Grindhouse Review
by Shane Burridge (sburridge AT hotmail DOT com)May 7th, 2008
Grindhouse (2007) 191m FIRST FEATURE: MR B REVIEWS A MOVIERobert Rodriguez, whose films are often a homage/spoof of B-pictures,
and Quentin Tarantino, whose films are largely a homage/rip-off of
B-pictures, had the combined clout to stage this recreation of the
long-lost double feature days of their misspent movie youth. I'd never
heard the term 'grindhouse' prior to this film, although I have had the
privilege of seeing run-down films in run-down theaters (one sojurn to
an inner-city 'bughouse', as we called it as kids, not only marked my
first Bruce Lee film - ENTER THE DRAGON doubled with A MAN NAMED
SLEDGE - but also the first time I'd ever seen breasts in a movie - any
movie!). GRINDHOUSE was intended as a uniquely cinematic experience
but the film flopped when it opened and was re-edited into two
separate movies for a more conventional release outside the U.S.
Much to the outrage of fans, the initial home video release of the films
took the same strategy, marketing separate and extended versions of
both films without all the B-movie accouterments of the cinema
version, which included fake exploitation trailers, advertising,
announcement cards and 'damage' to the acetate (including sprocket
jumps, fluttering focus, bad splices and heavily scratched prints).Rodriguez, whose film PLANET TERROR is the first title on the bill,
sticks to the grindhouse philosophy with conviction. Using George A.
Romero's films as inspiration, he creates a gooey gorefest of DAWN
OF THE DEAD and THE CRAZIES. The action, humorous asides, and
references to its 70s ancestry are non-stop, although several of its
gross-out moments are too much even for that reckless decade.
Despite the grisliness, PLANET TERROR is pervaded with high spirits
and a sense that the cast is throwing caution to the winds with as
much enjoyment as their director. Tarantino's DEATH PROOF, which
follows, is more problematical. It's quintessential drive-in fare right
from the font of the opening credits, but as the film progresses the
fake scratches and grainy photography disappear and it becomes a
Tarantino movie instead of a grindhouse knock-off. It's obvious
Tarantino knew that the premise of DEATH PROOF (a mixture of 70s
chase movies and Russ Meyer exploitation pics) was too slim to
sustain a stand-alone film but figured that making it the second half
of a double bill would provide him with a convenient 'out'. The
GRINDHOUSE concept gives Tarantino the opportunity to take a risk
and experiment a little but although DEATH PROOF is interesting in its
own right, it fails to live up to the premise that Rodriguez had firmly
established in the first half of the bill. The main disappointment of
DEATH PROOF is that there is not only too much dialogue but also
that it is largely uninteresting, repetitive and unconvincingly delivered
by all except Kurt Russell, who steals the show. Instead of recreating
70s exploitation, it has stuntwoman Zoe Bell talking about recreating
her favorite 70s movies (which she definitely did not see at an
outdoor theatre in Auckland since none has existed there) until the
finale which goes some way to redeeming the film with a wild car
chase. GRINDHOUSE is fun when treated at a schlock level, but despite the
efforts of the two directors it feels like it's missed a beat somewhere.
There's a lot of contradiction in the film's execution - not only from
the audience's point of view from watching fake 70s grindhouse fare
in modern state-of-the-art multiplexes but also by setting the films in
the present day and not the era they were supposed to be
replicating. And despite the fake shoddiness of the movies there is
real money and a big budget behind it all (that CGI chintz doesn't
come as cheap as the real chintz), raising the idea that the directors
should have put themselves on the line by making genuine Fake
B-Movies instead of fake Fake B-Movies. It's questionable how many
viewers would understand, let alone appreciate, the concept of
GRINDHOUSE to begin with. There's a moment in the first half of the
double bill where the film gets stuck in the projector gate and melts
(amusingly, it happens at the sex scene, as if to refer that this is the
moment projectionists back in those pre-video days would be
privately rewinding and replaying, consequently weakening the film).
