Kills Me Dead

The Mock Trailers and Periphery

01. I read somewhere that Hobo With A Shotgun was done by a Canadian, which is completely awesome. Not a film I would see if it was real, but it was pretty hysterical to see it prior to the trailers for Live Free or Die Hard (which looks FUCKING AWESOME, by the way) and Ocean’s 13.

02. Do you have any idea how badly I want to see Werewolf Women of the SS? L:KJASLKDJASLK:J OMFG ROB ZOMBIE WOW. You know, people complain that the majority of movies pumped out by Hollywood are worthless dreck and stuff, but I figure if they made more deliberately awful movies like this one would be, people would enjoy them a lot more.

03. Love the retro titles for the “Prevue” and “Feature Presentation” bits, although they have less of an impact because of Tarantino inexplicably using them in Kill Bill.

04. Machete? I kind of really want to see it. Who doesn’t love Danny Trejo? Couple that with Cheech Marin as a homicidal priest and you’ve got Rodriguez’s next project.

Planet Terror

01. The great appeal of Robert Rodriguez is how his movies consist of being over the top and blowing crap up and Planet Terror certainly delivered on that front.

02. This is the most violent movie I’ve ever seen, bar none, and I’ve seen a lot of violent movies. The blood was fantastic and plentiful. But even the non-graphic violence was ridiculously awful, like the doctor threatening to stab his wife and fellow doctor in the face with a needle. EW. So gross yet so awesome.

03. All of the scratches and dust and dirt on the film that people have been talking about for months really worked well in this one. When they randomly “lost” the reel that explained El Wray’s mysterious past and why the sheriff refused to give him a gun? Brilliant. As was the film “melting” during the sex scene. It just fit so well with the sleaze and ridiculous tone of the movie as a whole.

04. Contrary to what you might expect, Rose McGowan doesn’t get the gun leg until pretty close to the end of the film.

05. I guess a lot of critics were worrying about whether or not this whole project was just the work of two self-indulgent fanboys and while yeah, that is definitely true on many levels, it’s also not a stupid film; Rodriguez is too self-aware at the helm of this one for it to be mindless pastiche. There are lots of amusing little details in the shots or the dialogue that let the audience know he’s quite aware of the deliberate ironies he’s setting up along the way; the shot of Rose McGowan’s peg leg during the sex scene cannot be anything other than subversive parody of the genre. Think of it as a more fully realized and smarter version of Snakes on a Plane.

06. It makes perfect sense once they say it: only Bruce Willis could kill Osama Bin Laden.

07. I loved how Bruce Willis was never listed in the opening credits for this, making his appearance a surprise to anyone who hadn’t caught the two-second glimpse of him in the full-length trailer. Love him, love him, love him.

08. What I love about Rodriguez and Tarantino is how they recycle the same actors over and over. I was delighted when Sex Machine from From Dusk Till Dawn showed up as a cop in Planet Terror, just like I was thrilled when the sheriff from Kill Bill Vol. 2 appeared on screen as the retired sheriff.

09. The special effects were so revolting (in a good way); they’ve come a long way since From Dusk Till Dawn. The popping and oozing zombie skin was absolutely disgusting; when Josh Brolin popped the pustule on Nicky Katt’s tongue and it exploded all over his face, I nearly threw up, I swear to god. When Tarantino’s character’s testicals and god knows what else were falling off and dripping and he said he was going to rape Rose McGowan anyway, I could not believe it. It takes a lot to disturb me, but WOW is all I can say to that. Mission accomplished, boys, that was so sick in a very campy way.

10. Loved the helicopter using its blades to decapitate several dozen zombies. Awesome, awesome, awesome. And when El Wray hopped on that miniature motorcycle? * DIES *

11. Excellent score by Rodriguez, as always. He completely raped the Sin City theme for the Grindhouse theme, but since it’s an awesome fucking theme to begin with, I am a-okay with that. I just love how into his movies Rodriguez gets and how much of the work he actually does himself (directing, writing, camera work, music, editing, etc.).

