Grindhouse
is post-ironic perfection.
In
this week's review of Tears of the Black Tiger
, I claim that "Purposeful kitsch, presented as such, just isn't as fun as kitsch in its natural environment." It only took one day and one movie,
Grindhouse
, to prove that so-bad-it's-good intentional kitsch can still F-ing rock.
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But in order to rock, and especially to F-ing rock, a movie must have more than a gimmick: It must have muscle.
Grindhouse
-a double feature of gory B-movie exploitation films complete with faux trailers-is a muscle-bound, ass-kicking American ninja.
The buff, butt-kicking ninja/gunslinger who personifies
Grindhouse
's awesomeness is Wray (Freddy Rodríguez). In the first feature of the double bill, Robert Rodriguez'
Planet Terror
, Wray teams up with Cherry (Rose McGowan), the go-go dancer-cum-machine gun-legged vixen of vengeance, Abby (Naveen Andrews); the Jheri curl-sporting bioterrorist Dr. Dakota Block (Marley Shelton), the anesthesiologist who brings the pain; and a pair of sexy Latin identical twin sister baby sitters.
The squad blasts zombies with evident pleasure, the cinematography is beautifully B-level, the reels are scratched and, in some cases, missing altogether, the buxom girls' outfits diminish with every passing scene and the zombies' puss-filled cysts explode disgustingly enough to cause damsels in the audience to curl into their date's arms. With those bursting boils,
Planet Terror
proves that funny violence can still be good if it squirts something fresh at us.
Quentin Tarantino's
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segment,
Death Proof
, features an excellent Kurt Russell as Stuntman Mike, a sadistic stunt driver
whose sole pleasure in life is tormenting babes with his black, skull-emblazoned Dodge Charger. It also features long stretches of Tarantino-style dialogue referencing his own films as much as the slasher and chase flicks to which he pays homage.
In
Grindhouse
, Rodriguez' and particularly Tarantino's standpoint constantly shifts. The directors lurk in a glorious post-ironic netherworld; they point at the genres they emulate from an ironic distance and inhabit them with loving abandonment. This doesn't just make them harder to hit with "this is cheap" sensors, it also lets them deliver their own blows better, and from more varied angles.
Purposeful, so-bad-it's-good kitsch is prone to lameness but, if done with substance and style, it can still be awesome.
Grindhouse
is possessed with evident love for the movies it revisits and, in the end, that love makes all the difference.
