Dan's Papers - Issue #4 - April 20, 2007

I began last week's review of The Shooter with the question, "How much violence is too violent?" Well, this week we're taking on a double whammy of gross violence with Grindhouse. For the innocent amongst you, a grindhouse is an over-redolent, cheesy theater movie that could be found in most sleazy areas of the country in the 1960s and 1970s. The moving pictures shown there were chockfull of the skuzziest images of bare-nekked women being attacked by roaring, souped-up GM gas guzzlers, sweaty sickos and disintegrating zombies who need fresh human flesh. All of the above was supercharged with SEX. The movie Grindhouse takes you back to those days with a dutiful, gory homage to a typical shock-studded program - a double feature and a handful of trailers for upcoming flicks of equal bone grinding, bloodletting terror.

You don't need three guesses to figure out who the aficionados are who've reproduced those terrorizing mainstays of bad taste and up-chucking chuckles of yesteryear. Who else but the master of pulp himself, Quentin Tarantino, and Mr. Once Upon A Time In Mexico, Robert Rodriguez. With pulse-bubbling wit, they express their love of the whole trashy genre lavishly. They are so dedicated to it, in fact, they even replicate the snap-crackle-pops of the fractured soundtracks and the jangling visual ravages of well-worn film - the scratches, shabby splices and sprocket tears that heightened the overwhelming shabbiness like salt and pepper on the resurrected cadavers of those bare-boned budget thrillers. Tarantino was obviously influenced by the 1950s French New Wave directors, who recaptured the youthful rapture of the cheapo American B-Movie and, in doing so, created something startlingly new. Now, in the post-modern era of digitalized movie making, Tarantino's use of good ol' film is really refreshing.

Grindhouse's double feature of 1970s B-grade cult movies, interspersed with tacky trailers, is like pigging out on a greasy overdose of Double Whoppers drenched in a cheese meltdown drowning in ketchupy bloodiness. Rodriguez's Planet Terror reworks a zombie schlock-shock version of Night of the Living Dead and Tarantino's Death Proof revs up the steely Dodge Challenger of Vanishing Point to scare the starch out of your knickers, with a car chase to end all car chases, while leading up to it with a lengthy conversation bantered by four women in the pop culture style so typical of his exploitation of character. In his way, he manages to take trash films to a more serious plane of cinema, as generated by the likes of Jean-Luc Godard. Robert Rodriguez's gutbucket sensation pitches the terrific performer Rose McGowan into an arena of decomposing corpses lusting after her body, daringly presented in her opening scenes as a pole dancer. Her dreams of being a stand-up comic are dashed when the zombies devour one of her fabulous legs, but she gets her revenge when her boyfriend, Freddy Rodriguez, equips her with a limb that's also a mighty machine gun. (Hey, we're talking cult madness here.) In traditional style, the ravenous corpses are victims of government chemical experiments and Bruce Willis (good sport that he is) shows up as the Army villain, with Tarantino as his sideman, who is turned on by McGowan's one-legged availability for raping. And we're just getting started. You've got a really evil doctor, Josh Brolin, and his doctor-wife Marley Shelton, who's planned to run off with Stacy Ferguson, her lesbian lover. 'Nuff said. Planet Terror has more than its fair share of gross stuff. Body parts get down to too much detail - especially genitalia.

Tarantino's Death Proof stars Kurt Russell as Stuntman Mike, a charming killer of a driver who pits his heavy metal vehicle against women - giving new meaning to the term "lady killer" as he pursues Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Jordan Ladd and Vanessa Ferlito. But a sturdy foursome - Zoe Bell, Rosario Dawson, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Tracie Thoms - decide to challenge Stuntman Mike. A fellow reviewer has pointed out that Tarantino is one of very few moviemakers who are giving starring heroic roles to women. That's absolutely true. Female leading roles are inordinately rare. But I'm reminded of the remark of the father of one of the hundreds of nearly nude chorus girls in a Busby Berkley 1930s musical. She stood bent, as the front of a harp, alongside about 60 others in a big line, being strummed by musicians as the camera zoomed up, under, over and between all the chorus girls. The father lamented, "I didn't raise my daughter to be a Human Harp." I might add, "I wouldn't like my three daughters to be lethal hood ornaments."

Guy Jean de Fraumeni is the producer/writer/director of award-winning European and American feature films. He has been a judge at Major Film and TV award competitions, including the Oscars, the Emmy's and various film festivals. Sarah Halsey assists him.