Death Proof

01. Kurt Russell was very awesome, which is something I don’t think I’ve ever had the opportunity to say. When his character went from psychopathic killer with a murder weapon for a vehicle to big whiny baby apologizing to the women he was trying to kill, I died. It was so over the top you couldn’t help but laugh hysterically.

02. Like with Scorsese, I always adore Tarantino’s use of diegetic music. I want this soundtrack.

03. While I thought Death Proof lacked a lot of the clever little self-conscious tidbits that Planet Terror had, what I did like was Tarantino acknowledging his penchant for the appropriation of cultural references and how most of his audience is actually unlikely to get those references. I say this as someone who doesn’t watch the cult 1970s tv shows or movies that Tarantino grew up with that he likes to pepper throughout his films; these references don’t make the movie, of course, but they’re always a fun nod to the audience when you do get the reference. Kurt Russell’s character, Stuntman Mike, is going through a big long list of television shows he was a stunt double on in hopes of impressing some girls at a bar, only they stare at him blankly because they’ve never, ever heard of any of these shows. That may be the most self-aware moment in a Tarantino movie ever.

04. I feel like I’m saying the words “self-aware” and “self-conscious” too much.

05. Truthfully, I found Death Proof kind of boring until the car chase, which is odd because Tarantino’s usual strength is in the lengthy character-defining dialogue he writes for his characters. [I remember that being one of the complaints about Kill Bill Vol. 1, that it favoured action over character and dialogue and that's why it's weaker than Kill Bill Vol. 2, which favours character and dialogue over action.] I just mostly wished these women would shudafucup and get on with it.

06. When Stuntman Mike said that he was driving his mom’s car — complete with a giant skull painted on the hood — I pretty much died.

07. The end was so random and abrupt, it was wonderful. Three cheers for bludgeoning a guy to death!

08. Tarantino obviously employed the same sort of down and dirty scratched approach to the physical film itself as Rodriguez, but he kind of went overboard with the purposeful jumpy editing at the start before pretty much abandoning the whole stylistic approach for the rest of the movie. The “lost” reel in Death Proof was also completely unnecessary and didn’t add anything to the movie the way it did in Planet Terror.

09. I mentioned this earlier about Rodriguez, but I loved whenever the fictional world that Tarantino has built himself showed up in Death Proof. Apple cigarettes, Big Kahuna Burger and now Acuna Boys, some sort of restaurant? LFMAO. I died when they had the Acuna Boys commercial in between the two films. Plus the sheriff from Kill Bill Vol. 2 showed up in Death Proof as an as-yet-unretired sheriff with — drumroll please — Son #1 from Kill Bill!! LMFAO. I kept waiting and waiting for him to call him that and then he DID and it was great. I just like the internal consistency Tarantino weaves from film to film.

10. Speaking of which, my initial thought was that this was the most straightforward Tarantino film ever in terms of the timeline, but once the sheriff from Kill Bill came on screen and was a) still sheriff and b) still on friendly terms with his daughter the doctor, it became incredibly apparent that Death Proof occurs in the timeline before Planet Terror, even though they’re shown in reverse chronological order. I think that’s a small but important detail that makes this a Rodriguez/Tarantino film instead of just a random parody like Scary Movie 385623.

Who Wins The Battle of the Grindhouse?

Rodriguez, hands down, and not just because his movie had zombies. I felt like he had a much better handle on the project in and of itself than Tarantino did, which is weird. Rodriguez isn’t really a subtle filmmaker and so I think he was able to fall into this genre quite easily; I wouldn’t call Tarantino subtle per se, but usually he’s a little more deft about the references he makes and how he makes them. This didn’t really feel like a Tarantino film. Maybe he needed Samuel L. Jackson.

I think what I like best about this is that both of them have the freedom to take on really weird projects that wouldn’t get made by anyone else. I love that they’re able to take their fanboy love of B-films and turn it into something else entirely by recreating the entire experience from film to trailer to add to sketchy viewing experience. Plus I love that they gave their own faboys an opportunity to participate in the film by doing that trailer contest (i.e. the winner — Hobo With A Shotgun — got shown as a preview). If you don’t walk away from Grindhouse feeling like you need a shower and a tetanus shot, you obviously weren’t paying close enough attention.