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Grind House
Reviewed by Theo Michelfeld
Posted April 9, 2007

Directors Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez are best friends and kindred spirits who have built careers paying homage to “B-movies.” Now, with their double feature Grind House, they take that methodology a step further and actually pay homage to bad filmmaking. It’s an interesting proposition for the viewer, because Rodriguez actually is a bad filmmaker, whereas Tarantino is as skillful a director as we’ve ever seen. And while distinctions in quality may escape the casual viewer, certainly these two men are aware they are not playing in the same league. So for both of them, this project took guts. Indulging in all manner of bad technique, and then setting their work side-by-side, each risked a different kind of failure. But, funny thing about this trash-fest: It’s flawless.

Grind House is just over three hours long, two full length films accompanied by several fake trailers for uproariously bad movies that do not, and may never, exist. The trailers are not to be underestimated. More than just hilarious grace notes on the overall Grind House experience, they establish an un-mistakable tone of satire that helps set up the features that follow. For instance the first trailer, for a film called Machete, features grimy film stock, bad acting, topless women, cheesy visual poetry, violence and mayhem, absurd special effects, Cheech Marin, the exact same plot as the new Mark Wahlberg film Shooter, and the tag line: “They fucked with the wrong Mexican.” Two minutes into Grind House, and the tone has been set. We’re here to mock, and celebrate, lowbrow entertainment.

The affectionate satire has been Quentin Tarantino’s modus operandi from day one. But if Robert Rodriguez has been making satires all this time, he has failed to make that clear. Rodriguez’s unbearable films include Desperado and Spy Kids. He has also directed a couple of decent hack jobs, From Dusk ‘Till Dawn (which was written by Tarantino) and Sin City, which is, in some ways, a visionary work of art, even though it suffers from the director’s trademark lack of timing, patience, and coherence.

Now, as part one of Grind House, Rodriguez brings us the ninety minute zombie film Planet Terror, and I am not exaggerating to say that this film may redeem Rodriguez’s entire career. Planet Terror also lacks timing, patience, and coherence, and all of those failures are deliberate, and all are perfectly, ingeniously used as a kind of narrative gag. Rodriguez has duct-taped together this film’s jerky edits, dim lighting, cockeyed sound effects, and occasionally inaudible dialogue with pinpoint wit and precision. The effect is riveting and elating. Folks, I am a writer, and as such I sometimes encounter a thing I am keenly aware I cannot describe. The exquisite esthetic sleaze of Planet Terror is one of those things. This film is clever on a molecular level.

It is also disgusting in ways that defy the imagination. Of course that’s part of the joke. Planet Terror is shamelessly, self-consciously disgusting, in the tradition of the low-grade horror films it satirizes. The blood and slime are always goofy, never realistic. Nevertheless, what one viewer might find hilarious, another might find nauseating. Doubtful neither would find it mean-spirited, but in any case, consider yourself warned.

As for the acting and dialogue, these are handled with the same perfect satirical pitch as everything else. Rodriguez’s script is brilliant, featuring not one but three different cornball relationship reconciliations, and a preposterous political back story. Although these elements are clearly played for laughs, they are also genuinely satisfying to the viewer’s basic needs for character and intrigue. Rodriguez seems to have learned, from his Sin City exercise, that esthetics alone, no matter how brilliant, are not enough to carry a film.  

Following Planet Terror, and a few more grisly and side-splitting phony trailers, the Grind House double feature is completed by Quentin Tarantino’s oddball stalker/car-chase hybrid, Death Proof. It is a stroke of genius, and also a statement of mutual autonomy, that Death Proof and Planet Terror are thoroughly different movies. It was never these directors’ intentions to present themselves as the same commodity. And just as Rodriguez may have redeemed his filmmaking identity with this project, Tarantino has crystallized his.

By any traditional cinematic notion, Death Proof is even more pointless than Planet Terror. At the same time, Tarantino’s point has never been the story itself, but the telling of it. Tarantino’s work has become increasingly satirical ever since his debut, Reservoir Dogs, a mockery of machismo so subtle it’s as misunderstood by its fans as it is by its detractors. Forgive me now, a moment’s breech of critical objectivity, but the truth is, I am in awe of Quentin Tarantino. I say this only as a necessary disclaimer, as I embark on some pop psychoanalysis of the director. With immense respect for the man, I declare that he has dedicated his life to elevating the legacy of all the bad movies he grew up adoring. Repeatedly, he has taken B-movie subject matter and spun it into perfectly crafted, wonderfully written cinematic jewels. This goal was never clearer than with his four hour opus Kill Bill, a revenge film that could have been stupid and pointless, except that it is the most immaculate feat of film craftsmanship ever made.

Tarantino is also a relentless feminist, and not as a crusader for what “should be,” but as a cinematic historian of what is happening, before our very eyes, to the balance of power between men and women. This was his clandestine mission with Reservoir Dogs, a multi-pronged subversion of the tough guy persona. And it was his overt mission with Kill Bill, a celluloid universe of female empowerment, where the women are always the most deadly people in the room, and the men stroll grinning and proud in their shadows.

Death Proof follows in these established Tarantino traditions, and also features his trademarks: perfect timing, endless patience, and compulsive coherence. Much of the film simply eavesdrops on its numerous female characters hanging out in a bar, or in a café. Both prolonged scenes of drawn-out dialogue are beautiful set-ups for awesome punch lines. Eventually the heroines are set upon by a psychopath (played by Kurt Russell; an amazingly nuanced performance) who kills women with his car. And as the film evolves into a blistering car chase, the women turn the tables on their assailant and hunt him down in their own deadly hot rod.

Death Proof stars professional stuntwoman Zoё Bell as herself. The stunts she performs in this movie boggle the mind, and if you are not too caught up in the escapist fun of it all, it may occur to you that you are watching, with eyes glued to the screen, an amazing specimen of humanity risking everything to entertain you. In these moments Tarantino completely turns his film over to his performance-artist star. It is his purest, most direct feminist statement to date. Once again, he is daring us to call this stuff trash.

When all’s said and done, Grind House is a staggering piece of pop entertainment. These two directors go to every length, and depth, to rev our engines. They express their enduring fondness for the schlock that turned them on to movies in the first place. They give cinematic noogies to every highbrow film that ever did anything less than blow the viewer’s mind. And they willingly juxtapose themselves with each other, each to clarify his own approach, what he is and what he is not, and how the same tradition can yield very different legacies. Fantastic movie boys. Thanks a bunch.

Copyright © 2007 Theo Michelfeld