GRINDHOUSE Double-Feature Showdown

I just back from this movie, and I have to give it Planet Terror. As an old-timer (37 years old), this movie brought me back to the bad ass years of 70s cinema. Planet Terror got eveything perfect, from the music, to the characters, to the cheezy dialogue. The movie looks and feels like it fell out of the 70s.

Death Proof was a bit weak in my opinion. It takes too long to set up, but overall, it was good.

Still, Grindhouse was the most fun I've had in the movies since Sin City. It makes me want to dig through my movie collection and rewatch Dawn of the Dead, Escape from New York, and Phantasm!

What a delightful surprise this turned out to be.

I think Planet Terror was much better. Too much verbiage in Death Proof but it was still good. I wonder if it would have been better if Death Proof played first.

Neither. The winner was clearly whoever directed Machete.

I really liked Planet Terror. For some reason, Death Proof just turned me off...

I'd have to give the overall nod to Planet Terror.

Deathproof dragged for a bit...but the last 30-40 minutes made up for it.

"Don't" was the best of the trailers. I also liked "Machete."

I enjoyed the car chase scenes, and Kurt Russell's performance in Death Proof. As for what I didn't like...I know Tarrantino likes dialog. It's what he's known for. But this time he went too far. Scenes of characters sitting around talking went on way too long and didn't add to the story. Grindhouse cinema wasn't exactly known for its long dialog scenes, either.

Rodriguez got it exactly right.

I haven't seen it yet but plan to...Not sure I can sit through three hours though-- But we'll see.

I didn't think that I could sit through the entire movie, but I did. I was hooked.

Kurt Russell = fantastic performance.

I've been looking forward to it ever since I heard it was being made. Looks really good too.

Don't is a classic.

merper said:

Neither. The winner was clearly whoever directed Machete.

Click to expand...

That would be another vote for Rodriguez, then.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0985694/

Could a mod please change my vote to Robert Rodriguez please. I still haven't seen the movie, but I hear that I've misvoted.

I lovelovelove this movie! When I left the theater, I had the barely-controllable urge to drive insanely fast & nudge all the other cars off the road.

My vote goes to RIP -- Planet Terror was GREAT, gotta love his placement of the "missing reel," & I can't remember when I've seen such artful use of gore. Tarantino's was a super story, but I could've done without half of the conversation between Jungle Julia and her "posse." It didn't add as much as Quentin thinks it did, but I wasn't the only one in the theater laughing out loud & clapping at the end of that one!

If there was an option to vote for the trailers, they'd have to get it. I loved 'em all, even with the strategically placed "aging" on the film for Thanksgiving. Geez, I'm laughing just thinking about it! This is one I'll have to see again!

caren1701 said:

Tarantino's was a super story, but I could've done without half of the conversation between Jungle Julia and her "posse."

Click to expand...

What about the conversation between Rosario Dawson and her friends? That was the part that made me want to scream, "Look, either shut up or SAY SOMETHING!"

The scene in "Deathproof" where the four girls were eating at a table and talking while the camera moved around in an uninterrupted shot for like 10 straight minutes was absolutely brilliant. How can you have a scene that long with people actually eating and get it that perfect? If it was in the "Planet Terror" segment, I'd suspect CGI.

Ugh. I hated that scene. Grindhouse audiences would have been throwing things at the screen.

Celia, I guess I just thought those characters & their conversation were more interesting/written better. I love Traci Thoms' character (Kim) -- she's like a chick version of Sam Jackson. Some women think Tarantino can't write dialogue for women -- if I were the paranoid type I'd be searching for bugs in my apartment.

I love strong women characters who don't talk like women are supposed to & I thought that scene was brilliantly shot too.

Grindhouse audiences would throw things at the screen anyway. I can only speak for the drive-in, though.

Celia Cyanide said:

Ugh. I hated that scene. Grindhouse audiences would have been throwing things at the screen.

Click to expand...

(SPOILER WARNING)


Tarantino did go too far with the dialogue. He spent all of that time with the first group of girls, only to kill them off. Then we had to spend another 20 mintues getting to know the next group. I would have preferred more background on Kurt Russell's character.

Celia Cyanide said:

I enjoyed the car chase scenes, and Kurt Russell's performance in Death Proof. As for what I didn't like...I know Tarrantino likes dialog. It's what he's known for. But this time he went too far. Scenes of characters sitting around talking went on way too long and didn't add to the story. Grindhouse cinema wasn't exactly known for its long dialog scenes, either.

Rodriguez got it exactly right.

Click to expand...

I could respond, with geek gats blazing, but why waste words, when someone else has already poured it out so poetically...

"...this is coming from someone who was actually actively going to real Grindhouses in their heyday of the Seventies… along with their Drive-In companions. My parents had no restriction on the films they took me to, but before you think it was all sex and violence – that wasn’t what the GRINDHOUSE was about.

These theaters showed everything. Not just grade z cinema that so many like to turn up their noses at, but the weirdest double-bills ever… Like SCHLOCK, THE BANANA MONSTER and STAR WARS. You’d see a film like LIGHTNING SWORDS OF DEATH followed up with the French animation flick FANTASTIC PLANET. There was a strange mind-bending method to the madness of a GRINDHOUSE.

