At Grindhouse sneak previews across the country this week, publicists raffled off Quentin Tarantino action figures. They came with interchangeable heads: one intact, and the other with a gaping, bloody hole where the eye once was.
It's Tarantino time again -- like Christmas for film geeks, only much more rare. Since Reservoir Dogs in 1992, he has directed just five features (and that's if you count Kill Bill as two). So each new Tarantino film becomes a big event, goofy merchandise and all.
To me, Tarantino's movies have always felt a bit hollow and plastic, with their obscure references and false bravado. He's the precocious nerd of Hollywood, an insecure adolescent showing off his cool toys to his classmates. But there's no doubt the guy really loves movies.
For Grindhouse, he and pal Robert Rodriguez decided to each write, direct and shoot an exploitation flick, and then release them together as a double feature to pay homage to the supposed good old days of ultraviolent, supercheap B movies.
Only, let's face it, the real exploitation films are only watchable when the Mystery Science Theater 3000 crew is goofing on them. A typical exploitation movie, a la Troma or Roger Corman, shot for less than $50,000 in a week or so, features wooden actors, atrocious sound and picture quality, and ridiculous writing.
Rodriguez and Tarantino, on the other hand, had no intention of making cheap, crappy movies. They spent somewhere between $50 million and $100 million total on their two films, each of which are thick with effects. Their casts include familiar faces including Rose McGowan, Bruce Willis and Josh Brolin.
Grindhouse stitches these two films together with extra-cheesy '70s graphics and faux trailers to replicate the experience of seeing bad movies in a rundown "grindhouse." They even digitally added "scratches" and blips to their films, suggesting their films are relics from some bygone day of movie viewing. (Nostalgia, of course, only goes so far: Grindhouse is presented in state-of-the-art Dolby 5.1 surround sound.)
Rodriguez's Planet Terror, which opens Grindhouse, weaves together gooey zombies, Texas barbecue and McGowan's lithe body, a significant part of which goes missing by the third reel. The action and dialogue are both over the top, the style is simultaneously bleached and garish, and there are plenty of juicy, not-so-cheap thrills.
Testicles roll across the tarmac, bodies disintegrate, helicopters dice up zombies. Even at the end, the twenty-something, film-student crowd I saw the film with was still hooting at the cheesy freeze frames, bouncing boobs and Tarantino's extended cameo as a sadistic soldier, but for me, Planet Terror was too much Airplane- and Scary Movie-style spoof, with its jokey style wearing out its charm.
Next came the "intermission," with three trailers for imaginary horror films. One, Don't, by the director of Shaun of the Dead, is the most entertaining short film I've seen this year. Then came Tarantino's Death Proof, which starts as a Slacker-like talkfest and then slowly transmutes into a horror film.
The baddie (Kurt Russell), his face lined with a long, terrifying scar, first talks to and then stalks a group of long-legged women in an Austin, Texas, bar. As the film advances, it becomes less familiar as a genre film and more thrilling as a tribute to old-school action movies.
The film's final 10 or so minutes include the most thrilling, gut-wrenching car chase ever, all filmed without digital effects. As a whole, Tarantino's film is lean, terrifying and surprisingly soulful, thanks to a good-feeling injection of tough, vengeful chicks.
Death Proof is no grindhouse film. It's expensive, elaborate and painstakingly crafted. But with its lack of pretension, Death Proof may be an appropriate tribute to exploitation films. It's the kind of movie that generations of B-movie directors, had they been given time, money and talent, would have loved to have their names on.
