Grindhouse (Two-Disc Collector's Edition) (2007)

This set is getting bad reviews, based on a few people who really don't know what they're talking about. One of the reviews gave the blu ray a one-star review because this set isn't available on DVD. How does that make sense? Some other reviews, bashed the fact that these aren't the "extended" versions. Of course there not, you can already buy those. The point of this set is recreate the entire theatrical experience, so of course they have the theatrical cuts of the film and in my opinion, this is the way these films were meant to be seen. Also keep in mind that most of those bad reviews, came out before this edition did, therefore they aren't first hand reviews and are inaccurate.

I received the set today and it's great, packaging is great incredibly detailed and really adds to the feel of the fims. The movies play just as they did in theaters, which to me is the best way to see them and it is packed with special features, a good amount of them exclusive to this set. If you liked the Grindhouse films, but didn't get to see them in theaters, or if your like me and wanted to recreate that experience, then I highly recommend this set. If you want the extended cuts, well then go buy those.

One thing that baffles me about "Grindhouse" is how little mainstream press coverage it has received. We've got a legitimately unique, unusual film experience here and I've heard hardly a peep from the same people who were going on and on about that movie what with all the snakes on the plane and that other one with all the spartans. (Nothing against those films, by the way, I just don't see that they're news.) Perhaps the idea of recreating an old-school, independent theater double bill experience isn't that big of a deal, but how often do you hear about some film trying to do something unique at all? But whatever, even if the mainstreamers don't think this is something noteworthy, I do, and it proved to be a pretty damn good time. Furthermore, the unusual format did matter, I think, and helped make the film better than the sum of its parts.

The two features here are "Planet Terror" from Robert Rodriguez and "Death Proof" from Quentin Tarantino. Coming into this I was a much bigger Tarantino fan than a Rodriguez one, but the Rodriguez segment sounded more promising, and proved to be easily the better of the two, though "Death Proof" is certainly worth a watch too, even if it's easily Tarantino's weakest feature length work.

Though you may never have guessed it from the ads, which consist of nothing but Rose McGowan and here assault rifle leg, "Planet Terror" is a zombie film. Though the film as a whole is meant to recall the 70's, "Planet Terror" has the mid to late 80's written all over it. Furthermore, this ain't an update of the good zombie movies, like Romero made, but the bad ones, like Zombi 3 and After Death and numerous others. Some of those films were so bad that they weren't amusing anymore, but "Planet Terror" never comes close to crossing that line.

As with most zombie movies, the plot is of little interest. Basically, there's an outbreak of, uh, zombieism in a Texas town, and our cast of varied heroes must fight them off. It has a surprisingly large cast of characters and a number of subplots, but none of that matters much. It all just comes together as a rough, incredibly gruesome cheesefest, and it's a helluva lot of fun. Most significatly, though "Planet Terror" is essentially a comedy, it still feels genuinely affectionate towards it's dubious inspirations.

Rodriguez goes to great lengths to simulate the old theater/cheap movie experience, with a washed out, horribly scratched up print and rough technical aspects and editing. Watching the ads, I was worried that he might takes this stuff too far, but it works well and never too distracting. Rodriguez isn't afraid to be modern too, at times, with some fancier effects, though it's never so pristine as to take away from the old B-movie feel.

Zombie films, at least of this sort, are mostly about the gore, and Rodriguez delivers in spades, with lots of spewing blood, gruesome dismemberment and even liquefaction. (And liquification, in fact. We get both!) The humor is mostly of the lowbrow, grossout variety, but it's legitimately clever at some points too, which is more than you can say of most horror comedies. (The final delivery of the line "I never miss" had damn well better get a laugh out of you.) Beyond this, it still has some endearing performances, particularly from Michael Biehn as the sheriff and the main protagonist Wray, played by Freddy Rodriguez, who inexplicably turns out to be quite a killing machine.

Tarantino's "Death Proof" has a more legitimately 70's vibe to it, coming off as a mix of old-school slasher and car movie with a dash of rape-revenge thriller thrown in their. That said, "Death Proof" is less committed to the concept as a whole, proves to be more technically sound and comes off mostly as a Tarantino movie. That's, obviously, not a bad thing in and of itself, but it would've been cool if Tarantino had been more committed to the concept.

