by Audrey Callerstrom, Associate Editor and Staff Writer

Grindhouse, the double-feature throwback from Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, had a lot going for it. It’s horror, and horror films are always an easy sell for audiences. It was two films in one – Planet Terror and Death Proof (directed by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, respectively). I’m sorry, that’s just a good value. It was more of an experience than a film, a chance to laugh at some of the follies of old technology (missing reels), and enjoy an intermission with fake trailers from directors like Eli Roth, Edgar Wright, and Rob Zombie. Although Planet Terror included the dirty reel marking of a ‘70s drive through film, Death Proof was noticeably cleaner looking, but it still had a distinct style, particularly with the songs that Tarantino chose on the soundtrack, including “Hold Tight” by Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich. I was giddy when I saw it the first time in the theater in April 2007, and a second time, and then a third time during a midnight showing. And yet, while not a failure with critics, audiences were not interested, and it was outperformed by whatever comedies like Blades of Glory and Meet the Robinsons. The films were released on DVD and streaming separately, but the film Grindhouse wasn’t released until years later, on Blu-Ray.

Grindhouse was fundamentally a theater experience, and one that clocked in at 3 hours 11 minutes at a time when audiences were perhaps more inclined to have Netflix mail DVDs to their home, or more accurately, watch programs like Sopranos (which was ending) or Mad Men (which debuted). It wasn’t advertised to you unless you were looking for it. If you followed the career of each director closely, it was on your radar. If not, you would have missed it. It’s not as though Rose McGowan was promoting it on Jimmy Kimmel, or Kurt Russell was slated to host SNL near opening weekend (if only!) It was niche at a time where there wasn’t enough internet chatter to give it hype. So with the lack of advertising, hype, and Harvey Weinstein as producer, it sank. It was rumored that Tarantino referred to it as his worst film. In an interview in 2017 in Variety, Rodriguez said he thinks that Weinstein “buried” the film because Rodriguez cast Rose McGowan as the lead in Planet Terror. Rodriguez later said that the casting her was an intentional affront to Weinstein, who raped McGowan in 1997.

All of this is to say that Grindhouse is still an absolute blast to watch. It’s a horror lover’s delight, offering some brutal kills and practical effects (Planet Terror is particularly very gooey) as well as humor. There’s such a joy that comes with horror films as a collective, not individual, experience. It’s part of why this genre with persevere in spite of the pandemic. Being with an audience that enjoys the movie as much as you do adds to the experience. Gasps and shrieks and “uh-ohs” and “oh shits.” And Grindhouse is full of shocking moments of violence as well as giddy humor. In the first film, Planet Terror, McGowan delights as Cherry Darling, a go-go dancer (not a stripper, “there’s a difference,” she says) who loses her leg to zombies, and has it replaced with a shotgun by ex El-Ray (Freddie Rodriguez, usually a supporting player, cast here as a hero). Fergie shows up in a cameo, because, well, this was 2007. Bruce Willis shows up, too. In 2007, Osama Bin Laden was still alive, and Bruce Willis’s character claims to have killed him, putting “a bullet in his heart, and one in his computer” (pointing to his head). It’s a great line. Planet Terror also claims to have a “missing reel” as a sex scene begins, which always delighted audiences in the theater. Planet Terror also includes Marley Shelton, Josh Brolin, Naveen Andrews, an, ah yes, that would be Tom Savini himself as a deputy.


I’ll save descriptions of the trailers that appear between the two films with the hope that, if you haven’t seen them, you’ll seek them out on your own.

Or…

Death Proof isn’t Tarantino’s worst film, by far (I don’t think he ever said that, anyway). It doesn’t have the energy of Planet Terror, at least at first. It spends a little too much time with a ragtag team of actors and stunt women, including a rather annoying Rosario Dawson. It’s a revenge film in the spirit of ‘70s movies like Vanishing Point and Dirty Mary Crazy Larry. Stuntman Mike (a most charming Kurt Russell, who breaks the fourth wall at one point, below, and we love it) goes after the group of women in a car that can pulverize victims, but leave him unharmed. But he’s no match the for this new group women, who include Dawson, Tracie Thoms, and Zoe Bell, Uma Thurman’s stuntperson on the Kill Bill films, playing a version of herself. This film has a lot of humor and the music is full of overlooked singles from the ‘60s and ‘70s, like Smith’s cover of “Baby It’s You.” Kurt Russell camps it up as an evil stuntman-turned-crybaby. The violence is brutal, but Tarantino spends a lot of time building chemistry between Stuntman Mike and Pam (McGowan again, blond this time) that the dread truly sets in. She needs to get somewhere, and he offers her a ride in his deathmobile.

Grindhouse spawned a few spinoffs, but none of which had any lasting impression. One of the fake trailers, Machete, about an ex-Federale played by Danny Trejo, spawned its own film, Machete, and a sequel, Machete Kills. Versions of Grindhouse that played outside the U.S. included another trailer, Hobo with a Shotgun, which also became a feature film starring the late Rutger Hauer. But these grindhouse throwbacks didn’t get much audience attention, either because audiences don’t know the throwback era the genre is honoring, or they’re simply not interested. A specific aesthetic of dust on film reels isn’t something that a modern audience would appreciate. Modern audiences are accustomed to the manicured look of programming on AppleTV or Disney+. Although, who knows. Ti West’s X, in spite of being advertised to basically no one, still managed to edge its way into the top 10 at the box office. X definitely has a throwback, grindhouse, ‘70s exploitation style and feel to it. Fans can rejoice, as a prequel called Pearl will be released later this year (you can check out our review of X here).

Grindhouse, as a full-length film, is unavailable on streaming, and hard to find on Blu-Ray. To be determined if a film that took second place as the box office to Are We There Yet? will ever get a proper release, or come to streaming in its entirety. I hope so, because experiencing it in bits and pieces just isn’t the same thing. You could hash it together –all the fake trailers in the middle are on YouTube – but the effort. Grindhouse is intended to be an experience, a throwback to B movies and exploitation films that would play at drive-ins. But drive-ins are hard to find these days, and the more we pick apart films to add the heaping pile of Twitter discourse, the more we more away from films as an experience. I hope the experience of a film comes back, in some form. But I think that Grindhouse in particular, thought it may have been a fun and novel idea, simply won’t make its way to any new viewers in its original format.