Review
Rodriguez, Tarantino film impresses duo
April 12, 2007
It has been a long time since my cheesy zombie movie phase and “Grindhouse,” more specifically; “Planet of Terror” certainly brings back good memories.
To accompany the Robert Rodrigeuz film is the Quentin Tarantino film, “Death Proof,” which offers another memorable phase of my life — racing cars ... to the extreme.
“Grindhouse” is a double-feature film by two of the most insane directors/writers in film history.
It has all the blood and gore necessary for the mainstream audience to stay interested, but Tarantino and Rodriguez do it with style.
The first film shown is “Planet of Terror,” which consists of your basic zombie plot: on a random day, zombies with oozing faces flood a single town and the few that are “not infected” band together to form the ultimate team of zombie killers all while figuring out you cannot trust your country’s military.
Rose McGowan became my new idol as she plays the fearless heroine, Cherry Darling, whose leg becomes property of some zombies.
She later acquires a machine gun leg instead.
I instantly gave this movie the highest rating solely for her scene of flying through the air shooting up the bad guys in the sexiest way possible.
Freddy Rodrigeuz as Wray made the perfect badass hero as he sports tattoos and a “never miss” mentality with his guns. Between the two films is a set of trailers for similar fake gore/horror movies such as “Don’t Scream” and “Werewolf Women of the SS” by Rob Zombie.
This appropriately sets the mood for the double feature as do the few incidents of “Missing Reels” for the dark, grainy style of the film which also includes the actual picture quality as crap.
These things really set the movie apart from mainstream movies out today and give it a unique style that instantly made me fall in love with it.
Tarantino’s film shows second after the pseudo-intermission of trailers.
“Death Proof” starts out somewhat slow with a group of girls hanging out at a bar who meet Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell).
They later find out he is a maniac stunt car driver.
After he kills off some people, the same story starts again, but with other girls (Rosario Dawson, Tracis Thoms, and Zoe Bell - an actual stunt double). The appeal of being a gearhead girl sparked up again for me with the portrayal of three hardcore females that at first show the vulnerability of women when it comes to scary maniac men.
Later, there is a cheerful triumph for females everywhere as they dominate through their feminism.
Although the slowness could potentially be boring, it fits Tarantino’s style exactly, which is a whole lot of cussing and chatting building up to the anticipated action.
Throughout the entire film I had times that I literally dropped my jaw and other times laughed out loud at the hilarity of squirting blood.
McGowan was sleek and sexy as both characters. Russell is so evil in “Death Proof” he nearly wasn’t at all.
Tarantino has never been able to act in his own movies, but we love him anyway.
Teresa Aviles is a student at UW-River Falls.