"Grindhouse"

This deliciously depraved B-movie homage is as subtle as a buzz saw headed for a villain's private parts -- and it's rip-roarin' fun!

By Stephanie Zacharek

Read more: Stephanie Zacharek, Movies, Movie Reviews, Arts & Entertainment, Quentin Tarantino, Independent Film, Reviews, Robert Rodriguez

Photo: Dimension Films

Rose McGowan in the "Planet Terror" segment of "Grindhouse."

April 6, 2007 | Contemporary audiences have become spoiled by movies that make sense, have great acting, and feature nudity only when absolutely necessary: No wonder hardly anyone goes to the movies anymore. We sit at home, alone in our semi-darkened living rooms, hoping that "About Schmidt" or "Little Miss Sunshine" will answer our deepest questions about the human predicament.

But what about our littler questions? Questions like, Can nuclear splooge really turn us into flesh-eating zombies? Is it such a good idea to go into the basement of the last house on the left? And that naked girl sure looks great zooming down the highway on that motorcycle -- but did she at least wipe the seat with a towel first?

To answer questions like those -- or at least to render them academic -- you need an audience, a large roomful of like-minded individuals to hoot and holler at dialogue that sounds as if it had been written on a square of institutional-grade toilet paper, to jump when zombie-victim blood splatters the screen, to flinch collectively when the sniggering rapist gets an ax to the groin, to peer at the screen through parted fingers as the crazy speed demon on the dark country highway trails a carful of giggling, scantily clad teenage girls.

In your living room, no one can hear you scream. And where's the fun in that? As movies have gotten more sophisticated, so have we, and in their double-feature B-movie homage "Grindhouse," Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez suggest, with the subtlety of a buzz saw headed for a villain's private parts, that we've lost something along the way. "Grindhouse" is the filmmakers' love letter to the cheaply made, rough-edged action and horror pictures that, in the '60s, '70s and early '80s, would play the crummiest, most run-down movie houses in the worst part of town, or perhaps, if you lived in a more suburban locale, the drive-in. Typical fare included blaxploitation and/or women's prison pictures like Jack Hill's "Coffy" and "The Big Doll House"; psycho-killer creep-outs like Wes Craven's "The Last House on the Left" and Herschell Gordon Lewis' "Blood Feast"; el cheapo car-chase extravaganzas like H.B. Halicki's "Gone in 60 Seconds"; and any number of other imported or domestic pictures (kung-fu adventures, sexploitation cheapies) that might put warm fannies in seats. These theaters would show three or four features at a stretch, which made them attractive havens for bums and assorted ne'er-do-wells: The wag sitting next to me at the "Grindhouse" screening offered to pee on the floor to make the experience more authentic.

It was a chivalrous gesture, but an unnecessary one. "Grindhouse" -- which consists of two full-length movies, one by Rodriguez and one by Tarantino, as well as several faux trailers by guest directors -- is a grand collage of drooling zombies, bounteous breasts, spurting blood and careering cars, a rambunctious and unapologetically disreputable entertainment as well as a comprehensive catalog of B-movie references. It's also recklessly joyous and deeply affectionate, a celebration not just of an all-but-lost approach to moviemaking but of the nearly lost experience of communal moviegoing. The audience I saw "Grindhouse" with didn't pee on the floor (at least, not as far as I could tell). But we did hoot and holler and groan together, united, if only temporarily, by the happy recognition that most of what we were seeing on-screen was sick as hell: We're sane, thank God; it's the world around us that's gone mad! Our sanity confirmed, we all settled in to watch Rose McGowan, as an amputee stripper, take out a slew of baddies with the machine gun attached to her stump. Why ever not?

The charming, saucy McGowan is one of the chief attractions of Rodriguez's "Planet Terror," which makes up the first half of "Grindhouse": With those cartoon-pussycat eyelashes, that distracted pout, those killer gams (both of them), she's its heart and its hottie. In "Planet Terror," a biohazardous leak of something-or-other turns people into cannibalistic zombies. It's up to McGowan and her bad-boy hero boyfriend (Freddy Rodriguez) to stop them. Marley Shelton plays an anesthesiologist with a killer arsenal of hypodermic needles (they're strapped to her leg in a specially fitted garter); Josh Brolin is her wacko doctor husband. Naveen Andrews shows up as a scientist with a scarf tied around his head and a single hoop earring -- in other words, an "ethnic" villain. (He also carries a jarful of pickled testicles around with him, but never mind.) Two young Venezuelan actresses, Elise and Electra Avellán, billed as the Crazy Babysitter Twins, play -- what else? -- crazy baby-sitter twins. (They're also Rodriguez's nieces.) Tarantino appears, in a small part, as a rapist -- talk about grabbing the plum role for yourself.

"Planet Terror" is the sillier, more raucous of the two movies, a model of cheerful, demented, cartoonishly violent excess. Rodriguez, true to the movies that inspired him, goes for the gusto. More is more, especially when it comes to blood, which never just spurtles from squibs in tasteful quantities; it shoots out, geyserlike. (Legendary makeup artist Tom Savini, who designed the zombie effects for "Dawn of the Dead," appears in "Planet Terror" as a clumsy deputy who loses a finger.)

Explosions, car chases, women cavorting in skirts the size of hankies: "Planet Terror" packs it all in, but even though the movie may seems haphazard on the surface, it was clearly made with a Zen master's meticulousness. The picture's surface has been scratched up in some places, and jerks and jitters raggedly through the projector in others; scenes are tinged pink or red, as if the print has been fading for years; and when the characters talk to each other, their dialogue sometimes sounds as if it were being beamed from a radio transmitter in Sheboygan. Back in the day, just a handful of prints of any one "grindhouse"-caliber movie would circulate among hundreds of theaters across the country. A picture's scraped and scratched surface, its fading and discoloration, its funky sound, were the scars of being run through too many ancient, badly maintained projectors -- they'd become part of its identity. The prematurely aged look of "Planet Terror" is partly a novelty, but it also suggests the way movies -- lousy ones as well as good ones -- endure: In our memories, they outlive the fragile celluloid on which they're captured.

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