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Grindhouse
File:Grindhouse3.jpgGrindhouse theatrical poster
Directed by	Planet Terror: Robert Rodriguez Death Proof: Quentin Tarantino Fake Trailers: Robert Rodriguez Rob Zombie Edgar Wright Eli Roth
Written by	Robert Rodriguez Quentin Tarantino
Produced by	Elizabeth Avellan Erica Steinberg
Starring	Planet Terror: Rose McGowan Freddy Rodriguez Josh Brolin Marley Shelton Michael Biehn Death Proof: Kurt Russell Rosario Dawson Vanessa Ferlito Sydney Tamiia Poitier Tracie Thoms Mary Elizabeth Winstead Zoë Bell
Cinematography	Robert Rodriguez Quentin Tarantino
Edited by	Robert Rodriguez Sally Menke
Music by	Robert Rodriguez Graeme Revell
Distributed by	Dimension Films The Weinstein Company
Release dates	April 6, 2007
Running time	Planet Terror: 80 min. Death Proof: 90 min. Total: 191 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$53,000,000

Grindhouse is a 2007 anthology film written and directed by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino. The film is a double feature consisting of two feature-length segments bookended by fictional trailers for upcoming attractions, advertisements, and in-theater announcements. The film's title derives from the U.S. film industry term "grindhouse," which refers to a movie theater specializing in B movies, often exploitation films, shown in a multiple-feature format. The film stars Rose McGowan, Freddy Rodriguez, Naveen Andrews, Bruce Willis, Kurt Russell, Rosario Dawson, and Vanessa Ferlito, among others.

The first feature in the film is Rodriguez's zombie film entitled Planet Terror. The plot revolves around an outfit of rebels attempting to survive an onslaught of zombies as they feud with a military unit. Tarantino's segment, Death Proof, focuses on a crazed stunt man who targets young women, murdering them with his "death proof" stunt car. Each feature is preceded by faux trailers of exploitation films in other genres that were developed by other directors. Some of the trailers will be expanded into full-length films or released direct-to-DVD.

After the film was released on April 6, 2007, ticket sales performed significantly below box office analysts' expectations despite mostly positive critic reviews. Reportedly, the producers are considering splitting the film into two segments for the rest of its U.S. theatrical run in an attempt to increase revenue. In much of the rest of the world, each feature will be released separately. Two soundtracks were also released for the features and include music and audio snippets from the film. In several interviews, the directors have expressed their interest in a possible sequel to the film.

History and development

The idea for Grindhouse came to Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino when Tarantino set up screenings of double features in his house, complete with trailers preceding and between the films. During one of these screenings in 2003, Rodriguez noticed that he owned the same double feature movie poster as Tarantino for the 1957 films Dragstrip Girl and Rock All Night. Rodriguez asked Tarantino, "I always wanted to do a double feature. Hey, why don't you direct one and I'll do the other?" Tarantino quickly replied, "And we've got to call it Grindhouse!"

The film's name originates from the American term for theaters that played "all the exploitation genres: kung fu, horror, Giallo, sexploitation, the "good old boy" redneck car-chase movies, blaxploitation, spaghetti Westerns—all those risible genres that were released in the 70s." According to Rodriguez, "The posters were much better than the movies, but we're actually making something that lives up to the posters."

Rodriguez first came up with the idea for Planet Terror during the production of The Faculty. "I remember telling Elijah Wood and Josh Hartnett, all these young actors, that zombie movies were dead and hadn't been around in a while, but that I thought they were going to come back in a big way because they’d been gone for so long," recalled Rodriguez, "I said, 'We've got to be there first.' I had I’d started writing. It was about 30 pages, and I said to them, 'There are characters for all of you to play.' We got all excited about it, and then I didn't know where to go with it. The introduction was about as far as I'd gotten, and then I got onto other movies. Sure enough, the zombie invasion happened and they all came back again, and I was like, 'Ah, I knew that I should've made my zombie film.'" The story was reapproached when Tarantino and Rodriguez developed the idea for Grindhouse.