They weren’t all sleazebag dives, sometimes they had crazed genius projectionists and theater managers drunk in love with the 4 corners of the film frame and the unrestrained possibilities that could be contained therein. You’d see ENTER THE DRAGON double featured with DEEP THRUST – which isn’t what it sounds like. You’d discover the earliest days of Scorsese, Copolla, Lucas, DePalma – alongside crazed fevered hallucinatory films by Jodorowsky, Demme and the Shaw Brothers. You could see the films of Bob Clark and John Flynn (both of whom have died this week…) And yes, you could see some shit… but there could be some fricking amazing stuff in there. It definitely wasn’t the “usual shit”!
Right off the bat – I’m willing to go out on a limb and say about 90% of Critics that have been writing about GRINDHOUSE have never really given a thought about the movies that played in those theaters back then. My parents were addicts of those places though. They made friends with the projectionists and managers, they had a collectibles shop that sold the movie posters and held weekly parties at our old Victorian house where before each night’s line-up of usually CLASSIC CINEMA (think Flynn, Garbo, Dietrich, Heston, Gable, Cagney, Bogart, etc) they’d unreel an hour and a half of exploitation trailers and it was the strange juxtaposition of those trailers and those classic movies… and just the regular ingestion of the films of the seventies and eighties that made me the movie freak I am.
That doesn’t make me superior – it just makes me a lucky fucking kid.
I was a kid growing up around a series of adults that were drunk in love with every type of film and could love equally CASABLANCA and TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE… SINGING IN THE RAIN and JACKSON COUNTY JAIL… TREASURE OF SIERRE MADRE and SEVEN BLOWS OF THE DRAGON. Because while they were all Film School grads – this was the fucking Seventies and the rules were being thrown out the back window and the possibilities were expanding faster than anyone could keep track of.
And you approached each new film with the hope and prayer that it was something you’d ever seen before.

These weren’t films where reality necessarily reigned. The laws of physics need not apply. Getting your arm torn off was an opening act – for a character that’d end up ruling the film. However, at the same time – these films would sometimes try to trick you into thinking you were watching a conventional film – that would perhaps lull you into a false sense of security before knocking your dick in the dirt. To read more about the era and the cinematic possibilities of the GRINDHOUSE era – Read these two fantastic articles by the editor of the Austin Chronicle – and long ago film geek that hung out at my childhood home in the seventies – Louis Black. The Heroic And The Holy and The Cinema Of Possibilities!"

---Harry Knowles, obese film critic

SPOILER...

FredCharles said:

(SPOILER WARNING)


Tarantino did go too far with the dialogue. He spent all of that time with the first group of girls, only to kill them off. .

Click to expand...

That's it. That's what why I was turned off. We invested like 40 minutes of the film on these girls, only to have them gruesomely killed off. Like WTF? I understand it's a slasher film and it's Grindhouse, but boy, skip the frigging dialogue and all that set up (can you imagine how long it would have taken WITH the missing reel? LOL). It only gotten good AFTER the second four girls got off their asses. By then, an hour had gone by. I was so turned off by then I didn't even care.

OK, I understand the whole misogynistic beginning only leading to the satisfying reversal of fortune ending.... still... took too friggin long.


Kurt Russell was the bomb, though.

Celia Cyanide said:

Ugh. I hated that scene. Grindhouse audiences would have been throwing things at the screen.

Click to expand...

Actually, I was talking more about the cinematography than the dialogue - the fact that they were able to get one long, smooth 360 degree take like that while the characters were eating was like watching a magic trick. It reminded me of the scene in Goodfellas where Henry takes Karen to the Copa for the first time and it's one long, uninterrupted camera shot from the car to the table.

Rodriguez can do anything with CGI, but I liked Tarantino's choices of up-close realism. The scenes with Zoe on the hood of the car were better because they were raw and real, not CGI. Not that I'm slamming CGI, but it's refreshing to see a director doing the dirty work himself.

III said:

Actually, I was talking more about the cinematography than the dialogue - the fact that they were able to get one long, smooth 360 degree take like that while the characters were eating was like watching a magic trick.

Click to expand...

It was an impressive trick, but it did not belong in a "grindhouse" style movie, IMO. Tarrantino will make many more movies, and he can do this trick in any of them. This one was out of place.

Also, I wholeheartedly agree with what Maestro said above. We spent a long time with these women, only to see them killed off rather quickly. The time spent with them, while entertaining in some places, did nothing to make me sympathize with them when they died.

In Last House On The Left, Wes Craven gives the girls a very short conversation that doesn't take too much time, and still manages to humanize them before they are killed.

Celia Cyanide said:

Also, I wholeheartedly agree with what Maestro said above. We spent a long time with these women, only to see them killed off rather quickly. The time spent with them, while entertaining in some places, did nothing to make me sympathize with them when they died.

Click to expand...

IMO, this was part of his parody of the horror convention that the characters who drink/use/have sex have to die, & the virtuous characters might get to live. I started giggling the second closeup of Jungle Julia's leg outside the car -- just waiting for it to end up on the other side of the road from the rest of her. We're not "supposed" to sympathize with drug-using drunks who intentionally tease men.

I think not knowing much about Russell's character made him even creepier. Didn't we find out all we needed to know in the closing scene??

I'm not saying this makes me right, but I'm probably older than all of you & actually went to this kind of drive-in show when I was a kid. Smuggled in under blankets in the back seat by my friends' older siblings. Back then, it was more about the build-up than the slash-up.

caren1701 said:

IMO, this was part of his parody of the horror convention that the characters who drink/use/have sex have to die, & the virtuous characters might get to live.

Click to expand...

This is a convention of a slasher film, and Tarrantino said in so many words that it wasn't a slasher film. He didn't want to follow the strict rules of the typical slasher film conventions. In any case, it didn't take too long to establish that PJ Soles deserved to get whacked, while Jamie Lee Curtis deserved to live in the most successful slasher film of all time.

Kurt Russell's character, on the other hand, was perfect. He was never boring, and nothing he said seemed superfluous. Rose McGowan was good, but she was much more interesting in "Planet Terror."