From the offset I knew there was going to be problems with Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s double-feature called Grindhouse, namely a conflict of interests between loyal genre aficionados, horror fans, academia, and mainstream audiences. How could there not be in that the sparse few who are cognizant of the title without having to research the term would obviously be the most critical while their genre kindred, the horror fan, would undoubtedly bring their own strict expectations with them. Then there’s the academes who feel obligated to attend due to Tarantino’s presence though they have never bothered themselves with grind house–in their terms–“trash,” while limbo is left for the casual viewer. As the adage attests, no work can be all things to all people.

When Grindhouse was announced, it caused almost each and every horror hound to froth at the mouth. Taratino does horror. What made the prospect of the project all the more promising is that we would be treated to not just one feature but, for the those who had actually seen and, gasp, took grind house features with more than a grain of salt, we would have a double-feature at that. Shortly before the film was released the ante was upped once more as it was reported that Eli Roth, Rob Zombie, and Edgar Wright would be providing fake trailers in between the features. What could possibly go wrong?

Admittedly, my heart was heavy when I entered the theater for I knew that much would be lost, not just with the term and history of the grind house features of the 1970s, but with the names attached to the trailers as well. I anticipated laughing uncontrollably when the director of Shaun of the Dead premiered his faux preview to a film I would, if finances permitted, personally foot the bill for in order to have the privilege of seeing. Furthermore, I felt pity for Rodriguez for I feared that anyone would, by default, pale in comparison, regardless of how good one’s product was, when placed alongside the newest outing by QT.

Paradoxically, I have never accepted that learn’d expectation is rarely matched by reality.

Tarantino’s portion of Grindhouse, Death Proof, closes the double-bill in lieu of the fact that the two features are interlinked, sharing many of the same characters and locales as the events contained therein take place prior to those witnessed in Rodriguez’s Planet Terror. Remarkably, the master of contemporary cinema FAILS. Yes, not since Jackie Brown has the Q-man baulked so hard as he does with Death Proof. The problem with the feature is largely due to his own misjudgment of his work for Tarantino, though he is perhaps the most well-versed cineophile living today, has repeatedly declared that his film is a work of horror, specifically of the slasher brand. Only a very liberal reading of such could feasibly cast Death Proof in such a light.

Indeed, Death Proof opens as a work of horror as Kurt Russell stars as Stuntman Mike, a retired stunt driver who has a penchant for killing beautiful women by placing them in the unprotected passenger side of his modified, otherwise death-proof, stunt car. However, after the first instance of Mike’s technique, Tarantino’s film digresses into a thriller as the audience sits through over half an hour of a chase in broad daylight. Granted, one of many grind house formats include gratuitous car chase features yet, as a self-described work of horror, Death Proof fails just as much as it ceases to succinctly fall under the categorization of grind house after its opening sequence.

Grindhouse features brought the term “B-movie” to new heights during the 1970s for, after the Hays Code passed away and filmmakers were freely permitted to pillage where they had not been permitted to forage previously, the field of ready-made free-for-all exploitation was born. As we all know, the subjects which will never go out of style are sex and violence and grind house features capitalized upon this fact with a vengeance as they adamantly scarified style and substance for what people wanted to see and had previously humored laborious storylines for in order to acquire quick snippets of. (Academia’s gripe with the genre thereby becomes ironically paradoxical, if not hypocritical, for to bring anything to light and emphasize its existence can be labeled “exploitative,” which, in truth, reveals the field’s true grievance: In its conservative elitism, Annals of Higher Learning’s problem lay with sex and violence, staples of the underdog genre, two things which pencil necks see very little of either.) With this in mind, Taratino’s film suffers as a consequence of the master being unable to force himself to make anything less than a film. As the genre’s trademark hair, dust, and scratches on the film stock dissipate as the production progresses (unlike in Planet Terror where such is ever-present), the storyline continues to develop as the work creates and retains the genre taboo of authentic dialogue, something which grind house writers abhorred and avoided at all costs. If Tarantino was going to opt to go this route, it seems odd that he wouldn’t have chosen the exploitive field of poorly-made Kung Fu features which plagued the period considering his well-known affinity for such. (There are sequel rumors already and QT has stated that this is the direction which he intends to go if things go well.)

In a nutshell, Death Proof is too slick, too chatty, and too unhorrific to be seriously considered a work of grind house, to say nothing of be deserving of the horror label. The feature is analogous to writing a good essay on a topic that wasn’t assigned. If nothing else, the genre sin of disrespecting Kurt Russell to such a blasphemous degree for the sake of grinding one’s feminist axe once again is dauntingly committed as, sadly, even when viewed as a Taratino affair, the director evidences obnoxious self-indulgence via the reheating of his own trademark formula of reshooting plots from little-known features as they are retold with a larger budget and with more style and cohesion than before as he provides us with yet another nonlinear tale that includes long segments of pithy, repeated catchphrases which litter an area already congested with wry self-referential humor.