As Planet Terror took shape, Tarantino developed the story for Death Proof, based on his fascination for the way stuntmen would "death-proof" their cars. As long as they were driving, stuntmen could slam their cars headfirst into a brick wall at 60 miles per hour and survive. This inspired Tarantino to create a slasher film featuring a deranged stuntman who stalks and murders sexy young women with his "death-proof" car. Tarantino remembers, "I realized I couldn't do a straight slasher film, because with the exception of women-in-prison films, there is no other genre quite as rigid. And if you break that up, you aren't really doing it anymore. It's inorganic, so I realized—let me take the structure of a slasher film and just do what I do. My version is going to be fucked up and disjointed, but it seemingly uses the structure of a slasher film, hopefully against you."

According to Rodriguez, " had an idea and a complete vision for it right away when he first talked about it. He started to tell me the story and said, 'It's got this death-proof car in it.' I said, 'You have to call it Death Proof.' I helped title the movie, but that's it." Of the car chases, Tarantino stated, "CGI for car stunts doesn't make any sense to me—how is that supposed to be impressive? I don't think there have been any good car chases since I started making films in '92—to me, the last terrific car chase was in Terminator 2. And Final Destination 2 had a magnificent car action piece. In between that, not a lot. Every time a stunt happens, there's twelve cameras and they use every angle for Avid editing, but I don't feel it in my stomach. It's just action."

Production

Directing

According to actress Marley Shelton, " really co-directed, at least Planet Terror. Quentin was on set a lot. He had notes and adjustments to our performances and he changed lines every once in a while. Of course, he always deferred to Robert on Planet Terror and vice versa for Death Proof. So it's really both of their brainchild." Tarantino has stated "I can't imagine doing Grindhouse with any other director in the way me and Robert did it because I just had complete faith and trust in him. So much so that we didn't actually see each other's movie completed until three weeks before the film opened. It was as if we worked in little vacuums and cut our movies down, and then put them together and watched it all play, and then made a couple of little changes after that, and pretty much that was it."

Casting

Many of the cast members had previously worked with both directors. Before appearing in Grindhouse, Marley Shelton had auditioned for The Faculty, but Rodriguez chose not to cast her. She was eventually cast in the role of the Customer in the opening sequence of Sin City. Bruce Willis had appeared in both Tarantino's Pulp Fiction and Rodriguez's Sin City. Tom Savini had previously acted in From Dusk Till Dawn, which was written by Tarantino and directed by Rodriguez. Rosario Dawson previously appeared in Sin City. Michael Parks reprises the role of Earl McGraw in Planet Terror and Death Proof. Parks first portrayed the role in From Dusk Till Dawn. His son, James Parks, appears in Death Proof as Edgar McGraw, a character that first appeared in From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money. The first time the two characters appeared together was in Tarantino's Kill Bill. Tarantino himself plays small roles in both segments of Grindhouse, and director Eli Roth, who contributed the fake trailer Thanksgiving and whose film Hostel was produced by Tarantino, has a cameo in Death Proof.

Tarantino attempted to cast both Kal Penn and Sylvester Stallone in Death Proof, but both were unable to work due to prior commitments. In an interview, Tarantino revealed that he decided to cast Kurt Russell as the killer stunt driver because "for people of my generation, he's a true hero...but now, there's a whole audience out there that doesn't know what Kurt Russell can do. When I open the newspaper and see an ad that says 'Kurt Russell in Dreamer,' or 'Kurt Russell in Miracle,' I'm not disparaging these movies, but I'm thinking: When is Kurt Russell going to be a badass again?"

Cinematography

Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino each acted as cinematographer on their segments. Although Rodriguez had previously worked as the cinematographer on six of his own feature films, Death Proof marked Tarantino's first credit as a cinematographer. The director of photography for Rob Zombie's fake trailer Werewolf Women of the SS was Phil Parmet, whom Zombie had first worked with on The Devil's Rejects. Parmet began his career in cinematography working on the concert films The Song Remains the Same and Baby Snakes, which documented performances by Led Zeppelin and Frank Zappa. The director of photography for Eli Roth's fake trailer Thanksgiving was Milan Chadima, whom Roth had previously worked with on Hostel.

