Grindhouse

[Jetbaby]

Saw Grindhouse yesterday and thought it was a hysterical send-up of the 70's exploitation genre. Planet Terror was by turns horrifying and hilarious; IMHO, Fergie had the best cameo, ever!

Personally, I thought Death Proof was a better segment, in terms of building suspense and tension. Admittedly, it's not the non-stop roller coaster ride that Planet Terror was - there were times when the dialogue got really excessive. But every time Kurt Russell was on screen, I was rivited. It was really interesting to see this charismatic-yet-psychotic antagonist both work his mojo and blow his cool.

Last but not least, the trailers were ridiculously funny. Glad to see other schlock auteurs (Edgar Wright, Eli Roth, Rob Zombie) contributing to the fun.

[scary_dream]

I really wish those were real trailers... Heh, I'd SO pay to see Thanksgiving and Don't!

I expected to like Planet Terror more, but I ended up liking Death Proof. They were both awesome, but as Jetbaby said, it was fun to see the different sides of Kurt Russell's character, even the "screaming like a little girl" side The talking in it didn't bother me SO bad, especially because afterwards the movie rewards you for it with one of the most suspenseful scenes in the whole movie. It was worth sitting through, because I mean, it could have been worse... the conversations could have been REALLY unnatural-feeling and downright painful to watch. The only thing I got tired of was the build-up to the game Ship's Mast - it got a little old hearing them argue about it.

I also like that QT had cameos in both of the films.

One reason I also think this movie did worse than Are We Done Yet? in addition to Mr. M's "Rated R" explanation is think of when the movies opened: Two days before Easter. Families come together on holidays and bring the kids along as well of course, so it's only natural that if they're going to see a movie, it's going to have to be a family-oriented one. Had it been on a non-holiday weekend, the outcome would have been a little better, I imagine.

[Mr. Marshmallow]

Originally Posted by scary_dream

It was fun to see the different sides of Kurt Russell's character, even the "screaming like a little girl" side The talking in it didn't bother me SO bad, especially because afterwards the movie rewards you for it with one of the most suspenseful scenes in the whole movie. It was worth sitting through, because I mean, it could have been worse... the conversations could have been REALLY unnatural-feeling and downright painful to watch.

The conversations weren't exactly bad, the second group with Rosario Dawson and Zoe actually helped built up the whole "land on your feet" thing for those who have seen it. But it's just it dragged on too long, too much was being dragged over the place.

Any information be it good or bad can become tiresome if you pour it on too thickly. And funny thing you mention the "little girl" bit because that kind of disappointed me. Kurt Russell was awesome as this psychopath, but I felt the breakdown to crying and saying "I'm sorry" was really out of character.

It took away his homicidal bad ass image and just made it unrealistic, I mean I've never heard of a killer actually breaking down in apology unless he's in jail or confession or something. And I especially found it out of place because he was doing it to a bunch of GIRLS, the same people he targets daily.

It's obvious he hates women and doesn't give a damn what he does to them, so to me, actually admitting an apology to a bunch of rowdy girls (who actually are probably going to have a hard time explaining this to the cops) looks really weird for the character that was established with him.

[Jetbaby]

Originally Posted by Mr. Marshmallow

Any information be it good or bad can become tiresome if you pour it on too thickly. And funny thing you mention the "little girl" bit because that kind of disappointed me. Kurt Russell was awesome as this psychopath, but I felt the breakdown to crying and saying "I'm sorry" was really out of character.

It took away his homicidal bad ass image and just made it unrealistic, I mean I've never heard of a killer actually breaking down in apology unless he's in jail or confession or something. And I especially found it out of place because he was doing it to a bunch of GIRLS, the same people he targets daily.

It's obvious he hates women and doesn't give a damn what he does to them, so to me, actually admitting an apology to a bunch of rowdy girls (who actually are probably going to have a hard time explaining this to the cops) looks really weird for the character that was established with him.

Actually, I thought his crumbling was rather in-keeping with his character. Here's why: this is a murderer who kills not with his own hands, but with his car - which implies that he's not one who likes the intense 'intimacy', if you will, of killing his victim up close and personal. Instead, he hides himself behind a ton of steel and lets that do the killing for him. Also, it's not as if he blatantly kills his victim so that it's obvious it's a murder - he hides the motive behind the false pretense that the killings were as a result of an accident. In my mind, these facts set him up as a coward. Also, he kills women, not men, because in his mind he always has the upper hand with them. This also sets him up as a bully. And, as we know, most bullies are cowards at heart.

As far as the apology's concerned, it's not as if he shuffled up to them between classes and mumbled "Sorry for the trying to kill you and stuff." The apology comes only after he's been shot, chased and rammed repeatedly by the girls until he can't escape. He has completely lost control of the situation, and when faced with this role reversal and the very real possibility that he's going to die, he takes the coward's route and tries to apologize.