I've seen film melt on the big screen on at least two occasions -
once during a Fellini film, which elicited gasps of horror and dismay
from the audience, and another time during a screening of VOODOO
BLACK EXORCIST, which drew cheers and applause - but when it
happened in GRINDHOUSE there wasn't a breath of reaction, most
likely because the gag referenced a time that the majority of the
audience couldn't relate to. To cater at some level of in-jokiness for
audiences who are not B-literate, Rodriguez and Tarantino throw in
plenty of references to their own previous work, making their project
doubly indulgent. Rodriguez trademarks on show in GRINDHOUSE
include sexy women, explosions, faster-than-lightning gunplay and a
mysterious hero. Tarantino trademarks encompass specific references
to characters and items in his other films, antagonistic
profanity-ridden dialogue, and the resurrection of an otherwise
forgotten pop song (which is wrongly attributed to "Mitch" instead of
"Mick"). The beauty of GRINDHOUSE, however, is that it doesn't
matter if individual viewers deem either DEATH PROOF or PLANET
TERROR as a success or a failure. The nature of double features is
that one film, more often than not, is always going to be 'better'
than the other, and neither may be as much fun as many of the
coming attractions offered inbetween. The finest twist that
GRINDHOUSE has to offer is that its fake trailers are more
entertaining than its fake movies.SECOND FEATURE: SHANE-BOB GOES TO THE GRINDHOUSEOkay, so I'm still annoyed with the Zoe Bell remark about outdoor cinemas in Auckland. She knows there aren't any, so why did she say
that line? Being a port city in a small island country with a large
continent to the west, Antarctica to the south and half a planet of
Pacific Ocean to the northeast, Auckland has weather patterns that
are far too mercurial to make anything like an outdoor cinema or
drive-in practical. It's not like there weren't other avenues to see
grindhouse-style double, triple, or quadruple features in the 70s, but
this was in the days before multiplexes when local suburban cinemas
would show whatever cheap older movies or perennial favorites were
available. By the 90s, the few suburban cinemas still remaining had
been converted into arthouse or rep cinemas, or had disappeared off
the radar and had become ethnic theaters consigned to the likes of
Bollywood. But luckily I was in Auckland during the 70s as a kid and
there were still enough indie operators hanging around in the early
80s to provide me with the types of cinema-going events that are
now a thing of the past. I had good times, like winning a REEFER
MADNESS t-shirt at a 10-hour crapathon, and seeing a Scottish piper
walking through the aisles during intermission at a screening of LAIR
OF THE WHITE WORM, and I consider myself lucky to remember even
the bad experiences, which is at least a better thing than the
complete absence of experience generated in today's shopping mall
cineplexes. My ten worst experiences aren't all strictly grindhouse, but they are,
in chronological order:1. TERRYTOON PARADEOr something like that. I can't remember the exact title or any of the
cartoons, thank god. I do remember they were terrible, even at the
age of 12. Bad films don't necessarily make for bad viewing
experiences, but nearly every film on this list is a complete dog, and
the Terrytoon compilation was a pretty good, or bad, start. The thing
that made this my first memorably awful moviegoing experience was
not so much the abysmal, prehistoric fare I was watching (where did
they dredge this print up from?), or that it was the only thing showing
in the local Hicksville cinema, or that the audience was made up of
12-year-old Hicksville locals, but the fact that I was a city kid forced
to watch a movie in some country town's rundown firetrap because it
got me out of the way for two hours. I was eyed by the usher as
soon as I walked into the gloom of the theater, who doubtlessly
identified me as a stranger in town and growled "Do you know what
this is for?" while he held what looked like a nightstick up to my face.