Proceeding in reverse order, three faux trailers serve as a segue between the two main features. Not being a fan of Eli Roth and his cardboard characterizations, I winched at the thought of his inclusion within Grindhouse as I anticipated his contribution being the low point of the surefire hit. Startlingly, he upends Edgar Wright’s humor as the entertainment quotient manages to somehow supercede the automatic jocularity of Rob Zombie’s Werewolf Women of the S.S. as well. In the only preview in which the audience can readily ascertain the advertised work’s plotline (perhaps an authenticity faux pas on Roth’s behalf), Thanksgiving tells of a child who is so amorous with a turkey that, when his father kills the bird for the titular holiday, the boy goes psycho and–after coming back, Michael Myers-style, from a mental institution–is reborn as a homicidal pilgrim. A killer pilgrim! In an homage to Dario Argento, Roth brings in jaw-dropping taboo as we are given scenes which I refuse to spoil for the tabla rosa reader though, I will forewarn, the final image will indubitably keep you laughing for days, if not weeks, afterward. Needless to say, Roth steals the whole three-hour show with his unexpected hit as he finally puts an exacting finger upon why his films have yet to do anything of value: He has yet to take his ideas, in lieu of their perpetual begging, to their hyperactive extremes.

Prior to Thanksgiving, Edgar Wright gives us a preview to Don’t Scream, a spoof upon the futilely imitative plague of poorly made 1980’s slasher films. As much a parody of the films as the manner in which they were advertised, Don’t Scream culminates into an unexpected gag by the end of its running time as, par Wright, we find ourselves laughing once again as a consequence of his masterful hand, a manus which threatens to assume the horror comedy throne once John Landis decides to call it a day.

Before Thanksgiving, the eagerly anticipated trailer directed by Rob Zombie appears. Undoubtedly accounting for a small portion of ticket sales due to Zombie’s success as a horror director, the filmmaker displays a ready knowledge of the flotsam that fashioned the reputation for grind house features as he beckons back to the notorious 1974 feature by Don Edmonds titled Ilsa, She Wolf of the S.S. Zombie’s own mockup of horror’s capricious heyday, Werewolf Women of the S.S., by its mere title, would seem to be the automatic winner of the trailer lot yet he unfortunately approaches the material somewhat seriously. As the paper-thin premise is revealed of Nazi experimentation leading to the Axis power’s lycanthropic female super weapon, the over-the-top hilarity of the segment’s title is lost in lieu of a wry cameo by Nicolas Cage as Fu Manchu, leaving the effort as Grindhouse’s greatest “Could-Have-Been.”

Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror precedes Zombie’s work as the first feature-length chapter of Grindhouse nails the essence of the banner under which it is operating. Freddy Rodríguez stars as Wray, an antihero with a past that, due to a missing reel (a historic liberty which both directors assume in that the titular affairs of yesteryear only suffered from, at best, omitted frames, due largely to various projectionists taking souvenirs over the course of repeated screenings), we will never discover what such is exactly comprised as Rose McGowan plays opposite as Cherry Darling, a girl whom, as Grindhouse’s previews despoil, loses a leg only to gain a firearm. In true grind house flavor, little else comprises the nearly nonexistent plot as excess gives away, time and time again, to overactive imagination without concern for plausibility or consistency. As characters do the Hollywood impossible as an apocalyptic zombie infection spreads, Rodriguez blows

Tarantino’s sub par effort out of the water as Planet Terror playfully mocks the successor to grind house features of today: poorly made horror efforts attempting to sell themselves as the new best thing. We learn that the culpable party for the undead plague is the military as Bruce Willis once again becomes the American hero as it is satirically reported that he personally and single-handedly placed two bullets in Osama bin Laden’s heart before inserting one into his “computer.” Only the hubris of a cheap-hire filmmaker would have the audacity to include such a storyline, directors which largely comprised the employee list for grind house cinema during its time. In short, purely gratuitous, capricious, arbitrary, wanton fun is the agenda behind Planet Terror and, fortunately for grind house aficionados and horror hounds, it surpasses its goal well beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.

Opening the film is the trailer for Machete by, once again, Robert Rodriguez. The preview stars Danny Trejo as an illegal alien who is hired to assassinate a senator. Unfortunately for Trejo’s titular character, he is set-up as the introductory premise paves the way for a truly useless, unapologetically exploitative Hisploitation revenge flick that will never see the light of day (or maybe it will . . .) . By and far the most authentic in appearance, Rodriguez’s parody of blaxploitation films sets the tone for the fun which is to quickly follow.

Without a doubt, academes will begrudgingly extract something which they deem of value from Quentin Taratino’s segment, Death Proof, in lieu of the film’s poor quality and his lack of understanding of the agenda at hand (ironic in that the filmmaker’s distribution company, Rolling Thunder, re-released such grind house classics as Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond and Jack Hill’s Switchblade Sisters years prior) which most every other filmmaker involved, albeit to varying degrees, seemed to intuitively garner. Even though Rob Zombie promised to be the underdog to the event with Werewolf Women of the S.S., Eli Roth stands as the surprising winner of the Grindhouse project via his trailer to Thanksgiving as Robert Rodriguez does a very admirable job with two contributions to the work by way of Planet Terror and a preview to Machete, as does Edgar Wright, though to a slightly lesser degree, with Don’t Scream. Overall, Grindhouse is a fascinating experiment which results in the odd occurrence of a famed American auteur being usurped by, not one, but four of his peers. Hey, even Willie Mays had a five-year slump.

-Egregious Gurnow