So in that respect, yeah - I think Stuntman Mike's meltdown was, while unexpected, a fitting response to the situation, given his character. Of course, this is just one person's opinion - your mileage may vary.

[Mr. Marshmallow]

The thing is though, killing women does not make you a coward, it's an obsession or a purpose for them. Killing women doesn't make you weak, 90% of Jason's victims are women and he kills them through the act of sex most of the time. Granted he kills men, Jason's majority of kills come from women.

Also, the using the car actually does strike me as a cowardly act, it's actually quite a brilliant one. Just as the ads say, Stuntman Mike is a serial killer, the only difference is he uses a car instead of say a chainsaw or a machete. It's his weapon of choice and the smart thing about what he does is using the car.

Accidents happen all the time, he has a guranteed get out of jail free car with this method of killing. Plus, he wasn't drinking any booze that night and the girls he were following did drink booze and probably drugs (I can't remember if they did). I don't buy the whole "upper hand" belief for Stuntman Mike's motives.

Because in truth, there was never a motive established. Mike's reason for killing women is never stated and being a psychopath, it's impossible to tell why. I could easily speculate he kills them because he's been scorned by women, or thinks they have ego problems, it's too speculative.

I also don't think he's hiding behind his car, every killer kills people in different ways and does different things with his/her victims once there done. The really funny thing about Stuntman Mike that struck me was that he didn't seem completely 100% obsessed with killing the second set of girls.

After their little game (prior to being shot) Mike seemed happy with the fun he had and was planning on leaving, he didn't swerve back and try and ram them, even when they chased him, I think he was really done with them. His desire to kill wasn't anywhere near as heavily implied as was the first time.

I also think the ending kind of left two very odd questions behind. 1: what are they gonna do with the Vanishing point car now, give it back to the guy they stole it from all banged up? and 2: Spoiler Below

the fact they beat Stuntman Mike to death is NOT going to go over too well with the cops.

Even though we know he tried to kill them, they still killed someone who was unable to defend himself.

I know this is just end of the movie afterwards jibber jabber but it is something I am curious about.

[scary_dream]

Spoiler Below

Yeah I agree, I mean, I know killing him in the heat of the moment felt right for them probably, but they'll have a rough time with that one and the cops. Maybe it's to allude to an unhappy ending for EVERYONE, even though the girls were triumphant with him, they still get thrown in prison for aggrivated assault.

The way I understood his sissy-ness at the end was that it was supposed to be ironic. Here we have a cool, collected, suave psychopath, and then BAM, whoa, he's not exactly who you thought he was. Serial killers are glorified a lot in movies as unshakable beings, but I learned in my forensics class that almost all of them (in real life) have some kind of weakness that just makes them break down and the result is either intense rage or absolutely losing it.

I know it was never STATED in the movie that he wanted the upper hand as a motive, but maybe his breaking point was the loss of control in a situation. Yeah, he felt comfortable in his car as he was losing control on the ROAD, but he always had his seatbelt on. He didn't have time to put it back on after the girls shot at him and before they came back, so during the whole chase, he didn't have a seatbelt on.

[Mr. Marshmallow]

Originally Posted by scary_dream

I know it was never STATED in the movie that he wanted the upper hand as a motive, but maybe his breaking point was the loss of control in a situation.

That to me was the best explanation I could come up with. Being a creature of habit myself, I know how it feels getting used to something and then having someone suddenly come in and try to throw things off balance.

My guess is Mike has been doing this for quite a while and I don't think anyone has ever fought back. Ironic thing is, he was attacking fellow Hollywood people. The girls were actresses and even Zoe herself was a stunt woman.

So maybe it's a kind of professional skill level that explained how they managed to turn the tide. But back to Stuntman Mike, I really feel that he never in his life ever expierenced someone fighting back against him before.

This must have been a shattering event for him, because his whole life seemed to be fractured all of the sudden, because something like this probably never happened to him before.

I also have read about serial killers and some get into their fantasies so deeply, that once their little "fun and games" happy land gets shattered by a sudden change, they just can't function anymore and totally lose it.

It's just like Norman Bates in "Psycho". Seeing his mother cheating on his father then killing both, his mind just couldn't take it. And about the ending:

Spoiler Below

The funny thing is though that the "heat of the moment" thing probably wouldn't fly with the police because the girls killed Stuntman Mike while he was unarmed. He was trapped, in his car, no gun, no knife, unable to move or defend himself and they savagely beat him to death.