When I told him no he enlightened me with the bald fact that it was
for "hittin' people on the head!" and put me in a seat below the step
he was standing on. He wasn't bluffing. A little way into the film I
saw, from the corner of my eye, three kids evicted from their seats
and given clips across the skull as they tried to get past the stickman
at the door. Thenceforth I spent the rest of the movie like Alex in A
CLOCKWORK ORANGE, immobile, glued to the horrors on the screen,
and ever fearful of bodily harm. To this day I can't see an image of
Mighty Mouse without having instant flashbacks.2. REVOLT OF THE PERVERTSMove forward seven years, and how can my friends and I resist a film with a title like that? All we knew about this movie was that it was
showing at a film festival for one night only, so five of us crammed
into the car of the only one of us who could drive and made it to the
late show. We should have been tipped off by the fact the audience
was entirely male that this wasn't going to be the wacky futuristic
horror-comedy that the title suggested. Instead, it turned out to be
a documentary about homosexuality. The film itself was badly made
and excruciating for us to sit through but we didn't want to advertise
our non-homosexual status to the entire theater by walking out,
especially given the rabidly vocal response the film was getting, so
we kept our mouths shut and stayed put. By the time the session
finished I was very offended that we had been misled by the title,
duped into paying for a documentary and not a real movie, forced to
pretend we were part of a social revolution, and that while everyone
else had had a good time, our own singularly Perverted sensibilities
had ultimately not been catered for. It's tough to be a minority.3. THREE IMMORAL WOMENA softcore sex - oops, 'erotica' - pic which was one of the first age-restricted movies that a friend and I had seen in a cinema. We
told his mother that we were seeing a film called 'Three Immortal
Women' and hoped that her myopia wouldn't pick up the missing 't' if
she checked it out in the local paper. And so there we were, in an
audience that was mostly male (for a different motivation this time
than for REVOLT OF THE PERVERTS) all primed up to watch a
Restricted erotica - oops, 'sex' - movie on a Saturday Night. There
were mice running around in the cinema and the seats were filled to
capacity with the noisiest audience we had ever been in. With every
catcall, witless remark, or moronic laugh we could feel the house IQ
slipping lower and lower, alerting us that we were in over our heads
with not only the film, but also the audience. We didn't need to tell
each other what we were both thinking: WE DON'T BELONG HERE. I
held on to the feeble hope that maybe things would quieten a little
when the lights went down. The curtain went up to the
accompaniment of a communal masculine whooping of anticipation....
and then there was a sudden, raucous 'Wa-ha-ha-HA-ha!" from the
screen as a Woody Woodpecker cartoon blazed to life. I don't know
what kind of programming genius decides to kick off an evening of
erotic T&A with a cartoon, and patently the audience were not
interested in taking a moment to be amused over the possible double
entendre 'Woody Woodpecker', because what followed a mere second
later was the sound of hundreds of patrons voicing their indignation,
and the most beautiful, simultaneous barrage of crap towards a
cinema screen that I have ever seen in my life. Objects of every
shape and size - it looked like there was a baton in there - went
hurling in a tidal wave towards the woodpecker, magically illuminated
by the projector beam and permanently branded into my memory.
Which is more than I can say for anything that happened afterwards
in 'Three Immor(t)al Women'.4. THE CAPITOL HILL GIRLS (aka LUSTY LADIES OF CAPITOL HILL)Would we never learn? Tellingly, this was the last bad 'group experience' I had, having learned afterwards to make rotten
movie-going decisions on my own instead of having them done for
me. The film was showing at the 'Classic', an indie cinema that used
to show old movies from the 30s but had made the switch to softcore
porn. Lured by the 3-D proposition that 'the action jumps right into
your lap', and the consensus that this was going to be as close to
seeing breasts up close that we were likely to get, some friends and
I once again bundled ourselves off to the city en masse, because
there was safety in numbers and to see a film like this alone would
make you look like, well, a sleazo. To add a false note of
sophistication to this affair I had decided to dispense with the
uncomfortable, ill-fitting cardboard 3-D glasses usually on sale in the
novelty stores and carefully glued red and blue lenses to real wire
frames to better enhance any lap-jumping action I might be privy to.
Unfortunately, these glasses broke across the bridge as soon as got
into the cinema and put them on. After a moment of speechless
disbelief I ran pell-mell outside to find any store that sold Super Glue
and managed to make it back for the opening credits of the film,
wheezing and sweating. Being exhausted and rushed aren't the best
conditions to be fiddling around with precision gluing, especially when
you're sitting in the dark and trying to avoid instantly bonding your
fingers together, but I did manage to get the glasses repaired and
ready to use after missing only a few minutes of the movie. They
sagged apart at the bridge moments later, but fortunately in the
interim had become Super-Glued to my nose and would remain so
for the next hour and a half. I had, however, neglected to take into
account the effect of the super-fumes in such close proximity to my
nostrils, and spent the opening act of the movie with my eyes
watering, thus ruining any visual effect, three-dimensional or
otherwise. In any case, the film promised far more than it delivered,
and the only memorable 3-D moment was of a pool cue moving
towards the camera. We could have seen THAT in a PG movie.5. NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD A rare case of a bad experience with a good film. For some reason, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD had always eluded me, and I had been
champing at the bit to see it for years. I couldn't find it on video and
it never screened on TV. However, I did know that a guy who owned
an independent cinema in the distant suburbs had his own 16mm
print, and that on rare occasions he would hold a screening of it.
