Grindhouse; fun, and fine the way it is.

Grindhouse; fun, and fine the way it is.

So there's been a lot of talk about the whole Grindhouse thing, and much speculation about why it "didn't work." It took in less money this weekend than last, so commercially it's already being condemned as a bomb. In the long run I'm actually curious as to how this film will be judged by history, and by history I mean a few months from now, since I am fairly confident that word of mouth is just the sort of thing to actually help a film like this.

First of all, it's a fun film. It's over the top. It combines what some see as the best, and some see as the worst, qualities in both primary directors (Rodriguez and Tarantino). It's gory. Quite a bit of it comes off as gratuitous, but when you take a step back you see that everything actually does work towards helping the stories function as cohesive wholes.

Rodriguez's Planet Terror is a good old fashioned zombie flick, amped up in Rodriguez's inimitable imitation style of over the top acrobatics, and displays an undeniable penchant for spilling blood in ways that both shock and provoke uncontrollable fits of giggles. It's pace is relentless and it's characters reach beyond the territory of familiar archetypes to inhabit realms of exaggeration as they "reach up" to become something bigger than the material they pay homage to (or lovingly parody, depending on your own personal read.)

Tarantino's Death Proof is a bit different. Since he's spent so much of his career lovingly looking back on the pulp films that have formed his aesthetic attack, the viewer has grown used to seeing him take conventional genres and twist them to his own liking. Where Rodriguez offers us a familiar pastiche of zombie / apocalypse fare, Tarantino introduces a familiar trope in the form of a slasher / serial killer flick, only to pull the rug out from under the viewer right as things seem to have slowed to a confounding halt.

Much has been said about the fact that Tarantino's segment takes so long to get off the ground, but I think that the pace of his film is integral to its having the effect it ultimately does. Yes, it's true that Tarantino is much like Woody Allen when you consider that almost every character on the screen, male and female, are basically different permutation of the scriptwriter / director, but that doesn't make the verbal sparring and slowly building story structure any less enjoyable. Who goes to see a Tarantino film, or an Allen film, in hopes of seeing the voice behind the story willfully obscured? As long as the dialogue contains their trademark panache, no one should be complaining.

And Death Proof is a sweetly satisfying film that unfolds with a killer payoff at the end. In retrospect, the quiet character build-up helps sweeten the denouement, and a number of actors that have been introduced with stereotypical qualities to inhabit (and carry through with in) stereotypical roles, blossom into fully realized characters deserving of an honest bond with the viewer that transcends the genre.

Not to mention, anyone that's seen a slasher film know just how much non-action actually occupies the story in contrast to the three or four instances per movie of slasher "pay-off." Tarantino knows this rule, but tweaks it so that the viewer gets involved with the story as a whole instead of merely twiddling their thumbs waiting for the next scene of ultra-violence to explode across the scene.

And finally, if the two movies are paced so differently, why should they be kept together anyway?

The funny thing is, that for all of its enjoyable adrenaline rush, I suspect that had I seen Planet Terror as a stand-alone, I might have felt a little cheated, whereas Death Proof might in some ways profit from being viewed by itself, since it's more mature handling of pace would feel more natural. Even so, the simplest reason I can think of to NOT split the two is that they were conceived to be viewed in a single sitting. Secondly, a number of actors are shared between both; some inhabit the world of Tarantino's and rodriguez's previous films, some seem to walk a shadowy path between both Grindhouse movies, and some are just recycled in the manner the D-movie actors were back in the days of true double features.

The best reason, though, is that when viewed together the films hearken back to a time that never really existed in the first place. Originally the grindhouse movies were terrible. Really terrible. And double features, while being a good way to loose oneself for a few hours on a muggy afternoon when the air conditioning was out at your house, were way too long. But they did have something magical about them in the way that they pushed the envelope and dared to offend sensibilities, even if those moments were literally seconds of two-hours of otherwise mind-numbingly boring fare. What Tarantino and Rodriguez have done is take those seconds, expanded them into hours, and rescued the romantic notions of the original idea by making good on the promises of those older, failed films.

MP3: Robert Rodriguez "Grindhouse (Main Titles)"
MP3: Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich "Hold Tight"