Special effects

The film uses various unconventional techniques to make the films more like the films that were shown in grindhouse theaters in the 1970s. Throughout both feature-length segments and the fake trailers, the film is intentionally damaged to make it look like many of the exploitation films of the 1970s which were generally shipped around from theater to theater and usually ended up in bad shape. To reproduce the look of damaged film reels in Planet Terror, five of the six 25,000 frame reels were edited with real film damage, plug-ins, and stock footage.

Planet Terror makes heavy use of digital effects throughout the film. Perhaps the most notable effect is Cherry (Rose McGowan)'s fake leg. To accomplish the fake leg that Cherry sports after her accident, during post-production the effects teams digitally removed McGowan's right leg from the shots and replaced it with computer-generated props - first a table leg and then an M4 carbine. During shooting for these scenes, McGowan wore a special cast which restricted her leg movement to give her the correct motion, and helped the effects artists to digitally remove her leg.

Editing

During editing, Tarantino and Rodriguez came up with the idea of inserting "missing reels" into the film. " was about to show an Italian crime movie with Oliver Reed," Rodriguez recalls, "and he was saying, 'Oh, it's got a missing reel in it. But it's really interesting because after the missing reel, you don't know if he slept with a girl or he didn't because she says he did and he says that he didn't. It leaves you guessing, and the movie still works with 20 minutes gone out of it.' I thought, 'Oh, my God, that's what we’ve got to do. We've got to have a missing reel!' I'm going to use in it in a way where it actually says 'missing reel' for 10 seconds, and then when we come back, you're arriving in the third act. The late second acts in movies are usually the most predictable and the most boring, that's where the good guy really turns out to be the bad guy, and the bad guy is really good, and the couple becomes friends. Suddenly, though, in the third act, all bets are off and it's a whole new story anyway."

On the editing of Death Proof, Tarantino stated "There is half-an-hour's difference between my Death Proof and what is playing in Grindhouse. I was like a brutish American exploitation distributor who cut the movie down almost to the point of incoherence. I cut it down to the bone and took all the fat off it to see if it could still exist, and it worked." An extended version of Death Proof will be screened for competition with other director's films for several awards at the 60th Cannes Film Festival. Tarantino is quoted as saying "It works great as a double feature, but I'm just as excited if not more excited about actually having the world see Death Proof unfiltered. It will be the first time everyone sees Death Proof by itself, including me."

Music

The music for Planet Terror was composed by Robert Rodriguez. Inspiration for his score came from John Carpenter, whose music was often played on set. A cover version of Jello Biafra's "Too Drunk to Fuck" performed by Nouvelle Vague was also featured. The soundtrack for Death Proof consists entirely of non-original music, including excerpts from the scores of other films. Soundtrack albums for both segments were released on April 3, 2007. Both albums featured dialogue excerpts from the film.

Rating

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Grindhouse is rated R in the United States for strong graphic bloody violence and gore, pervasive language, some sexuality, nudity and drug use. On March 15, 2007, The New York Post reported that the film would possibly require heavy and extensive cuts in order to avoid an NC-17 rating. Shortly after, the film officially received an R rating from the MPAA. Ain't It Cool News reported that according to Tarantino, only minimal cuts were made which ended up totaling 20 seconds.

