GRINDHOUSE: Legs Are Flyin' Left and Right

Finally got a chance to watch 'Grindhouse'; the teaming up for Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino that was a throw back to those early eighties gore and slash exploitation films. I had always wanted to watch it, and was disapointed when the doubleset of films was split up after a poor box office performance. One thing you should never do is mess with a director's vision.

Okay, most of the time. Unless it's BloodRayne, and in that case, you shouldn't let that guy direct it in the first place. Because... wow - that's twenty minutes of my life I'll never get back.

Thankfully, STARZ is running the Grindhouse movies intact, complete with scratchy film, fake trailers, and missing reels, so I got to get the experience the double feature the way the director's intended.



Sorta. It was very late at night when I started and I kinda fell asleep during the first fifteen minutes of DeathProof.


I watch movies very late.


Still, I really enjoyed the flicks. Probably more than I expected to. I've never actually watched any of the early 80's drive in gore films. They were before my time. I started came into the movie watching, movie lovin' haze around the time of 'Goonies', 'Girl's Just Want To Have Fun', 'Hiding Out' and 'Raiders of the Lost Ark'. It was all about bad hair and big dreams, and was still too young to really explore the lost mine of gore and boobs.

Of the two, Planet Terror was the most enjoyable. I'm a big fan of cheese, and gore, when it's done well and with imagination, such as the romantic blood-splattered Shaun of the Dead. Combine hot one legged girls with guns in the place of legs with a lot of guns and a lot of fighting? I'm so there. Add in an obscure reference to Ava Gardner? You've got me for life.

Also, the fake trailer for Machete, featuring 'that guy' character actor, he of all the knives in Desperado, was my favorite of the bunch.

Deathproof, from the always sometimes too talky Quention Tarantino, also featured strong lead characters and an unconventional leg amputation. Still, it took forever to get going, especially after the 'punch-you-in-the-gut' immediate action that Planet Terror gave you. The crescendo itself was worth the wait, however, for the punched up, octane-filled thirty minute finale featuring action stunt woman Zoe Bell perched up on the hood of a car, going 80 miles an hour. And a lot of cussing. And the chance for Kurt Russell, who will always be the bad ass mouthy truck driver from 'Big Trouble In Little China', to be crazy again. Lately he's just been a little too serene, what with his hockey miracles and all.

Starz seems to be the only place you can actually watch the doublefeature the way it was originally released. Planet Terror and Deathproof are now sold as their own discs, which is a shame. Lose the scratchy footage and the 'missing reels' and I think you take some of the character out of it too. Hopefully the distributers will realize there's a market for collectors, and at least try to join the two halves in the future.