Crass Appeal
by Ed Owens

The actual honest-to-god trailers put me in the mood before Grindhouse, the lovingly crafted collaboration between cinematic bad boys Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, even started—actually one trailer in particular. Seeing the pale visage of Michael Meyers in the preview for Rob Zombie’s upcoming remake/reimagining of John Carpenter’s Halloween called up all sorts of feelings that I remember having as a young man, whether it was sneaking out of the house and into theaters to see the latest holiday themed slasher pic; or screening scratchy bootleg copies of euro-shock films by the likes of Fulci, Bava and Argento with friends in the dead of night while our parents were sound asleep. It was a particularly fitting beginning, as Halloween was the film that started it all for me—my obsession with horror films, my fascination with exploitation pictures, and, most of all, my love of films in general. While Grindhouse itself could hardly live up to the fond memories I have of those bygone days, I was excited by the prospect of being able to relive even a shadow of those moments, no matter how fleetingly.

The different pieces of Grindhouse connect on different levels, with varying degrees of success. Rodriguez shoots for full-on over the top camp with Planet Terror, while Tarantino aims for something more…artistic with his babes & “buicks” homage Deathproof (even the faux trailers, including Rodriguez’ own “mexploitation” pic Machete and Rob Zombie’s hit or miss Werewolf Women of the SS, have their own tone and approach to the material). In short, there’s a little bit of something for everyone, though a few caveats stand out. Firstly, the film is an endurance test by anyone’s standards—clocking in at 3 hours and 11 minutes, this isn’t a quick trip to the movies. Fortunately, the different tones help pass the time more quickly than you might imagine, though it also makes the less compelling bits even less riveting. Secondly, this isn’t for everyone--the exploitation flicks being celebrated tended to be gratuitous, vulgar, gory, exploitative, and frequently misogynistic. Grindhouse wallows in most of those, and relishes every shocking moment. Finally, the features themselves each suffer from their respective problems, partially a result of trying to capture an essence that’s hard to pin down.

I will here buck the critical consensus by saying that I found Rodriguez’ riff on the zombie flick to be the more enjoyable of the two features. Rodriguez, tongue firmly planted in cheek, keeps things moving briskly, slowing the pace just long enough to set up the next big gag or setpiece. Even better, the film’s escalating sense of absurdity makes even some of the more repetitive gags more tolerable, moving to a climax that pretty much throws everything at the screen it can in a literal and figurative explosion of sensational excess. Planet Terror occasionally aims low (such as a thoroughly repulsive cameo from co-director Tarantino), but a light touch and an equal share of clever bits redeem an otherwise rote genre exercise.

The same cannot be said of Deathproof, a tedious, numbing exercise in self-love from Tarantino. While the basic premise is pure grindhouse, the execution is less than intriguing, plagued by a unnecessarily protracted setup and the fact that Tarantino loves the sound of his own dialogue too much to know when to cut it. There’s some fabulous automotive action (including a violent crash shown four times from four different perspectives) and a refreshing climax that shares more with the work of Russ Meyer than the films Tarantino’s characters name drop repeatedly (including the car porn classic Vanishing Point), but getting there involves sitting through some of Tarantino’s most inane dialogue to date (even a long—and I mean LONG—take involving some nifty camera movement and brief glimpses of the Kurt Russell's antagonist can’t save it). Russell is excellent, and the female protagonists are all very good, but all of them are left stranded by Tarantino’s lackluster script. All of the film’s pacing issues are exacerbated by the fact that it comes last on the bill, and, after the breakneck pace of Rodriguez’ effort, Tarantino just doesn’t deliver in spite of a thrilling conclusion.

If I had to choose a single moment that best captures the prurient and taboo-pushing appeal of the grindhouse films that I grew up on, it’s Eli Roth’s spot-on trailer for the fictitious Thanksgiving, a seemingly by-the-numbers holiday-themed slasher pic that features more T&A in 3 minutes than both of the features combined, along with some of the most singularly disturbing shots of any film in the last five years. Roth gets it on a level beyond pure camp or self-impressed homage, and his trailer elicits the same morbid fascination that I experienced watching Last House on Dead End Street (just to name one example) in the middle of the night--it goes without saying that the volume was often so low I could only hear half of the dialogue for fear of waking my parents…but I didn’t watch it for the dialogue! It’s the kind of trailer that you find yourself thinking back on long after you’ve left the theater, even creating your own narrative in a vain attempt to try to make sense of the surreal and bizarre images that flashed by (Mr. Roth…if you’re reading this, please contact me to explain just what the hell was going on in that last shot!).

For every high point, there's a low, and ultimately it's hard to decide whether to celebrate or condemn Grindhouse--that very well may be part of the point. All in all, Grindhouse is a mixed bag that’s worth seeing if you’re part of the target demographic—others should probably steer clear.

©2006 Ed Owens
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