Grindhouse: Planet Terror (2007, Robert Rodriguez) and Death Proof (2007, Quentin Tarantino)

If there's one thing I won't forgive the American people for in the first decade of the 2000s-- well, next to electing Bush twice-- it's that people didn't turn up in droves to watch perhaps the coolest movie experiment in all of modern cinema, Rodriguez and Tarantino's resurrection of the trash cinema double feature, Grindhouse. Because it's not like other movies, where, if no one goes, who gives a damn? They'll be your little secret, and you can make one-by-one converts of all of your friends.

But no-- poor box-office for Grindhouse means that, for the conceivable future, the Grindhouse experience will be lost. Planet Terror and Death Proof exist just fine-- but not Grindhouse. Having seen the film a few times during it's theatrical run in 2007, I can say that it was a singular cinematic experience, a trashy tunnel of thrills, a neato genre exercise. The "Restricted" title cards, the missing reels, the scratchy prints, and best of all, the trailers-- oh, those glorious fake teasers for woefully nonexistent b-horrors, all gaudy cameos and wink-nudge sadism. (Rodriguez's trailer for Machete, an imaginary star vehicle for Danny Trejo, remains on the Planet Terror DVD looking an awful lot like an overblown Desperado, come to think of it.)

But what of the movies? Fortunately, both directors pass with flying colours, albeit with different approaches to the material. And fortunately, you can put together a makeshift Grindhouse double feature if you so desire-- it'll just take a little more time, as both platters are "extended and unrated", thus stretching the running time to damn-near four hours.

Rodriguez is up first with Planet Terror, and it's clear that his grasp on the concept is immaculate. From the outset, there's a tough-talking go-go dancer, a mysterious stranger in a truck, bubbling flesh, and a testicle thief. As the story gets rolling-- something about gas that turns people into zombies, but who cares, really?-- Rodriguez propels his vision into Evil Dead-and-beyond levels of cartoonish splatter. Boils rupture, limbs fly, intestines ooze, bodies pop like water balloons. And he remains true to the trash-cinema tropes of the idea, all campy cleavage-cams, delicious one-liners, and, in the film's single most hilarious scene, missing reels. Rodriguez has done what I bet lots of prestige directors wish they had the balls to do-- he's understood the joy, the campy glee in sitting around and watching an ostensibly-awful-but-incredibly-fun movie with friends, and made his own ostensibly-awful-but-incredibly-fun homage. Freddy Rodriguez is the mvp here, playing it earnest all the way, but points to Bruce Willis for sending-up an intensely Bruce Willis-y role.

Yep, RR wins for slavishly recreating an old, sub-Living Dead shocker-- but for sheer craft, Tarantino swoops in once again. His Death Proof is, essentially, a Tarantino film. Sure, he scratches the surface of the terror-on-the-open-road thriller, but when you get right down to it, he packs it with a few things: lots of women, women who like to talk about obscure pop culture, moments that are obscenely, gloriously retro, an ostensibly career-saving performance by an aging actor (Kurt Russell, here), and lots and lots of music that, outside of the decade in which it was produced, hasn't been heard outside of Quentin Tarantino's house until now. But I, for one, refuse to look a gift film in the mouth, and if QT couldn't avoid making another QT film, who are we to pass it up? And it's a good one, too-- the Grindhouse version moved at a fantastic clip, packing into 90 minutes two vastly different exploits of Russell's Stuntman Mike. The DVD version does this, too, but all it adds is more dialogue, making Tarantino's already-talky film talkier. It's the first time the dialogue in a Tarantino film adds excessive padding, instead of enhancing-- the double-feature version features a lot of verbiage, but every word is carefully placed, every conversation necessary to flesh out characters that we need to invest in to get the full effect of what inevitably happens to them.

It's also an extremely well-acted film, for the most part-- Sydney Poitier as Jungle Julia leaves a lot to be desired-- she sleepwalks a bit, i think-- and Rose McGowan overshadows herself by being better in Planet Terror, but a sultry Vanessa Ferlito and an adorably perky Jordan Ladd make the initial batch of girls worth watching. Of course, it's Russell's show from the beginning-- his dialogue is so well-placed and -worded that you'll begin to fall for Stuntman Mike yourself, freaky scar and all, and he's so frightening and charismatic that he immediately invades the upper echelon of movie villains. When there's a turning of the tables in the film's latter half (that introduces a new batch of girls, the most memorable of which is Tracie Thoms as Quentin's female Sam Jackson stand-in), Death Proof goes into giddy overdrive, and makes its mark in Tarantino's ouvre as certified classic.

I'd love to see Grindhouse immortalized one day the way the creators intended it-- but, failing that, the padded-out full-length versions of Planet Terror and Death Proof will have to do.

Grindhouse: ***** (out of five)
Planet Terror: ****
Death Proof: ***** (original); ****1/2 (extended)