If you’re looking for EXCITEMENT!
If you’re looking for ADVENTURE!
If you’re looking for ZOMBIES!
look no further than…
THE GRINDHOUSE
warning* possible spoilers in review (i don’t know for sure, since I never wrote a review before).
…ok, that was my little introduction to the grindhouse. I got advanced screening tickets to see it last night. For those who are unaware I will give a brief overview of the history of grindhouse theatres:
Basically, in the 70’s and 80’s there were two types of theatres, the big guys who played hollywood movies, and the little guys who played the underground b-movies. The b-movie theatres were usually known as grindhouse theatres because they would usually give you a double feature for the price of one. Most of the time they would show movies that were ‘unacceptable’ to play in the bigger theatres. So a film maker would make their movie and the studio would only have that one original copy! they had no money to make dup’s. So that one copy would just circulate around the theatres, it would spend 3 weeks at this theatre then ship out and spent 3 weeks at the next place. By the end of the first month the original was played so many times that it would become ridden with scratches and defects, hence the choppy scratchy grainy style.
So here we have a movie made in this style called the grindhouse. It’s a throwback, genre film and it’s sooo good. The first film is by robert rodriguez called “planet terror”. I liked this one better than tarantino’s film.
Basically Planet Terror is a zombie flick. What sets this one apart from your average zombie flick is of course the details. The story is pretty basic, a deal between the military and a scientist goes bad, and a bunch of zombies are the result. They spread their sickness throughout texas and a few survivors lead by a mystery man named El Wray have to fight through it.
One of the best parts of this entire movie is the music, the theme song is sooooooo good, just oozes grindhouse! The interesting things about this movie are that one: there’s a chick with a gun for a leg, and two the zombie’s are a little different than you’d expect from the more recent rash of zombie movies. They are human looking, and don’t look dead, but their skin bubbles up from a mutation, and if they don’t get it cured the skin turns soft and mushy (think of an ice cream sandwich after 5 minutes in the sun, pick that sucker up too hard and it’ll mush all over). I loved the chef, he’s this guy who own’s this shady shop and he won’t give up his recipe for his “bar-b-cue”! There’s a ton of details in this one that I don’t really want to tell about because it’ll ruin the fun, just remember to watch the movie from the opening sequence, not the movie opening sequence, the opening sequence from when the picture shows up on the screen, so much great stuff just in the openings! …and by the way, the first movie trailer from the “prevus” is a real movie coming out next year.
Tarantino’s film “Death Proof” was a great throwback as well, however I thought that “Planet Terror” was a stronger movie, but it could just be because i’m more into zombie flicks. Death Proof is basically a car chase movie with a twist. The twist i can’t talk about. the beginning of this film plays out sort of like Halloween, that movie with Mike Myers the serial killer. It was a great start, but it threw me off when I watched the rest of it. this one scene at the beginning shows these girls at a store, one of them is outside smoking and she see’s a car stopped in the street right in front of the store, she stares, then after a second the car drives off, later in the evening she see’s the same car parked in the lot where the girls are drinking at the bar. The greatness in this scene is the music, the contrast, the scene before shows the girls inside having fun, fun music all that, then the next scene is this girl outside smoking by herself, no music, then she see’s the car, and then the music, it’s similar to the mike myers film music, it does a great job of making the car evil and scary. Tarantino does a great job of forshadowing, pay attention to what everyone says, and the proceeding scenes…so good. You’ll hopefully pick up on the classic story telling aspects of good vs evil, the interpretation of these elements in the form of dark vs light (can’t say much here without giving something away), and the ideas of classic interpretations of predator and prey and girl power.
Overall, the grindhouse is 3 freakin’ hours of fun! Well worth the price of admission, the ‘ads’ before each flick are priceless and the little details throughout the films are what makes these two filmmakers the great artists they are. I can’t wait for the DVD, and special thanks to Rodriguez for getting me back into the zombie genre, i’m off to pick up some zombie flicks!
