The
Grindhouse ventures- two films, the former by Robert Rodriguez, the
latter by Quentin Tarantino- were an interesting revival of 70s
schlock B-movie. They were all, in honesty, pretty shitty movies. But
these films are worth watching just to see what the directors could
have achieved, had they collaborated closer and put their
storytelling abilities to better effect.
Grindhouse
is comprised of two movies, Planet Terror and Death Proof. These
movies also include a fake trailer for a movie called Machete, which
Rodriguez later expanded into a full feature film and filmed in a
similar style to the previous two.
Planet
Terror (2007)
A go-go
dancer and her ex-boyfriend lead a gang of stragglers through a
zombie-populated night in a small Texas town.
Death
Proof (2007)
Psycho
stuntman murders girls in his protective stunt car in staged
“accidents”. Heroine latches on to his plot and seeks revenge
with her feminist girl-buddies.
Machete
(2010)
Former
Mexican Federal and general hard bastard Machete is still searching
for the men who murdered his family three years ago. He's offered- or
forced to take- a contract job on the head of the corrupt Texas
Senator. When he's double-crossed and left for dead, he now has
another enemy to seek vengeance on.
The
first two of these films I thought were over-long. Machete, however,
I thought could have been of a similar length but still could have
portrayed a slightly deeper message.
The
titular character is a bad man, a hired gun, an anti-hero who has sex
with his enemies' wives and daughters, posting humiliating videos
online and then murdering his enemies anyway. Some investigation into
the Machete character would have rewarded the audience. He's a bad
man. He knows it. Everyone else knows it when they meet him, whether
they cross him or not. But he's a stereotype, an irredeemable violent
gringo murdering his way through a cliché-ridden OTT revenge/action
movie that doesn't add anything to the genre it nods towards.
Also,
what are we supposed to feel about Machete and other characters being
illegal immigrants? Are we supposed to sympathise with them? I
suppose so. We're asked to share the perspective of many criminals
when we watch certain movies. If it was a film about people trying to
enter the UK illegally, however, I wouldn't want to sympathise with
them. I wonder how American audiences reacted to this aspect of the
movie, considering illegal immigration is the main catalyst for the
story.
These
films were all shot with a certain feel in mind, that of the grainy,
low-quality budget image of 70s exploitation movies. It's an
interesting deviation from the uber-high-quality image resolution
that directors today usually prefer. The digital era has allowed
film-makers to produce sharp, focussed photography. It's also allowed
cinemas to use digital projectors that has left us with only faint
memories of what 16mm prints look like. The Grindhouse movies are a
throwback to the image and atmosphere of pre-digital cinemas.
I always
thought, however, that the three movies above could all have been
enjoyably shown with much less screen time. By the time Planet Terror
came out, Tarantino's talky, steady style of exposition had already
been adopted by a thousand copycat film-makers. Watching Death
Proof's rambling, inconsequential opening we are no longer thrilled
by watching characters in their natural habitat, unrestrained by
narratives or dramatic need. Tarantino's work had started to become
tedious, almost caricaturist when compared to his earlier offerings.
The
directors, however, could have lifted the Grindhouse movies out of
mediocrity with a collaboration and a very apt switching of format.
A
grindhouse is an American
term for a cinema that mainly shows low-budget exploitation films,
the genre that the three films mentioned above attempted to emulate.
As a pitch for an improved version of Grindhouse, picture this: The
movie opens with a man running from the law. He darts, Oswald-like,
into the Grindhouse theatre. There he hides, and the first movie
trailer rolls. We watch this full-screen, like we are in the
Grindhouse with him. Then the first movie starts: Planet Terror. The
film runs for 20 minutes, with all the exposition crammed into
quick-fire scenes. No old-hat waffling, no elongated lap dance
musical numbers or torture- just fast, shocking plot.
Between
the short films, we see the law close in on the protagonist. The
theatre owner insists that the officers do not disturb the rest of
the patrons. The police stop to watch the films, captivated by the
stories. Whilst distracted, their suspect makes his getaway.
My
Grindhouse pitch would have made a lot less money, being one
single-standing film as opposed to a double-bill and a spin-off, but
wouldn't it have been a more enjoyable and less tiresome feature?
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