Tarantino inevitably described "Death Proof" as a slasher movie where the killer uses his car as his weapon of choice. Kurt Russell is our killer, Stuntman Mike, and Russell does a great job, charming and menacing at the same time. Definitely the best turn we've seen from him in some time. The other characters are a bit more dubious, however. We've got two packs of female protagonists, most of them interchangeable, all of them standard Tarantino characters, but with a lot of the charm lopped off. Now, the endless dialogue is amusing about half the time, but we've got a lot of dubious material in their too. The major problem comes in the middle. The first 40 or so minutes of "Death Proof" are massively dialogue driven, but it's building to the first major chase/action/horror scene, and we actually get to deal with the Russell character some and learn about him etc. After the first major encounter, however, Tarantino goes back into dialogue mode, this time with no Russell and it starts to get wearying. In short, the first major talking section feels like exposition and build up, the second like filler. The final climax works very well, again, but much of the build up is pointless, and it takes so long to get there that it seems rather abrupt. In short, "Death Proof" could easily stand to have 10 minutes lopped off, even at its brief length. It's still cool and all, but I expect more from Quentin Tarantino.

The icing on the cake of the whole experience are the fake trailers which are, minute for minute, the most entertaining part of the film. These are definitely the most old-school part of the film, filled with the gratuitous violence and nudity, the choppy editing and the repeated titular references that defined exploitation film trailers. Eli Roth's "Thanksgiving" trailer is the best of them and is, within the limits of the form, genius. "Thanksgiving" is meant to be an early 80's, just after "Friday the 13th" style slasher movie, and Roth's recreation of the style is just spot on, but with plenty of intentional humor thrown in. I don't dare give away too many specific jokes, but Roth's having the killer be dressed up as a pilgrim is hilarious, and the outrageously awful narration is brilliantly written and performed. (...and this time there will be no leftovers...) You can check it out over at IGN, which you definitely should if you like slasher movies. Rob Zombie's "Werewolf Women of the SS" isn't as strong overall, but it has a great concept perhaps the biggest laugh in the movie, which I won't give away, and the casting of Udo Kier is another great stroke. Rodriguez's trailer "Machete" is an 80's style actioner, though its plot appears remarkably similar to "Shooter". (More great voice over: "They ****** with the wrong Mexican" and "If you hire Machete to kill the badguy, you'd better make sure that bad guy isn't you".) Again, very funny. Edgar Wright's "Don't" trailer is the weakest of them, and is basically one joke, but it's a pretty funny joke, at least. .

All in all, "Grind House" does prove to be more than the sum of its parts, though the individual parts are quite cool by themselves. Make sure to see this in theaters.

Grades

Planet Terror: A-

Death Proof: B-

Overall Experience: B+

P.S. This movie does contain a brief appearance by Fergie. Just thought I should warn you.

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Just so you know, "Grindhouse" begins with a trailer for "Machete" and then the first film, "Planet Terror." You then have to choose your opportunity to run to the restroom between the three trailers--Rob Zombie's "Werewolf Women of the S.S." (look for Nicholas Cage, Sybil Danning, and Udo Kier), Edgar Wright's "Don't," and Eli Roth's "Thanksgiving"--or the start of the second feature, "Death Proof." My recommendation would be for the start of the second movie if you need to miss a minute or two what is on the screen. At 191 minutes, not including the real trailers before the fun begins, "Grindhouse" presents the same sort of challenge to bladder control that movie patrons faced with Peter Jackson's "King Kong." Hope this helps you make an informed decision. My other bit of advice would be do not play on eating anything gooey during the first feature. You have been warned.

I doubt that I have seen half as many exploitation films as Quentin Tarantino but having checked out dozens of double features on DVDs from the friendly folks at Something Weird Video, I have ample reason to believe I have seen more examples of the genre than 99% of the populace. I also get nostalgic when the "Coming Attractions" and "Feature Presentation" bits from my youth appear on the big screen once again. My wife has probably never seen an exploitation film in her life, which would explain why she hit me no less than six times during "Planet Terror" over the fountains of blood, gore, and other bodily fluids that were gleefully showering the cast of characters. So she does not appreciate how what she sees on the screen (or would have seen if she had not buried her face in her hands) is an homage to those days when producers had to come up with "legitimate" reasons to show sex and violence on screen. The whole bit with the doctor looking at the horrible pictures on the computer is clearly a reference when not only nudity but gross medical abnormalities could be shown in the name of sexual hygiene (booklets will be available in the lobby or blink your headlights and somebody will come to your car and sell them to you).