Patience paid off when I discovered it was the last film of a quadruple
George Romero bill he was showing one Saturday night. I had already
seen the first three films and didn't want to sit through them all
again, so I set my alarm for 3am and took into account the hour it
would take me to drive to the suburbs, and made it to the cinema
with minutes to spare. There was nobody at the ticket office when I
arrived - in fact, there was nobody anywhere - so I just walked right
in. The cinema itself was a relic from a bygone age and was surviving
only through repeated weekend audience participation screenings of
THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, which had been playing for
years. The third film on the bill, KNIGHTRIDERS, had finished, and the
projectionist was setting up the reels for an emptying house when I
found a seat and settled down. It appeared I was the only person
left in the place. However, as soon as the film started and revealed
itself to be a low-budget black and white effort from the 60s I heard
discontented remarks from some rows behind me. Slumped in their
seats, and now rising like the Dead of the title, were a group of bikers
that had patently been more interested in the previous feature. Their
discontentment, which started as abuse being hurled at the
projectionist safely locked in his booth above them, eventually drove
them out of their seats and around the cinema. Finding little of
entertainment worth, they then climbed up onto the apron that had
played host to countless Rocky Horror Time Warps, and found their
way behind the screen, where they discovered all manner of
treasures, given the amount of crashing around that I could hear.
After returning to the front of the screen, and finding themselves
illuminated by the projector beam, they were then inspired to drop
their pants and treat what they thought was an empty cinema to
the sight of their sexily-swaying, brightly-lit buttocks. This was a
great cause of hilarity to all until the prime instigator of the fun
caught sight of me, probably from the reflection off my now-sweating
brow, and abruptly froze about a split second before my own blood
sympathetically froze in turn. I had been sinking very gradually into
my seat since the moment they had clambered onto the stage, but
obviously needed some bodily exposure in order to see the movie,
which I was nevertheless still trying to watch in spite of everything
else that was going on. "Hey, there's somebody there!" the lead
butt-waggler remarked. They probably didn't know whether to feel
embarrassed or infuriated, and I wasn't about to provide any
excessive movement like blinking or breathing to help them make up
their mind. Instead, I tried making what I hoped were plausible
breathy sleeping noises and after a couple of minutes the gang
descended from the stage with their pants pulled up and returned
to the back of the theater to continue voicing their dissatisfaction
with Romero's classic. It was impossible for me to watch, let alone
enjoy, the film from this point, being in constant dread of another
spontaneous walkabout by the gang which might, this time, bring
them closer to an investigation of my own seat. If you had to rank
this list, then not being able to enjoy this classic horror pic would
be my single worst viewing experience.6. TYPHOON CLUBI belonged to a Film Society for ten years, and in that time got to
know all the regulars, even though no-one in the screenings ever
spoke to one another. It was a weekly gathering of people who lived
on the margins and sat in isolated pockets in the dark: the girl with
the gigantic lacquered beehive hairdo, who nobody could sit behind;
the guy with the same leather case, the same shorts and the same
sandals all year round, including winter; the guy who nobody could
ever identify in the darkness of the theater, who not only laughed
at everything that nobody else ever laughed at, but did it in a loud,
idiotic, nasal braying that made everyone cringe. As my exposure to
most foreign films was largely in the form of scratchy 16mm Film
Society prints shown in lecture rooms I thought it would be nice for
a change to watch a new 35mm print playing in a real cinema with a
good sound system, and so went to see TYPHOON CLUB, a Japanese
film about students waiting out a typhoon in a school. Ten minutes
into the movie, the empty seat next to me was filled by a dishevelled
latecomer who looked like he had just come in from a typhoon of his
own, sniffling and squinting through steamed up glasses. He had also
brought a cup of coffee in with him - not a paper cup, but a ceramic
cup with a saucer - which failed to keep him awake during the film,
because about halfway through he started snoring. Then he started
leaning into me. I started pushing him back up. I could sense other
people looking at me and broadcasting the silent message "You're
the one next to him, why don't YOU do something about it?" The
snoring/leaning/pushing cycle kept going, although amazingly he still
had both hands gripped on his cup and saucer, until finally I couldn't
stand the thought of being responsible for this din or the distraction
any more and pushed him back violently enough to jolt him awake.
