![]() The scheming youth quickly flees the administration building with his glue just as the two macho bounty hunters try to refuse wearing the ridiculous rabbit outfits to blend into the crowd. One of his sons defensively interrupts Lobo's line of questioning and orders him to find the bomber. Walt explains they all quit to work at Simian City Safari Park. Lobo questions the upset owner, asking him why his own security can't handle it. Walt shows them the first anonymous letter demanding $50,000 credits, followed by the second which threatens to detonated a bomb in the park if he doesn't close down. ![]() They meet with the owner, Walt Dizzle, and his three sons, Harry, Henry and Frizzle. They pass a disgruntled youth with a can of glue, planning a little retribution for some slight the park caused him. They arrive at Cheezworld in high spirits, with Lobo assuming it's going to be more like a vacation than work. It's a bit of a mess, but like all car crashes, you can't help but stare at it.Lobo and Jonas head off to the job Quarantino has booked them, a cushy security gig at a theme park. Maybe the inevitable release of Grandhouse as a whole will win over my heart more. Even if it is uneven and ponderous, listening to these characters waffle on about nothing in particular is still executed smoothly and embodies that Tarantino air of coolness. No Tarantino film could ever bore you aesthetically, or indeed talk you to death with insipid dialogue. Again, blame the editing, for an awful lot of this movie creates a hugely diverting story of girls pontificating the kind of popular interests that only Tarantino would make them do, such as a love for the film Vanishing Point or Dave, Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Titch. Well barring the ultra-violent central car crash that splits the film's two female groups, and the climactic car chase (expertly executed) Death Proof is nothing more than a girls gone hiking film. It has the veneer of a movie in desperate need of a good editor, much in the same way that Kill Bill vol. I did often wonder if much of this was down to Tarantino having to bulk up his film after splitting it from Planet Terror. At least Pulp Fiction had meaning behind the mundanity of its own inhabitants. A simple interaction that goes on forever it would seem, failing to tell us anything about the characters or indeed the plot. One scene, for instance, involves one of the girls buying a magazine at a gas station. Tarantino can't help but overload his scenes with meaningless meandering, almost as if he has reached the point of aimless directorial swaggery. Although this is not entirely a bad thing, it is not inherently valid for this type of material. But that quickly fades away, and Tarantino very quickly moves into familiarly talkative territory akin to hit men talking about European hamburgers or bank robbers musing about the veracity of Madonna's hit single "Like A Virgin". Yes you get the grainy film footage, and the purposefully poor editing that raise the chuckles they crave. It is a Tarantino film with the ghosts of so many bad old movies hovering over it. Why then does the film seem so incidental when attempting to recreate the vibe of a Corman-style trash fest? The long and short answer is that this isn't really a grindhouse film. ![]() An appropriately stupid premise tailor-made for a grindhouse market. The first of these films, is Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino's homage to the likes of producer Roger Corman's Deathrace 2000 and director Jack Hill's Switchblade Sisters (1975), with Kurt Russell's Stuntman Mike having an unhealthy obsession with crashing into cars driven by young ladies. But apparently only seeing the numbers, Quentin and co-director Robert Rodriguez decided it would be best to split their respective stories apart, and release them as two movies in the UK, flying in the face of Grindhouse logic. This despite most critics who went to see it having nothing but praise for Tarantino and chums. Grindhouse took a paltry $4.2 million on its opening weekend and has thus far failed to make back even half the double movie's budget. ![]() Perhaps this explains, to a certain extent, why the old drive-in formula of watching back-to-back trashy hardcore exploitation films was lost on American audiences. Not the most appealing of conventions when it comes to the modern cinema audience. Clunky editing, grainy filming, laughable stories, ultra-violence and exploitation in the guise of feminism and blacksploitation. ![]()
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