That being said, be well aware that Robert Rodriguez will make all of those earlier efforts look like children's films. By the time Quentin Tarantino's character gets what is coming to him in "Planet Terror," you will be totally revising your definition of the word "GROSS." However, if you come to see "Grindhouse" just to see Rose McGowan strap that machine gun onto the stump where her leg used to be, then be aware that you are going to have to wait for the climax of the film to get to the point. Rodriguez's film is a potent reminder of why I never wanted to take biology in high school, and tries to touch on as many of the types of exploitation film as possible, from zombies and women in prison to your basic mixture of shock and sex. McGowan's Cherry meets up again with her old lover, Freddy Rodriguez's El Wray, just as their Texas town in being overrun by people with festering sores turning into zombies (I am really understating the sores: check you gag reflex at the door). Cherry has El Wray's jacket, which she took with her when she left and he keeps trying to explain how he looked for it for two weeks and she keeps interrupting his story. This matters because Rodriguez has also loaded up his film with as many cliches as he could think of, and it is to the credit of the actors in this film (including Jeff Fahey, Michael Biehn, Josh Brolin, Tom Savini, Michael Parks, Naveen Andrews, Bruce Willis, and Marlene Shelton), that they are able to say some of this dialogue with more than a straight face. I also want to add that if you did not expect what happens during the big sex scene then you are just not in the right frame of mind to endure this film. This is not an exploitation film, but a self-conscious parody of an exploitation film that takes its tongue in cheek approach seriously. For me the high point of the movie is when we get to the "Missing Reel" part of the film and we get back to the story to immediately discover that things have changed (big time) for the worse.

While the publicity for "Grindhouse" has made the sight of Rose McGowan with a machine gun for a leg the iconic image associated with these films, but do not be surprised when you are walking out that the woman you are thinking about is Zoe Bell, who plays herself in "Death Proof." It is Bell, who was Uma Thurman's stunt double in the "Kill Bill" movies, who provides the "DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME" moment in Tarantino's film. I heard "Death Proof" described as a splatter flick where the killer uses a car as their weapon of choice, and that is basically all you need to know about the film, which falls neatly into three acts. I was expecting that Rosario Dawson as Abernathy would be a pivotal figure in this one, but Sydney Tamilia Portier as Jungle Julia gets our primary attention in the first act and then Dawson's "Rent" co-star Tracie Thoms takes over as Kim and Bell shows Kurt Russell's "Stuntman Mike" that there are more impressive hood ornaments that a duck. To say that "Death Proof" is the "better" movie of the two is really comparing apples and oranges because "Planet Terror" is more of a roller coaster ride of exploitational excess, while "Death Proof" actually is an attempt to make what an actual exploitation film. The net result is clearly more entertainment than exploitation, but I think that was really their ultimate goal here. I laughed more than anybody else in the theater because I understood the exploitation elements being played with and my wife kept asking me why I wanted her to see these films. I had as much fun as I expected with all this nonsense and she is never going to let me decide what film we go see for the rest of my life.

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Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino have always professed to anyone within hearing distance their extreme and fanboyish love for the grindhouse days of filmmaking. Both directors' resume of work look like a modern grindhouse films but with better writing, effects and directing. Anyone who grew up watching grindhouse film's of the 70's and 80's can see it's heavy influence on films such as From Dusk Til Dawn, Desperado, Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill. With 2007's Grindhouse, both Rodriguez and Tarantino take their fanboy love for all things grindhouse and exploitation to a whole new level with personal take on the cheap John Carpenter-knock offs, zombie gorefests, slasher film and revenge-driven flicks that made being a young kid during the 70's and 80's quite enjoyable.

Robert Rodriguez went all-out in paying literal homage to the zombie-gorefests of George A. Romero, Lucio Fulci and Umberto Lenzi. Planet Terror plays like a hodgepodge of all the zombie movies from these masters of the walking dead but Rodriguez has the use of digital effects to match the over-the-top feel of the past zombiefests without making the effects look too cheap. Rodriguez also channels his inner John Carpenter when it came to Planet Terror's synth-based sountrack. There's more than a passing resemblance to John Carpenter's very own synth-scores from his classics like Assault of Precinct 13, Halloween, and Escape from New York. Some of the soundtrack almost seemed like it was lifted straight from Escape from New York, especially during the chaos inside the town hospital.

