" really needed? How the hell did the MPAA give this film an "R" rating?) There's also Rodriguez's use of Quentin Tarantino, the actor. He chews the scenery with abandon, which would be fine if Tarantino were even a mediocre actor. But he's not. He's an annoyance, and Rodriguez should have known better than to use him for anything more than the briefest of cameos. On the plus side, Rodriguez's indulgences don't ruin the fun as much as momentarily sidetrack it.

Tarantino indulges himself as well in his Grindhouse contribution, Death Proof, a revenge drama/car-chase ode that begins with multiple close-ups of women's feet (Tarantino has an admitted fetish). He follows the feet--and the women attached to them (including Jordan Ladd, daughter of Cheryl, and Sydney Poitier, daughter of Sidney)--as they tool around Austin, TX, shooting the shit about boys, pot and what they're doing for fun that night. They wind up in a bar (where the bartender is played by--surprise!--Tarantino), where they get drunk, shoot the shits some more and generally kill time--until they meet Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell).

Stuntman Mike is a ruggedly handsome man--or he would be, if not for the whopping scar down the left side of his face. Reasonably charming, too. Except, of course, for the fact that he's a serial killer who likes to stalk women and run them down with his armored-up, tricked-out stunt car. (The skull and crossbones on the hood? Not a good sign.) After a horrific crash in which Stuntman Mike is the only survivor, Earl McGraw (Michael Parks again) muses that Mike is probably a murderer. But proof? None.

So Stuntman Mike goes back on the prowl, this time stalking a foursome of females making a movie in Tennessee: Actress Lee (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), makeup artist Abernathy (Rosario Dawson), and stuntwomen Kim (Tracie Thoms) and Zoe Bell (billed "as herself" because she's a real-life stuntwoman who doubled Uma Thurman in Kill Bill). Stuntman Mike gets a whole lot more than he bargained for, though, when three of his intended victims fight back in one of the most thrilling car chases ever filmed.

Even with the period subject matter and style, you can't mistake this for a film by anyone but Tarantino. There are the usual obscure pop culture references. There is great use of music, including the terrific "Hold Tight" by Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich (perhaps the most awkwardly named rock group ever) and the opening theme by Jack Nitzsche (which was also used as the theme for Bert I. Gordon's Village of the Giants and is one of the best instrumentals ever). And there are long conversations that don't necessarily advance the plot, but do flesh out the characters. Tarantino's dialog isn't nearly as sharp as usual, though, so it's easy to become impatient while the women talk and drive and drive and talk without seeming to go anywhere or say anything. Still, one of my main complaints about mad slasher films has always been that we hardly get to know the victims at all (other than hair color and bra size) before they're dispatched by the crazed killer. Getting to know these characters before they're threatened and/or slaughtered makes us care a bit more about their eventual fates.

No matter how much Tarantino spins his wheels (pun intended) for much of Death Proof, the chase at the end--by turns thrilling, frightening and hilarious--more than makes up for it. It also doesn't hurt that Russell gives a quietly menacing performance reminiscent of Robert Mitchum in Night of the Hunter--calm and cool when playing with his intended prey, increasingly frantic as the situation is yanked out of his control by women who refuse to be victims anymore.

Both Tarantino and Rodriguez present strong female characters capable of kicking serious amounts of ass, but both make these characters suffer before they get to be strong; the women in Death Proof are terrorized by Stuntman Mike before they turn the tables, and Cherry Darling has to be outright mutilated before she's given the opportunity to save the day. Both directors have been down this road before: Tarantino's Kill Bill features a martial-arts master who defeats everyone in her path, but not before she's shot in the head and substantially degraded. And Rodriguez's Sin City is a misogyny-a-go-go. (To be fair, so are Frank Miller's graphic novels, which Rodriguez faithfully adapted.) It would have been nice if, this time around, both directors could have let their strong women have some damn fun without paying such a high price for it.

Both halves of Grindhouse are a good time nonetheless, just like they're meant to be. Sure, this is a vanity project suffused with nostalgia for an era most filmgoers have forgotten, if they were even alive to experience it--isn't the whole of Grindhouse an obscure pop reference, when you get down to it?--created two obsessive cinema buffs who have the muscle to get it made.

That's not the point. The point is, have Rodriguez and Tarantino achieved their goal? Is Grindhouse a cheesy, sleazy good time? Yes and yes.