There’s lots to touch on in this review (i’ve actually discarded half of a review and it’s still way long!!) so if you want it in a small dose then the following is all you need…  Death Proof is an awfully slow and boring movie, the worst of Quentin Tarantino’s career and the likes of which is so hard to comprehend after the fun and electric Planet Terror from Robert Rodriguez which never seems to stop with it’s fast paced gore, sex and zombie violence.

If you need to know more, here is my review broken down into several small sections. Remarkably I was in a cinema with around 9 people… how depressing for my first American audience experience, but the lack of numbers didn’t stop us making some noise. I had a great time watching the movie with these guys and gals who cheered in the right places and laughed along with what the directors were trying to achieve.

MACHETE trailer - Robert Rodriguez

Oh this is such a fun way to start the Grindhouse experience. All I can remember about the trailer is Danny Trejo causing all sorts of violence and mayhem, oh and also a man of cloth firing a shotgun. What more needs to be said? Although Rob, I don’t think I would ever seen this thing in a full feature if you still plan to release it straight-to-dvd.

PLANET TERROR feature - Robert Rodriguez

Awesome movie. Rodriguez has quickly become a dependable director for delivering cool action movies, which never let up in their excitement and innovative nature.

Planet Terror is very much an extension of what James Gunn was attempting to do with Slither last year. It’s an outrageous B-Movie gross horror movie with terrible acting, a minute plot and heavy on gore and exploitation of the human body… that all the characters in the movie are taking seriously, but the director and us as an audience aren’t.

There’s a key difference that I think needs to be explained here. The Wicker Man remake is a god-awful movie that the director and cast were taking seriously, which made the flick unintentionally funny and need I really remind you, extremely shitty? Hot Fuzz on the other hand, has the characters taking the flick seriously, but not the director who builds a parody like atmosphere which means we can laugh along with the movie, rather than laugh at it.

That’s what Rodriguez has managed to pull of so wonderfully here, and it’s even harder to achieve that effect in a horror movie over a comedy flick.

Rose McGowan is as hot as her name promises… Freddy Rodriguez plays her bitter ex boyfriend and dons a great action hero lead who rarely talks but every word he says is the coolest line of the movie.

The real stars of Planet Terror though are Marley Shelton (who is strikingly similar to Uma Thurman both in looks and acting style) and Josh Brolin who are a married couple who just happen to be a nurse and doctor respectively. Also they can’t stand each other. It’s a fascinating subplot of the movie to see this marriage breakdown and escalate admidst a zombie war which includes cameo’s and larger roles from Lost’s Naveen Andrews (playing almost the same character as the hit show), Bruce Willis (loved his work here) and Michael Biehn.

The bottom line on Planet Terror is that the story is thin, but each character has so many different subplots going on and the film never lets up on action, suspense and violence that it’s easily as entertaining as 300 and is a must see for those who loved the cinema of George A. Romero.  

PLANET TERROR AS A SINGLE FILM GETS **** STARS

WEREWOLF WOMEN OF THE S.S. trailer - Rob Zombie

It was bad enough having to watch his trailer for the Halloween remake before the movie started, which by the way looks terrible on the big screen, but this takes shitty to a whole new level. What was going on, is their even a story to this thing? I’ll admit there was some cool visuals and sexy nazi women and vampires is cool but this just looked beyond stupid.

DON’T trailer - Edgar Wright

Easily my favourite trailer of the whole experience, this was frikkin’ hilarious and some of the cast that make an appearance should be very familiar to British audiences. The most fun trailer I have seen all year.

THANKSGIVING - Eli Roth

Probably my second favourite trailer of the whole thing. You know Roth can do slasher films really well and although this movie does push the gore to a dangerously high level, it didn’t matter because it was all done in jest and was a throwback to a 70’s and 80’s era of horror movies which has now sadly passed. This was just insane.

DEATH PROOF feature - Quentin Tarantino

Well this was what I was building towards… I could hardly contain my excitement for seeing Kurt Russell as Stuntman Mike in Death Proof but when it finally came, I was let down. It was like finding out that Santa Claus doesn’t really bring the christmas presents down the chimney on Christmas Eve, or that the Tooth Fairy is really your mum late at night when your in the land of nod.

The movie is just girls sitting around talking, bitching, talking, bitching, talking and then more bitching. Sound familiar? The first 30 minutes at least of Death Proof is fucking Sex and the City!!

The girls all do a good job (and there are LOTS of them in this movie) and they each carve out a nice character for themselves but the one real stand out is Zoe Bell, who was actually the stunt women for Uma Thurman on the Kill Bill set. She was picked for one of the leads of this Tarantino flick because she can not only do her own stunts but she can act too, and she quickly becomes one of the most lovable actors in Quentin’s universe and is the center piece of the greatest car chase sequence in years. (watch for a cute little joke where Darryl Hannah’s name gets mentioned).

That is Tarantino at his best… it’s an awesome climax, but one that ends too suddenely and wasn’t the direction I wanted the movie to go in… SPOILERS…. why did the awesome Kurt Russell get such little screentime and such a shitty character turn after a great opening?

This is my least favourite Tarantino movie of all time but my girlfriend really liked it. This is defintely a movie for girls, and one that promotes “girl power” if such a term still exists and Quentin does a remarkable job of tapping into how girl’s speak. Remember this is the guy who has filled Samuel L. Jackson and Michael Madsen with so many cool lines down the years, but here he has girl speak right down to a tee.

PLANET TERROR GETS A **1/2 STARS

Final word before the rating. I’m so glad I got to see this movie in it’s original form and it’s such a shame that it won’t be readily made available in this fashion for most other countries. I loved the fake trailers, loved the scratchy reels, loved the missed reels, the fake adverts for shops that don’t exist and I especially loved the double feature idea. But alas, it doesn’t seem popular these days.

One awesome movie that knows it’s genre, followed by a talented director who’s movie is a boring and confused mess which doesn’t know it’s purpose in life. The trailers, the faux advertisements and the sheer enthusiasm for the project though means the movie is well worth seeing in it’s original form if you have the chance, otherwise skip Death Proof and head straight for Planet Terror when it hits your area.