Grindhouse

You might have heard Grindhouse flopped at the box office last year. If that's been keeping you from renting the movie, don't let it. Drop what you're doing, drive to Nutbusters or log in to your Netflix account, and rent this movie.

Movies actually. It's a double-feature, with Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror first, Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof second. Interspersed are faux trailers that are worth the price of admission all by themselves. Thanksgiving is an especially notable trailer, about a slasher pilgrim who terrorizes a small community during Thanksgiving. The best part is when he kills grandma, trusses her up like a turkey, cooks her, and then serves her to the tied up family. I also enjoyed the scene with the topless cheerleader jumping on the trampoline for her appreciative boyfriend; the slasher sneaks up on them and provides some necessary decapitations. It's all so over the top, I was howling with laughter in between gasps and grimaces. At the end of the trailer, the pilgrim slasher has a decapitated head stuffed in a cooked turkey; I can't you what he's doing to it.

This is a family blog, you know. Plus, I don't want anymore trouble from the FCC.

Of the two movies, Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror is hands down the better of the two. Bruce Willis leads a cadre of soldiers trying to protect a supply of green noxious gas that turns people into man-eating zombies if they breath it. Again, the action and gore is done to such an extreme, you'll be chuckling throughout all the B-movie mayhem and storyline. Both movies are made to look like 70s reel movies, complete with cracking in the film, scene skips, and repeating or missing dialogue. For instance, the love scene between Rose McGown and Freddy Rodriguez (yup, that short dude from Six Feet Under) degenerates into melting celluloid. When the movie "cranks" back up, the sheriff is apologizing to Freddy, saying he didn't realize he was El Wray and finally hands him a gun. Death Proof does the same thing: the movie flashes a "missing reel" message just as Vanessa Ferlito is about to give Kurt Russel a lap dance. When the movie returns, the lap dance is long over and everyone is in the parking lot getting ready to leave.

Death Proof doesn't measure up to Planet Terror because it starts slow and maintains a mostly slow pace throughout. I enjoy Tarantino dialogue, but not forty-five solid minutes of it. Usually the clever lines of his characters are sandwiched between some action. But in Death Proof, nearly an hour passes before anything interesting happens. The idea for the movie is great, a stunt man who "death proofs" his car and then uses it to murder an automobile full of women. It's just its execution is a letdown coming off of Rodriguez's explosive and entertaining first half.