Planet Terror

Synopsis

Template:Spoiler In a rural town in Texas, go-go dancer Cherry Darling (Rose McGowan) decides to quit her low-paying job and find another use for her talents. As she meets her ex-boyfriend El Wray (Freddy Rodriguez) at the Bone Shack, a restaurant owned by JT Hague (Jeff Fahey), a group of military officials, led by the demented Lt. Muldoon (Bruce Willis), are disturbed to learn that a deadly disease that transforms ordinary citizens into zombie-like creatures, DC2 (also known as "Project Terror"), is already spreading throughout the town. After capturing Abby (Naveen Andrews) for information, they depart to stop the spreading disease. The infected townspeople are treated by the sinister Dr. William Block (Josh Brolin) and his mistreated wife Dakota (Marley Shelton) at a local hospital. As Cherry and El Wray are attacked by the zombies, Doc Block learns of his wife's plans to abandon him and reunite with her lesbian lover, Tammy (Stacy Ferguson), who was killed by the zombies earlier. Doc Block tries to kill Dakota with her own anesthetics, but only has enough time to numb her hands and lock her in a closet before returning to the overwhelming amount of infected patients. Cherry loses her leg to the zombies and El Wray is detained by Sheriff Hague (Michael Biehn) based on past encounters between the two men. As the patients transform into zombies, El Wray escapes the police station and arrives at the hospital, attaching a wooden table leg to Cherry's stump. As they violently flee from the hospital, Dakota escapes to her car and returns home, breaking her wrist in the process. Meanwhile, Doc Block becomes infected by one of the first zombies, Joe (Nicky Katt), and the others take refuge at the Bone Shack.

Dakota rescues her son Tony and takes him to her father, Earl McGraw (Michael Parks). When Tony accidentally shoots himself in the face with a gun, Dakota, Earl, and Tony's crazed babysitter twins (Electra and Elise Avellan) arrive at the Bone Shack. With Sheriff Hauge and his brother JT critically injured, the group decides to flee to the Mexican border, before being stopped by a large mob of zombies. However, Muldoon's men arrive, and kill the zombies before arresting the rebels. They learn from Abby that the officials are planning to liquidate the entire area in order to stop DC2. As Cherry and Dakota are taken away by two rapists, the others defeat the security guards and search for Muldoon. After being discovered by El Wray and Abby, Muldoon explains that he killed Osama bin Laden before he and his men were infected with DC2 and were ordered to protect the area. After killing a mutating Muldoon, the duo arrive and save Cherry and Dakota, ultimately replacing Cherry's wooden leg with a custom-made M4A1 carbine assault rifle/M203 grenade launcher, which she promptly uses to defeat the rest of Muldoon's men. In the final battle, Sheriff Hague dies of his injuries as JT sacrifices himself to eliminate the zombies, shortly before Abby is killed in combat. Doc Block then arrives and is killed by Earl, shortly before the survivors use a nearby helicopter to defeat the remaining zombies. However, while saving Cherry from a zombie, El Wray is shot to death, and the remaining survivors flee. They eventually take refuge in Tulum, Mexico, where a new society begins and Cherry gives birth to El Wray's daughter. Template:Endspoiler

Cast

Death Proof

Synopsis

Template:Spoiler Friends Arlene (Vanessa Ferlito), Shanna (Jordan Ladd) and radio disc jockey Jungle Julia Lucai (Sydney Tamiia Poitier), are driving around Colorado St. in Austin, Texas, celebrating Julia's birthday, unknowingly being followed by a man in a 1971 Chevy Nova SS with a Kung Faux "skull" logo on the hood. Over margaritas at Guero's Restaurant, Julia tells Arlene that earlier that day she made a radio announcement, promising any boy who calls Arlene "Butterfly," buys her a drink, and recites her a segment of the poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" will be given a free lap dance. Next, the girls stop off at the Texas Chili Parlor for more drinks and to meet up with some boys. Pam (Rose McGowan), a childhood enemy of Jungle Julia's, is also at the bar, eventually encountering Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell), a scarred body double for Hollywood action films, who offers to give her a ride home. However, Mike is soon revealed to be a serial killer who takes great pleasure in killing vulnerable young women on the road. First, he brutally murders Pam by swerving aggressively to injure and frighten her, and then accelerating rapidly and braking hard, which leads to a deadly impact with the unpadded dashboard in front of her. Next, he crashes into the other three girls (along with Jungle Julia's pot dealer, Lanna Frank (Monica Staggs), whom they met up with at the bar) at a combined speed of two hundred miles per hour, resulting in a gruesome, violent death for each girl. Mike only suffers minor injuries, however, and because the girls were driving while intoxicated, he is cleared of all charges, much to the chagrin of Texas Ranger Earl McGraw (Michael Parks), who knows that Mike is a homicidal maniac guilty of "vehicular homicide."

