Grind It Till You Find It

GRINDHOUSE Double Feature

Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror: B-

Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof: A-

Fake action/horror movie trailers: B+

Including previews, Grindhouse clocks in at 3 and 1/2 hours. It seems like a pretty long commitment for a couple of stupid horror movies, but I must say that I left the theater feeling downright giddy (and guilt-free even though I spend a big chunk of a gorgeous day in the dark).

As you've probably heard, Rodriguez and Tarantino fashioned the show after the B-grade double features that used to show in venues known as Grindhouses (because they kept on grinding out crappy movie after crappy movie). The directors have lots of fun with the idea that they're recreating the whole experience, padding the proceedings with fake trailers for action and horror movies with names like Machete and Don't! At the risk of pissing off modern moviegoers, they even insert "Missing Reel" when steamy sex and lap dance are supposed to happen.

The first feature, Rodriguez's Planet Terror, is silly, disgusting and, at times, charming. But it goes on forever, causing me to take a strategic pee break before Tarantino's contribution rolled. Planet Terror stars Rose McGowan, Freddy Rodriguez from Six Feet Under, Bruce Willis and Naveen Andrews of Lost fame. After a toxin-generated epidemic causes thousands of Texas dwellers to turn into oozy-fleshed zombies, a small group of folks bands together to fend off the monsters. The best sight gag appears toward the end, when a go-go dancer played by McGowan loses a leg, prompting Freddy Rodriguez's character to fashion prosthetic legs for her (one is a long wooden stick that she breaks when sticking it into the eye of a would-be rapist played by a completely creepy Tarantino, and the other is a machine gun that comes in handy when she needs to kill off dozens of zombies in one fell swoop).

Three fake previews roll after Planet Terror, and then Grindhouse hits highway speed (and then some) with Tarantino's edge-of-your-seat romp Death Proof. Also set in Texas, it starts off with a pleasantly slow sequence about four young women hanging out at an Austin bar. They meet Stuntman Mike, a seemingly harmless teetotaler who says he just likes to hang out at bars for the nachos. While the four friends drive off listening to dreamy music, Stuntman Mike agrees to drive another woman home. He summarily kills her and orchestrates a grisly head-on with the other four women. The crash kills all the women, and he survives and soon sets his sights on another quartet of women. Little does he know that the group consists of a couple of actresses and two stuntwomen who, in a couple of breathtaking and innovative car chases, decide to partake in some vigilante feminism when he messes with them in a big way. Tarantino has always been a great dialogue writer, and he doesn't disappoint here. All the conversations crackle with sass and irony, and the characters are remarkably well developed considering this is only supposed to be a B-movie.