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.
I was supposed to see Grindhouse with friends at a downtown theater--one of those comfortable joints with clean floors, stadium seating and vastly overpriced popcorn and candy. You know, the kind of place where the movies Grindhouse attempts to imitate would never, ever have played.
There aren't many of them left, and every year there seems to be one less than the year before. The Three Penny in Lincoln Park, in existence since 1911 according to Jazz Age Chicago and one of the few Chicago movie houses to sell beer, shut down last year. The Esquire closed not long after. Across the street from the Three Penny, the Biograph--infamous site of the death of John Dillinger (gunned down while leaving a viewing of Manhattan Melodrama)--where Red Secretary caught "classics" like The Rules of Attraction and Swimfan still stands, but has recently been converted, as a number of the downtown houses were, into a live-theater venue. And the Village, down at North Avenue and Clark Street? It went dark so quietly that it was weeks before I even heard about it.
There are still a few around, though. The Logan, in the heart of Logan Square, still shows second-run feature films just like it did back in 1972, when Mom took me there on the Milwaukee Avenue bus to see Pinocchio. We got there late--even then, the CTA was screwing up our lives--and wound up sitting through the second feature, John Wayne's The Cowboys, in which the Duke herds cattle with a bunch of young boys. At one point, one of the boys falls between the cattle and is trampled to death. To my eight-year-old mind, this was pretty funny, so I laughed. Mom batted me upside the head. I stopped laughing.