Fleeing to Tennessee, Mike targets Lee (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), Abernathy (Rosario Dawson), Kim (Tracie Thoms), and Zoë (Zoë Bell, playing a character based upon herself and her real life experiences as a stuntwoman), a group of women working below the line in Hollywood. Kim, Abernathy, and Zoë eventually take a Dodge Challenger on a test drive, during which Zoë plays a dangerous game which she calls "Ship's Mast." The stunt requires the rider to climb onto the roof of the car at a high speed and ease onto the hood while holding onto two leather belts fastened to the two doors to emulate the experience of being up a ship's mast. Mike, in his "new" 1969 Dodge Charger, chases after them, repeatedly crashing into their car and nearly killing Zoë multiple times as she loses grip on the belts. The extensive chase is ended after Mike successfully pulls a PIT maneuver that throws Zoë off the hood. Mike gets out of his car and congratulates the women and prepares to leave, only to be shot once in the arm by Kim. After he speeds away, Zoë jumps up from the brush in front of the Challenger, claiming no more injuries than a few bruises. The girls, angry at what Mike just did to them, decide to take their revenge. His illusions of invincibility shattered, Stuntman Mike is reduced to tears while sterilizing his wound with Four Roses bourbon and taking a few drinks to calm his nerves. Finding him further up on the country road, the girls crash violently into his car. While he is trying to escape, Zoë violently beats him in the arm with a metal pipe. There is another extensive chase sequence and Mike pleads with the girls from his car window to let him go, but the chase is abruptly ended by a PIT maneuver executed by Kim that causes Mike's car to flip over, breaking his arm. The girls drag a whimpering Mike out of the car, and each take their turn violently punching and kicking him in the face. He falls to the ground, on the verge of death, and Abernathy delivers a final blow via an axe kick to Stuntman Mike's face. Template:Endspoiler

Cast

Fake trailers

Before each segment, there are trailers advertising fake films, as well as vintage theater snipes and an ad for a fictional restaurant called Acuña Boys. According to Rodriguez, it was Tarantino's idea to film fake trailers for Grindhouse. "I didn't even know about it until I read it in the trades. It said something like 'Rodriguez and Tarantino doing a double feature and Tarantino says there's gonna be fake trailers.' And I thought, 'There are?'" Some Canadian screening releases included the South by Southwest-winning trailer Hobo with a Shotgun. Rodriguez and Tarantino had originally planned to make all of the film's fake trailers themselves. According to Rodriguez, "We had so many ideas for trailers. I made Machete. I shot lobby cards and the poster and cut the trailer and sent it to Quentin, and he just flipped out because it looked so vintage and so real. He started showing it around to Eli Roth and to Edgar Wright, and they said, 'Can we do a trailer? We have an idea for a trailer!' We were like, 'Hey, let them shoot it. If we don't get around to shooting ours, we'll put theirs in the movie. If theirs comes out really great, we'll put it in the movie to have some variety.' Then Rob Zombie came up to me in October at the Scream Awards and said, 'I have a trailer: Werewolf Women of the SS.' I said, 'Say no more. Go shoot it. You got me.'" Each trailer was shot in two days. While Wright and Roth shot only what ended up on screen, Zombie shot enough footage to work into a half-hour film and was particularly pained to edit it down.

