Film Prostitute

Dude fucking cut himself falling out of his time machine.

When Grindhouse was released to less than stellar box office results, it proved that Quentin Tarantino wasn’t bomb proof. The ode to schlocky 70’s cinema he produced with fellow auteur Robert Rodriguez was yanked from theaters before most folks had a chance to see it, including myself. This was too bad because the idea of two talented writer/directors who also happen to be passionate cinephiles creating their own takes on the exploitation genre and releasing the results as a double feature in true B movie style seemed like a pretty good one.

Grindhouse, as it turns out, bombed fairly spectacularly. I figured this was due to most Americans’ unwillingness to sit through a double feature in one sitting; i.e. simply not getting the concept of “double feature”. That may indeed have been one problem, but another glaring issue is that Tarantino’s half of Grindhouse is a turd. *

The plot, such as it is, is simple enough: a stuntman cum psychopathic killer named Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) kills young women with his muscle car. Great, sounds like fun. Can’t wait to see plenty of gruesome, over the top murders, maybe some cool car chases, and of course a healthy dose of Tarantino’s dark humor and wit. Bring it, Quentin!

Alas, my hopes were set too high. What you get is about 45 minutes of tiresome, mundane squawking from a group of irritating shrews cruising around Austin. They run into Stuntman Mike at a bar. 75 more minutes of squawking and then Stuntman Mike executes them hot rod style.

Surely that’s not all Q.T. has up his sleeve, is it? No, because soon after this we see Stuntman Mike in the hospital (he had to wreck his car, as stuntmen do, in order to kill those women) where he’s cleared of any charges because his victims had all been drinking.

All right! Now we’re on to part two. I guess that first boring part was just some sort of weird exposition or something, right?

Wrong. We’re then treated to another group of irritating shrews who engage in possibly even more banal conversation for 90 minutes or so. By now one wonders if Tarantino was intending the dialogue to be some sort of self parody. At one point he more or less recreates the opening shot of Reservoir Dogs, only this time the topic of conversation, something about a roadside ditch and whether or not someone fell in it…or something, isn’t even remotely clever.

Then some other stuff happens, and there’s a reference to Vanishing Point which turns into a plot point and then Stuntman Mike gets what’s coming to him. The end.

I’m willing to give Tarantino the benefit of the doubt and chalk this up to a minor hiccup in an otherwise brilliant career, but this time his encyclopedic film knowledge and tendencies toward allusion and homage seem to be liabilities and not assets, as they were in his previous work.

Apparently his next project is going to be Inglorious Bastards, yet another homage, this time to old World War II flicks. Let’s hope that this one’s a pastiche of Pulp Fiction caliber brilliance and not another reason for the subjects to declare that the emperor has no clothes.

Grade: D

*I have not yet seen Rodriguez’s Planet Terror, so I cannot attest to its fecal qualities, or lack thereof.