Out of Frame: Grindhouse
Once upon a time, in a dirty and slightly sticky corner of the motion picture industry, there were films produced purely for the sake of feeding audiences' seemingly endless appetite for gaudy sex and near pornographic violence, often slathered with buckets of unnaturally red viscera and always with a splashy title and equally eye-catching poster. The rise of independent cinema in the 1970s made for an explosion of these low-budget features, and audiences hungry for a break from Hollywood had no shortage of options for any type of film that could have "-ploitation" tacked on to its genre. They showed in double features in dingy movie houses often transformed from low-rent burlesque clubs, the tastes of the audience essentially being the same, whether the subject on display was gore or go-go dancer.
The grindhouses are gone, and Hollywood has since dolled up B-movies in fancy clothes. Hollywood films that are thinly veiled excuses for nudity and violence now like to dress up in the sheep's clothing of professionalism, but they're rarely better for the added gloss. At least the low-budget escapism of the 70s was up front about its intentions. And it's that spirit of honest love for shocking spectacle that directors Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino bring to their own loving homage to the gloriously filthy days of exploitation cinema.
The movies Rodriguez and Tarantino are celebrating were all about style over substance, wild celebrations of excess and eye-popping, gut-wrenching (often literally in both cases) visuals. The directors are well aware that aside from a contingent of hard-core film geeks who actually know names like Herschell Gordon Lewis and Monte Hellman, most multiplex audiences aren't going to be that familiar with the grindhouse experience, and so they take great pains to recreate it as imaginatively as possible. From the colorful 70s-style "Prevues [sic] of Coming Attractions" and "Feature Presentation" clips (which, it should be noted, are still used at Fairfax's great Cinema Arts Theatre) that are shown before and in-between the features, to the added scratches and flaws in the prints, to the trailers for fake exploitation-style films shown as part of the whole experience, the pair seem to have thought of everything. The fake trailers bear particular praise, for as anyone who's ever watched any of the 42nd Street Forever collections can attest, watching exploitation trailers is often as much of a thrill as watching the movies themselves. Eli Roth's nausea-inducing trailer for Thanksgiving feels the most authentic, squeezing as much gore and depravity as possible into three minutes of washed-out 70s film stock with a forboding ultra-bass voiceover, though Rodriguez's own trailer for Machete, about a Mexican day-laborer with a serious vengeance streak, stands out as the fake film one would most like to see actually made (and a quick check of Rodriguez's upcoming projects on IMDB indicates that he felt the same).
What neither Rodriguez nor Tarantino can really pretend to be are bad filmmakers. Even in the weakest moments in their filmographies, they're still extremely technically proficient, which was not always a hallmark of the B and C-movies they're recreating. But their films are not so slavish in their adulation that they leave no room for the directors' individual styles and talents. Rodriguez's Planet Terror maintains the director's skill for well choreographed and gritty action-horror (see: From Dusk 'Til Dawn), while adding in fantastically contrived situations and laughably bad dialog (always with an exaggerated wink and nudge). The payoff to Freddy Rodríguez's oft-repeated tough-guy marksman line, "I never miss," should leave you on the floor. Terror takes its place in the long line of zombies-that-aren't-textbook-zombies bioterror films such as Nightmare City, or, if you prefer things more highbrow, 28 Days Later. A biotech agent that turns its victims into pustule-popping, pus-dripping monsters is spreading quickly, and a motley gang of cops, vigilantes and BBQ cooks in Texas are all that stand between the virus, the military, and the end of civilization as we know it. All you really need to know? Rose McGowan plays a go-go dancer who loses a leg, which by movie's end has been replaced by a machine gun/grenade launcher, and Lost’s Naveen Andrews plays a deliciously self–serving scientist who not only may have the only key to a cure, but also likes to collect the forcibly removed testicles of his enemies. As with the best B-movies, plot is secondary; these are the things you came to see.
The second movie in the double feature, Tarantino’s Death Proof, is similarly simplistically structured. Kurt Russell plays an ex-Hollywood stuntman with a taste for meticulously planned vehicular homicides of groups of young girls. But when he targets a group that includes two tough-as-nails stuntwomen, the tables are turned. All you really need to know? The last third of the movie, which starts as a loving homage to Vanishing Point, turns into one of the most thrilling car chase sequences since The French Connection or Bullitt, before ending with a savage celebration of female revenge on male victimizers that should have audiences cheering wildly. Tarantino proves his skill, once again, at providing remarkably deep characterization through everyday conversation, and then switching gears and dropping all the talking to recreate the era of the pre-CGI stunt-driven car chase with the same attention to detail he gave to the martial-arts sequences in Kill Bill.
A lot of mainstream reviewers are knocking the films for lack of plot coherence or a failure to authentically recreate the movies to which they're paying tribute. Some knock exploitation cinema in general, but they're missing the point. Grindhouse is the most fun you’re likely to have at a movie this year, because Rodriguez and Tarantino deliver all the seat-squirming, eye-covering moments your fiercely racing heart craves, without ever pretending the films are anything they’re not. Forget about "guilty pleasures." Call it a pleasure, and leave it at that. Above all, see this movie in a theater, preferably the dirtiest, most run-down one you can find.