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Machete

Rodriguez wrote Machete in 1993 as a full feature for Danny Trejo. "I had cast him in Desperado and I remember thinking, 'Wow, this guy should have his own series of Mexican exploitation movies like Charles Bronson or like Jean Claude Van Damme.' So I wrote him this idea of a federale from Mexico who gets hired to do hatchet jobs in the U.S. I had heard sometimes FBI or DEA have a really tough job that they don't want to get their own agents killed on, they'll hire an agent from Mexico to come do the job for $25,000. I thought, 'That's Machete. He would come and do a really dangerous job for a lot of money to him but for everyone else over here it's peanuts.' But I never got around to making it." It was later announced that the trailer will be made as a direct-to-DVD feature film.

Werewolf Women of the SS

Rob Zombie's contribution, Werewolf Women of the SS, featured Nicolas Cage as Fu Manchu, Udo Kier as Franz Hess, the commandant of Death Camp 13, and Zombie's wife, Sheri Moon Zombie, and Sybil Danning as SS officers/sisters Eva and Gretchen Krupp (The She-Devils of Belzac), along with wrestlers Andrew Martin and Vladimir Kozlov, and Olja Hrustic, Meriah Nelson, and Lorielle New as the Werewolf Women. According to Zombie, "Basically, I had two ideas. It was either going to be a Nazi movie or a women-in-prison film, and I went with the Nazis. There's all those movies like Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS; Fräulein Devil; and Love Camp 7—I've always found that to be the most bizarre genre." Zombie is also quoted as saying "I was getting very conceptual in my own mind with it. A lot of times these movies would be made like, 'Well, you know, I've got a whole bunch of Nazi uniforms, but I got this Chinese set too. We'll put 'em together!' They start jamming things in there, so I took that approach."

Don't

Edgar Wright's contribution, Don't, was produced in the style of a 1970s Britsploitation Hammer horror meets Mondo trailer. The trailer featured appearances from Jason Isaacs, Matthew MacFadyen, singer Katie Melua, Georgina Chapman, Emily Booth, Stuart Wilson, Lucy Punch, Wright regulars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost and a voice-over by Will Arnett. To get the necessary 1970s look, Wright used vintage lenses and old-style graphics. During editing, he scratched some of the film with steel wool and dragged it around a parking lot to make it appear neglected by wayward projectionists. According to Wright, "In the '70s, when American International would release European horror films, they'd give them snazzier titles. And the one that inspired me was this Jorge Grau film: In the UK, it's called The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue. In Spain and in Italy, I think it's called Do Not Speak Ill of the Dead. But in the States, it was called Don't Open the Window. I just loved the fact that there isn't a big window scene in the film—it's all based around the spin and the voiceover not really telling you what the hell is going on in the film." On the Charlie Rose talk show, Quentin Tarantino also pointed out another aspect of American advertising of British films in the 1970s that is being referenced—none of the actors have any dialogue in the trailer, as if the trailer was intentionally edited to prevent American viewers from realizing that the film is British.

Thanksgiving

Eli Roth's contribution is a promo for the slasher opus Thanksgiving. Produced in the style of holiday-based slasher films such as Silent Night, Deadly Night, Halloween, April Fool's Day and My Bloody Valentine, the trailer starred Jeff Rendell as a killer who stalks victims dressed as a pilgrim, Jordan Ladd, Jay Hernandez, and Roth himself as his intended victims, and Michael Biehn as the Sheriff. The design for the titles in Thanksgiving were based on a Mad magazine slasher parody entitled Arbor Day.

According to Roth, "My friend Jeff, who plays the killer pilgrim—we grew up in Massachusetts, we were huge slasher movie fans and every November we were waiting for the Thanksgiving slasher movie. We had the whole movie worked out: A kid who's in love with a turkey and then his father killed it and then he killed his family and went away to a mental institution and came back and took revenge on the town. I called Jeff and said, 'Dude, guess what, we don't have to make the movie, we can just shoot the best parts.'" "Shooting the trailer was so much fun," Roth has stated, "because every shot is a money shot. Every shot is decapitation or nudity. It's so ridiculous, it's absurd. It's just so wrong and sick that it's right."