Now I'm NOT saying he didn't deserve it, I'm just saying is that from what I recall of the law, killing isn't gonna fly unless you felt your life was in danger and anyone who saw the movie knows that Mike was NO threat to the girls at the end. I know he had it coming it's just that if I was a cop and I saw or found out about this, you'd find it close to impossible not to arrest the girls.

[scary_dream]

Originally Posted by Mr. Marshmallow

Spoiler Below

The funny thing is though that the "heat of the moment" thing probably wouldn't fly with the police because the girls killed Stuntman Mike while he was unarmed. He was trapped, in his car, no gun, no knife, unable to move or defend himself and they savagely beat him to death.

Now I'm NOT saying he didn't deserve it, I'm just saying is that from what I recall of the law, killing isn't gonna fly unless you felt your life was in danger and anyone who saw the movie knows that Mike was NO threat to the girls at the end. I know he had it coming it's just that if I was a cop and I saw or found out about this, you'd find it close to impossible not to arrest the girls.

Yeah, that's what I meant by alluding to an unhappy ending for everyone, you just said it better . Of course the cops wouldn't buy that "it just seemed right at the time", even if he did or didn't deserve it, so like you said:

Spoiler Below

It'd be close to impossible to not arrest them. I made a mistake earlier as well, since they killed him, it wouldn't JUST be assault charges, it'd be voluntary manslaughter. Ouch... still, hella prison time for them.

[Nathander]

Before giving my thoughts on the film, I'll first put down my two cents for the current discussion..

Spoiler Below

My personal belief is that, while Mike dies, the girls do not kill him. Rather, "Planet Terror" and "Death Proof" are interconnected in their events, and Mike almost certainly dies during the infection outbreak in the hospital in "Planet Terror". Let me give my reasons for this.

1) It's common for the story in a Tarantino film to be told chronologically out of order. Personally, I believe that the second half of the film is technically a flashback to events a while back; not the start of Mike's sociopathic rampage, but still happening before he kills Jungle Julia, Shauna, Butterfly, Pam, and the other woman who was driving the car the first three were in. The last shot of the film, after stating "The End" is of Abernathy delivering an axe kick to Mike's noise. In the first half of the film, there's a scene where Mike is talking to Julia's cliche on the porch of the bar they were at. During this scene, Mike draws back in pain for no apparent reason, motioning his hand towards his nose. My belief is that this is the injury delivered by Abernathy's kick acting up.

As for whether Zoe, Abernathy, and the other girl whose name escapes me at the moment went to jail, it's unlikely as I doubt either side brought this to the police's attention. Zoe's group, leaving him for dead, wouldn't want to press charges for that obvious reason. Mike, meanwhile, wouldn't have pressed charges out of pure common sense, knowing that since he's most likely killed before and been indicted in cases similar to this, it would be stupid to draw attention to it without it being a necessity, as it was when he supposedly had to talk with McGraw after killing Julia and her friends.

2) Early in "Planet Terror" when Dakota's friend/lover Tammy is driving her car, the station she is listening to states "In Loving Memory of Jungle Julia". This would imply that the events of "Planet Terror" occur right after Julia's murder, which was perpetrated by Mike. This would also imply that Mike was still in the hospital during the outbreak, meaning he would've been killed then.

3) The fact that Dakota is the doctor taking care of Mike, and that McGraw is involved (including Earl McGraw's interactions with Dakota, refusing to recognize her as his daughter and referring to her only as "Doctor Block") again imply that "Planet Terror" and "Death Proof" are connected. However, the connection of Earl McGraw can be taken with a bit of salt, as Sheriff McGraw appears in many other films by Tarantino and Rodriguez. Dakota, however, is only in the two films comprising Grindhouse.

While this is what I believe, it really depends on the idea that "Death Proof" and "Planet Terror" are connected to one another, which is not necessarily the case. However, seeing as how closely Tarantino and Rodriguez collaborated on it, it's not hard to imagine.

Really, this was just a long winded way of saying "I think they kicked the crap out of Mike, but didn't kill him."

Now that that's out of the way, time to talk about my impressions of it.

I loved it. I loved loved loved loved it. I think they were a great throw back to the exploitation and splatter films of the 70s, and the presentation of it (grainy picture, missing reels, ect.), as well as the "fake" previews (more on those later) were wonderful. There are also very few movies that make me go "I want that film's soundtrack". This was one of them, if just for the song at the end of the film and the piece playing at the beginning of "Planet Terror".

While I liked both films, I think the better of them was "Death Proof", which was a surprise. Not because I don't like Tarantino, but because I fully expected to like "Planet Terror" more, due to my love of both cheesy films and zombie films. While I think Rodriguez did incredibly well with it, and it seemed more like a cheap film out of the 70s to me then "Death Proof", there were moments were I actually felt it went to far, the main one being when Spoiler Below

Tony ends up accidentally shooting himself in the head.

