I have mixed feelings about this one. First, it's 3 1/2 hours
from previews to end of movie, and that's just too freakin'
long for this type of movie experience. The first part of the
double-feature is Rodriguez's Planet Terror which is meant to
be nothing more than a sendup of the cheesy zombie flicks
from the 70s, along with paying homage to Night of the Living
Dead, The Terminator, among others. It's good for a few
laughs, but it drags, and is really no better than most of
the monster flicks I used to watch as a kid on Creature
Double-Feature. The best visual is with Rose McGowan with the
machine gun as a prosthetic leg, but that happens late in the
film, and pretty much the best scenes of that are shown in
the previews. Tarantino's film, Death Proof, with the missing
reel, technical glitches, and movie references, gives a lot
of lip service about being a sendup of a 70's exploitation
film, but this is a pure Tarantino film. The guy is incapable
of making a bad movie even when he wants to, and this one's
an adrenaline rush. The plot is simpler than any previous
Tarantino film--basically a revenge film, and the ending does
capture somewhat a bad 70s exploitation film--but this is
still a great film. Not on par with Pulp Fiction, Jackie
Brown, Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill, but still a great film, far
better than movies like "History of Violence" and "Ice
Harvest". As much as I enjoyed this, I probably would've
liked it more if I wasn't so antsy from already sitting in
the theatre for almost 2 hours.
About the "coming attractions": Machete does the best job of
actually capturing what these grindhouse films were like,
"Don't" and "Werewolf Woman of the SS" were lame, and
"Thanksgiving" had some very bizarre and disturbing images
even though it intentionally didn't make much sense.
If were to do it over again, I would've gone in 2 hours late,
and only bothered to sat through Tarantino's film.
--Dave Z.
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