Roth's fake trailer contained elements that almost earned Grindhouse an NC-17 rating, including a cheerleader simultaneously stripping and bouncing on a trampoline, and three decapitations, one of which occuring as the victim's girlfriend performs fellatio on him. According to Roth, "Instead of seeing it spread out in a feature, watching it all jammed together nonstop makes it more shocking. But we had a great discussion with the ratings board. They got it. Once they saw it with all the bad splices and the distress and scratches they were fine with it."

Hobo With a Shotgun

Some screenings of Grindhouse also featured a fake trailer for a film titled Hobo With A Shotgun. The trailer is the winner of Robert Rodriguez's South by Southwest Grindhouse trailers contest and was created by Dartmouth, Nova Scotia filmmakers Jason Eisener, John Davies, and Rob Cotterill. The general plot is that a vagabond with a 20-gauge shotgun is taking the law into his own hands. In the trailer the main character is seen killing numerous persons ranging from armed robbers, corrupt cops to a pedophilic Santa Claus. The trailer was available in certain selected movie theaters in the United States and Canada. There have been discussions about making the trailer an actual movie.

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Response

Critical reception

Grindhouse was embraced favorably by the consensus of critics nationwide, earning a high 81% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a website that tracks the critical consensus of films. Entertainment Weekly awarded the film an "A" rating, praising it as a "crazily funny and exciting tribute to the grimy glory days of 1970s exploitation films" that "will leave you laughing, gasping, thrilled at a movie that knows, at long last, how to put the bad back in badass." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone also awarded the film an almost perfect rating, commenting that "by stooping low without selling out, this babes-and-bullets tour de force gets you high on movies again." Popular critic James Berardinelli also enjoyed the film but was not as positive as other critics. Awarding the film three stars (out of four), Berardinelli found the film to be "cinema as an expression of pulp with attitude... are speaking from the hearts... but that doesn't mean everyone sitting in the theater will get it."

Of the critics who didn't like the film, they were not amused by the film's graphic and comical violence, with Larry Ratliff of San Antonio Express-News noting that "this ambitious, scratched and weathered venture never manages a real death grip on the senses." Similarly, Dennis Schwartz of Ozus' World Movie Reviews was unimpressed, writing that the film is "as much fun as being in a car crash" and found the features to be little more than "pointless kid fantasy films." He awarded the overall film a C-, eventually noting that, while Planet Terror at least "caught the spirit" of the genre, Death Proof was "a complete misfire" filled with "long-winded banter that a grindhouse viewer would never sit through back in the day." This opinion was shared by a selection of other critics; Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle awarded the film a high rating, but noted that: "the Rodriguez segment is terrific; the Tarantino one long-winded and juvenile." Others, by contrast, have considered Death Proof to be a deeper and more noteworthy segment. John Beifuss of Memphis Commercial Appeal notes "the film's element of surprise and its defiance of expectation is as much a part of the grindhouse legacy as bare breasts and bloody knives." Jeffery M. Anderson of Combustible Celluloid comparatively writes "Death Proof pays a good deal less attention to looking like an old film and spends more time actually being shocking and unusual."

Box office

Grindhouse opened poorly with "a disappointing $11.5 million" for a per-theater average of $4,417, with box office analysts originally predicting an opening weekend total of at least $20-$30 million. The opening weekend box office total stood below not only the second weekends of Blades of Glory and Meet the Robinsons, but was also below the opening weekend of the widely panned Are We Done Yet?. In an attempt to explain the film's disappointing opening weekend, box office analyst Brandon Gray suggested that Grindhouse "suffered the usual horror comedy dilemma that afflicted Snakes on a Plane and Slither among others: too funny to be scary, too scary to be funny." Box office analyst Lee Tistaert of popular tracking website Lee's Movie Info compared the result with what may have happened if Tarantino's Kill Bill saga had been released as one film, instead of two separate volumes. "Is it possible that Tarantino got his wish this time as a result of two back-to-back $60 million grosses?" he asked. Others attributed the film's disappointing opening to the timing of Easter weekend, noting that the weekend is more tailored for family-oriented films or light-comedy, not exploitative horror films. Also, other critics attribute the disappointing box office total to the fact that many people were turned off by the over three-hour time for the movie and also say that a three-hour movie cannot have as many showings as shorter movies. Quentin Tarantino is quoted as saying about the film's box office results, "It was disappointing, yeah. But the movie worked with the audience. People who saw it loved it and applauded." Harvey Weinstein said that he is so "incredibly disappointed" with the film's opening weekend that he is considering re-releasing it as two separate movies and possibly adding back the "missing" scenes. The film has altogether earned $24,279,000 in ticket sales as of May 6, 2007.