The story for Planet Terror is simple story of a town besieged by zombies. Rodriguez gets the grindhouse feel with such a ludicrous storyline. The feeling of confusion in addition to the non-stop zombie action was only conpounded even more by the digitally-added film stock scratches, burns to the edges of the reel and when the movie was about to get all hot and sexy, missing reel footage. Anyone who watched movies in grindhouse theaters would recognize the look quite well. The violence in Planet Terror begins strong and just gets stronger and even more over-the-top right up to the final frame. Zombies getting their heads blown apart is shown in scratchy, loving detail with an impossible amount of blood, bone and brain for people to gawk at. The female characters are hot and sexy. Rose McGowan as Cherry Darling holds Planet Terror together with her spunky go-go dancer dreaming to be a stand-up comedienne turning into Ellen Ripley minus a leg but gaining an M16A3 w/ M203 grenade launcher as a leg prosthetic. Freddy Rodriguez as El Wray seem to be channeling a hilariously bad version of Snake Plissken. These two make for quite the explosive couple as they must try and save their small Texas town from the infected townspeople turned zombies.

Planet Terror truly got the look of a grindhouse flick, but it's Tarantino's Death Proof half which got the spirit of grindhouse down to near-perfect. But before Tarantino's Death Proof half of Grindhouse begins the audience gets treated to a sort of intermission involving three fake trailers for movies which celebrate just how ridiculously fun grindhouse movies really were during the 70's and 80's. There's Rob Zombie's Werewolf Women of the SS, Edgar Wright's fake trailer for Don't and then there's Eli Roth's Thanksgiving is a throwback to the seasonal-themed slasher flicks like Black Christmas but this time turns the yearly, turkey day and Pilgrim celebration into a trailer with some of the most disturbingly inventive scenes for a fake slasher movie.

Tarantino's Death Proof is less a literal copy of the grindhouse look and more a thematic homage of the genre. Tarantino takes one part slasher movie adds in a heavy dose of his own Reservoir Dogs (the talking between the female characters in Death Proof are as foul-mouthed and trivial as the diner scene in Reservoir Dogs) then mixes in equal amounts of Vanishing Point, Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and I Spit On Your Grave. Instead of just mimicking these particular grindhouse classics, Tarantino uses his own flair for extended dialogue to slow down the pace of the film thus lulling the audience for the two pay-offs which happen in the middle and the end of Death Proof. Kurt "I AM SNAKE PLISSKEN" Russell really saves the day once he makes his appearance as the automotive-themed serial killer, Stuntman Mike. Where Jason uses farming and bladed implements as his tool of the serial killing trade, Stuntman Mike uses deathproofed 1971 Chevy Nova SS and a 1970 Dodge Charger R/T 440 as his weapons of choice.

Death Proof captures the spirit of what makes a grindhouse exploitation film. Even with the heavy references to Vanishing Point, especially with a white 70's Dodge Challenger used just like in that movie, Tarantino still injects his own brand of craziness to the whole movie. The final chase-scene between the Russell's Stuntman Mike and the female-trio of Rosario Dawson, Tracie Thoms and real-life stuntwoman Zoe Bell has to go down as one of the craziest, whiteknuckling, barnburning car chase sequences of recent memory. No use of CGI-techniques would George Miller, John Frankenheimer and Richard Sarafian would be proud of what Tarantino was able to accomplish with Death Proof's 20-minute long car chase. By the time Death Proof ends the audience have been put through the wringer and one was hard-pressed not to cheer and root for Stuntman Mike even though we know we shouldn't.

Grindhouse is a film not for everyone. There's going to be quite a few people who won't "get" the film homages and refences by both Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino. Some would say that the movie was too over-the-top, badly made and just out there, but then they would be missing the point of the whole project altogether. For those who grew up watching these kind of films as kids and teenagers, it's a belated Valentine's gift from two fanboy filmmakers who finally were able to do the films they grew up idolizing and enjoying.

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What more could anyone possibly want from the long awaited debut of GRINDHOUSE on region 1 video? This is far superior to the previous extended version releases, including all of the trailers and fun bits that made GRINDHOUSE so great. The double feature versions play much better than the padded extended versions available on the previous seperate video releases. Everything about this release screams QUALITY. As far as the PQ goes, this looks as good as a film that is deliberately made to look battered and worn can look. Much has been made about the lack of a lossless audio track but again, the audio track is full of pops and hisses added to make the film seem worn out so I think the standard 5.1 is fine. As far as the extras go . . . there are too many to go into. It takes more than a day to watch and listen to everything that is included on this release. There are extended versions of the trailers as well as audio commentaries for them, storyboard comparisons, interviews, making of's, another cooking school segment from Robert the list goes on and on. The packaging is outstanding as well with the two discs coming in a gatefold slipcase, a high quality insert duplicating the poster art and an inner sleeve with lobby card art printed on the reverse side. Vivendi couldn't have done a better job with this.

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