Through the Grinder
Well, me and the wife caught this at a matinee yesterday afternoon. As with Kill Bill, I have to say, Yes yes yes - I get it. I get it already. The over the top sleaze, the scratchy old prints, the missing reels, the B-list actors turning up in both halves of a double feature (and in some of the trailers). This is what happens when film directors skip Film School and spend their formative years working in video stores seeing every piece of crap on the shelves as 'gold in the rough'.
The trailers were hilarious, Werewolf Women of the SS, Don't, Machete, etc, but most of the double feature was pure tedium. Rodriguez's 'Planet Terror' had a few moments here and there but was so over-the-top with the splattering violence that it became tiresome to watch. Don't these guys remember the fact that those old movies they are paying homage to, almost always promised a lot more than they delivered? I almost would have prefered that Planet Terror were one of the trailers and we got to see 'Machete' instead.
Tarantino's 'Death Proof' is what I came for, and it also nearly drove me out of the theater, not from the violence, but from the sheer boredom of the first 20 minutes of the film. But once it started revving its engines, it was worth the wait. A fun classic car demolition fest that makes the 3 hour torture worth it.
Posted
Wednesday, April 11, 2007 10:44 AM
In the great film interview book 'Truffaut/Hitchcock', Hitch presents a scenario as a way of illustrating the difference between shock and suspense. Picture an office with two fellows talking across a desk for ten minutes and then POW a bomb goes off. Shock. Audience jumps out of their seats. Then picture the same scenario, but this time the audience is told ahead of time that a bomb has been placed under the desk and will explode in ten minutes, and that the two men are unaware of its existence, then the audience spends ten minutes squirming in their seats while the two men blather on unaware of the danger facing them.
The first half of Death Proof, rather than building character and tension (unless you are on the edge of your seat wondering if the two horny guys are going to spend the evening at the 'girls only' party), the audience is nearly lulled to sleep by inane dialog, and pointless extrapolation, and then when 'Stuntman Mike' and his 'killer car' are unleashed, it happens so fast that it is merely cheap shock value. It is only in the second half when the audience is let in on the danger (and treated to a short implausible explanation of Mike's motivations) that the tension is allowed to build and the payoff is worth all the buildup.
I also found it interesting, that in the first half, Tarantino seems to be playing along with the whole 'B movie' conceit (faux scratched print, bad acting, insipid dialog, missing reels), but then in the second half he totally abandons those pretentions and the movie transcends its origins to find its own voice.
Posted
Monday, April 09, 2007 12:37 PM
I definitely agree with you about the video store film school aesthetic, but I found the first 30-40 minutes of Death Proof to be the best part of Grindhouse, building both character and tension. It was all downhill from the first crash/murder. The chase itself was good, but felt disconnected to the rest of the film; Stuntman Mike seemed like a totally different character, and it didn't help that he didn't have any interaction with the girls outside of the chase.