International split controversy

During the 2007 Berlin Film Festival, Glen Basner, responsible for international releases for The Weinstein Company, made clear that the film would be split in two for release in non-English speaking countries. The films would be called Grindhouse: Planet Terror and Grindhouse: Death Proof, and would be released approximately two months apart. According to the poster artwork, the fake trailers for Death Proof will be directed by Rodriguez, while those for Planet Terror will be by Tarantino. No mention has been made of the trailers by Roth, Wright, or Zombie. While The Weinstein Company has stated that the film will be split because non-American audiences have no experience with the concept of double features, many European fans see it as an attempt to increase profits by forcing audiences to pay twice for a film that is shown as a single film in the United States. Tarantino reacting to the the possibility of a split in a foreign release, stated "Especially if they were dealing with non-English language countries, they don't really have this tradition...not only do they not really know what a grind house is, they don't even have the double feature tradition. So you are kind of trying to teach us something else." European fans of Tarantino have expressed their outrage in film forums and with online petitions, with many suggesting they will boycott the films or possibly illegally download them. Last week on http://www.empireonline.com it was revealed that Death Proof would be released in the UK on September 21st.

Sequel possibilities

Both Rodriguez and Tarantino have said that they are interested in making a sequel to Grindhouse. Tarantino said that he wants to shoot an "old-school Kung Fu movie in Mandarin with subtitles in some countries, and release a shorter, dubbed cut in others" for his segment. It has also been reported by Rotten Tomatoes that Edgar Wright may expand Don't into a feature film. According to Eli Roth, he and Wright have discussed the possibility of pairing Don't with Thanksgiving for a Grindhouse sequel. Roth is quoted as saying "We're talking to Dimension about it. I think they're still trying to figure out Grindhouse 1 before we think about Grindhouse 2, but I've already been working on the outline for it and I would do it in a heartbeat." Rodriguez plans to film a direct-to-DVD adaptation of Machete and release it by the time Grindhouse is released on DVD.

References

1. Joiner, Whitney (January 28, 2007). "Directors Who Go Together, Like Blood and Guts". The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-03-20. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
2. "'Blades' Stays on Top With $23 Million". Yahoo. 2007-04-08.
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22. ^ Olsen, Mark. "These plotlines get hacked to bits". LA Times. Retrieved 2007-04-01.
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Further reading

• Tarantino, Quentin and Rodriguez, Robert. Grindhouse: The Sleaze-filled Saga of an Exploitation Double Feature. Weinstein Books, 2007. ISBN 1602860149. The book includes forewords by both directors, interviews, a history of grind houses, and behind-the-scenes information about the production of the film. In addition, the book also includes the complete scripts for Planet Terror and the faux trailers Machete and Thanksgiving.

• Tarantino, Quentin. Death Proof: A Screenplay. Weinstein Books, 2007. ISBN 1602860092.

External links

• Official website
• Grindhouse at IMDb
• Grindhouse at Rotten Tomatoes

• 1970s retro movement
• 2000s horror films
• 2007 films
• American films
• Anthology films
• English-language films
• Exploitation films
• Films directed by Quentin Tarantino
• Films directed by Robert Rodríguez
• Films over three hours long
• Slasher films
• The Weinstein Company films
• Zombie films