Review of Grindhouse (2007) by Jason V — 07 Mar 2011

Though a film event like this was attended and discussed by every friend I had, and I'd had the misfortune of not seeing it until four years later, I found myself pleasantly surprised, something I did not think was possible after hearing so many divergent opinions.

The mere idea behind the putting two grindhouse films back to back and filling the middle with trailers for other fictional films is genius, but how the process pans out turns out to be the most interesting part.

The director of the first segment, Rodriguez, took it upon himself to distill everything he loves about splatterhouse movies into an hour and a half, pushing the level of grossness to laughably intense extremes and using the inherent comedy of his excess to attach a woman's leg to a machine gun, the trigger of which she apparently controls with her mind. The plot is familiar without being too derivative and fun without being too exciting.

Tarantino's segment comes away as the more interesting one on the whole; though it certainly suffers from some boring moments, the film's action is resplendent while its gore is horrific. It could be said that the film is only worth watching for the car scenes, but stopping to remind one's self of this double feature's title is paramount; like the films it apes, most of which so poorly made as a result of the maker's focus on great action, violence, and sexuality, the second effort truly achieves more than the first by recreating the grindhouse experience.

Those used to the mainstream, critically lauded previous efforts of both filmmakers were bound to expect more of the same, or at least a pair of visceral efforts to satisfy their thirst for low budget, low circulation films in the company of 'The Evil Dead' and 'Vanishing Point'. As the experience of this film may attest, when the cream rises to the top and reaches the mainstream, it fails at being identified with the sediment at the bottom, and though this double feature's a-list cast and crew immediately put them with the cream, they do their best to fill your pallet with the sediment as well.