However, I thought that the majority of it was great, and I loved Bruce Willis as the psychotic/possibly sympathy-inducing marine leader (can't remember his rank, unfortunately). Really, it helped with my craving of bizarre action films and zombie flicks.

"Death Proof", however, was the better film. I think that it was due to the fact that it seemed to more closely echo Tarantino's usual style then "Planet Terror" did Rodriguez's style. However, I think that Rodriguez actually did create a nearly genuine modern day "Grindhouse" film, while Tarantino really....well, created a Tarantino film that somewhat echoed back to Grindhouse films, but no where near as much as Rodriguez's. And, in many ways, I was perfectly fine with that. Also, the talking back and forth between the girls really didn't bother me that much, as nearly-pointless blather can be a keypoint of Tarantino's films, which is one of the things I love about the man, to tell the truth. Really, many of the conversations brought to mind the conversations from Reservoir Dogs, if just for the fact that Reservoir Dogs had more "pointless blather" conversations than most of Tarantino's later work.

I also think it was a good idea to put "Planet Terror" first and "Death Proof" last because, dare I say it, "Death Proof" kind of gave me a better feeling at the end then "Planet Terror". While "Planet Terror" gives you a large sense of hope, there's no real victory, not yet at least. "Death Proof", however, in my mind does end in a sort of note of victory.

Also, about the fake trailers.....Rodriguez has actually confirmed that one of them, Machete (which was actually the trailer he himself presented for the film), will be made into a direct-to-DVD film he intends to see brought out by the time "Grindhouse" hits DVDs. Whether or not any of the others will be brought ought is up in the air, but of them, I'd personally like to see Don't and Werewolf Women of the SS brought out. I'd like to see "Don't" simply for the fact that it would be done by the "Shaun of the Dead" guys, and "Werewolf Women of the SS" just to see Spoiler Below

Nicholas Cage in the role of Fu Manchu.

And I'll shut up now.

[Mr. Marshmallow]

Mcgraw has been in plenty of films before and acting similar to how did in "Death proof". I honestly don't buy the fact the movies are connected since that defeats the whole purpose of a "double feature", two movies back to back.

If it was a single story or at least supposed to be, you would have had some indication from an outside source, director, or party to suggest this. The points you listed all seem a bit stretched to tie up without having your head hurt. Seeing Dr. Block in there was the only indication I ever picked up about this.

If there is anything at all. Anyways, as far as the conversations thing, "Reservoir Dogs" at least had INTERESTING things to talk about. Basically Tarantino's film was loaded with gabby girl talk, and it wasn't stuff that grabbed your attention. Most of it was jabbering about "juicy gossip" stories and not really helpful info.

Zoe's whole "cat" thing was the only thing I found relevant to the discussions. "Reservoir Dogs" on the other hand all carried conversations that gave us an idea of the characters personalities, which was more interesting considering the fact we knew nothing about these guys, not even their real names.

Most of em anyway. Now as far as the continued private discussion, and by private I mean referring to spoiler material of course:

Spoiler Below

I believe Stuntman Mike is dead because this honestly seemed WAY too much of a good thing for the girls to let go. They nearly died being chased off the road by him, and then went to all the trouble of getting killed on the highway to run him off the road, trap him, then beat the living piss out of him.

Considering their attitudes, I hardly think they would go to all that trouble without killing him. The "Planet Terror" mix movie theory aside, there's still alot of left over bits of evidence though that would easily lead the cops to the girls. 1- the original owner of the car is gonna eventually report it missing.

2- Even if he doesn't and they bring it back, no way in hell he won't call the cops about the damage on the car. 3- there gonna have to go back because they left Lee back there. 4- About 20 different people saw their little runaround on the road and caused god knows how many crashes.

No way no one wouldn't report what they saw or at least a description. And finally 5- assuming he is dead from that beating and they didn't destroy or hide the body, someone will eventually find it and report it. And if they do report it, the cops are gonna be able to pick up traces of finger prints.

They smashed his face in 50 times and jammed a boot in his eye, that's gonna leave a trail. I normally wouldn't talk so much about after the movie material but it's only cause this film ended on such a open hole that I feel the need to. I also highly doubt if Mike survived, he'd fear talking about this to the cops.

We all know Mike can't get touched by the police because if he did, he wouldn't have been released for this previous little "stunt". He can easily kill whoever he wants with a stunt car and never be suspected because it's an accident far as people are concerned, that's the beauty of his little design.

That car gives him an automatic excuse for his actions from the law, only thing that would stop him is eye witnesses and as you know, he doesn't leave any.