He stared at the screen for a moment to get his bearings, and then
resolved a Film Society mystery that I had been pondering for years,
by broadcasting a familiar, loud, retarded BWAHAAA-HA-HAAAAA-HA
at the first thing he heard uttered on the screen. More idiotic braying
was to follow, after which I'm sure everyone was looking at me
accusingly again with the silent criticism "What did YOU have to
wake him up for?"7. FLAMING CREATURESThis one is unique among other entries on the list because the
viewing experience itself was completely normal but the film was so
tedious that it has changed my concepts of time ever since.
Unbelievably, this film (Was it a film? I think someone just left a
camera running) had somehow earned itself enough of a place in film
history to get it booked as a retrospective in a Film Festival, which is
where I saw it. It was winter, it was cold, it was late, and my choice
was to either stand outside until the right bus arrived, or stay inside
where it was warm and keep watching the movie. I remember nothing
of the movie. I remember only blurry black and white images, the
sensation of time passing painfully slowly, and seeing the cinema
empty as those patrons lucky enough to have their own cars walked
out during the film one by one. 8. THERESE AND ISABELLEI was glad to get a rare chance to see a beautiful 35mm print of one
of Radley Metzger's arty European softcore films, which screened as
part of a Gay and Lesbian film festival, but I wasn't keen on the idea
that I might be the only male in the audience. After all, how many
other guys would be paying to see some black and white 1968 film
about a lesbian romance? So I stood in the cinema lobby waiting for
the doors to open and surreptitiously looked about at everyone else
milling around and was pleasantly surprised. "Oh! There ARE some
other guys here!" I thought. This made me feel a little more at ease,
for all of ten seconds. When I looked a little harder I realized
"Noooo....they're all women..." A few of them were looking at me as
if I was encroaching on an event that was exclusively theirs, or was
some deviant who got off watching women make out on screen.
Once inside the theater, it became clear how out of the loop I really
was. Everyone in the audience reacted completely differently to me,
mocking the film for no other reason that it was 'old' and didn't have
the upfront in-your-face style of contemporary gay cinema. And so,
once again, I couldn't shake the uncomfortable feeling throughout
the movie that I was the outsider who didn't belong there.9. HYPNOSISA short and sweet bad date movie. I mentioned this Japanese horror
film to a gorgeous young Indian girl I had just met and was surprised
when she agreed to go with me to see it at an out-of-the-way
obscure cinema in Chinatown. During the drive over we talked about
horror movies and she said that the only thing that scared her in real
life was injections, as she had a phobia about needles. Guess what
happened in the first five minutes of the film, projected twenty feet
high in front of us? After doubling up and retching, she was trembling
and unfocused for the rest of the movie, terrified that another
medical scene was going to appear. I never saw her again, let alone
went to another movie with her.10. THE SINFUL DWARFA bad date movie that managed to transcend the limitations of bad
dates to attain a kind of Bad Date Afterlife. Despite rejecting all of
my previous invitations to go to the movies, a girl that I knew finally
relented to seeing this sleazy Z-grade sexploitation movie at a Trash
Festival. I had invited her purely as a joke, certain that she would
call me a sicko and throw it right back at my face, but I think she
saw it as a dare, and figured that I couldn't just 'assume' she
wouldn't go, and so would prove me wrong by fronting up for it.
Being intelligent, independent, and assertive, she was certainly not
one to subscribe to any ideas of 'the weaker sex', so I was hoping
she would look beyond all the blatant exploitation of women in the
film and view it as dated camp. I was probably more apprehensive
about the screening than she was, knowing that the worse the film
would turn out to be, the worse it would reflect on me. When we
got to our seats we were informed by an announcement that the
ratings board had demanded removal of the most offensive scene
before the film could be shown at the festival, which gave me a little
breathing space on that score, at least. Or so I thought. The film
played out for over an hour until it reached the point where the film
had been cut, whereupon the projector shut off, a couple of
spotlights hit the stage in front of the screen, and an actor posing
as a dwarf by means of shuffling onstage with shoes fixed to his
knees enacted the offending material before our eyes with a blow-up
sex doll and a walking stick. As our good fortune would have it, we
were sitting in the front row where we had the best view in the
house. You don't even need to bother wondering if she ever went
out with me again. [email protected]
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