GRINDHOUSE

Grindhouse
2007
Directed by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez

The deal is that these two movie would be stitched together, along with fake trailers and film damage to replicate the grindhouse theatre experience of the 70's but the film did poor business at the US box office and over in the UK, as well as many other European markets, we had to see the films separately when they were released as two separate movies.

This afternoon I replicated the grindhouse experience by watching both movies back to back.

Death Proof, billed as the fifth movie from Quentin Tarantino, Kill Bill (which was also originally intended to be one movie before being split into two) is film four, both of them.

Now back to Kill Bill - what disappointed me with this movie was how bereft it was of Tarantino's usual long pop culture dialogue sections which is pretty stupid in my opinion, take those away and all your left with is an action movie without a specific identity. Death Proof I'm pleased to say has those long sections, particularly in the diner for the first act of the movie, where there's pretty much nothing going on except for dialogue. And what brilliant dialogue it is as a group of young women discuss their boyfriends, jobs, blow jobs and lap dancing. They are being watched however by the sinister Stuntman Mike who sits at the bar nursing his drink and offering lifts to unsuspecting hikers.

Stuntman Mike has a very special car which he's made death proof, well as long as your sitting in the drivers seat that is. The stunts are incredible and there is only limited CGI used so most of what you're seeing was done for real. As a stand alone movie I would rate Death Proof as better than Kill Bill.

The second movie - I believe this was the first movie when the films came out - is Planet Death which is basically zombie hokum done with a sense of humour and some quality hammed up performances. There's a lot more CGI in this movie but then given some of the effects that is probably inevitable.


Grindhouse worked well for me as a double feature and did very much remind me of those days during the late Seventies when I would sneak into the cinema to watch all of those X rated movies. It didn't seem to matter how young you were in those days, our local cinema used to let us in to see anything that was on, including the soft porn of the Confessions movies.

Ahh those were the days - Grindhouse with its sections of damaged film and soundtrack problems replicates those days wonderfully.