Grindhouse Double Bill! Part Two: Planet Terror

Planet Terror
On DVD now

Hey kids! It’s time for part two of the Grindhouse review that I promised nearly a week ago! Woo!

Anyway, let’s get down to brass tacks. Planet Terror: this is more like it. Go-go dancer Rose McGowan fights zombies with her machine gun leg. Hells yeah.

If you’ll recall, in the Death Proof review I hilariously posted an image of me watching grey paint dry – a sly dig at how God-damn boring that film was. For Planet Terror, I have an equally representitive image, that sums up the quality of the film:

Yes, I am invoking the holy text of Die Hard 4.0, wherein John McClane, peace be upon him, killed a helicopter with a car because he ran out of bullets. That’s how awesome Planet Terror is. Didn’t you already read the bit about how Rose McGowan is a go-go dancer? Fighting zombies? With her machine gun leg? Huh?

I guess you want a full plot synopsis then. Well, in Planet Terror, rather than starting with boring girls talking, as Death Proof did, you get Rose McGowan dancing around in her skimpies. The film the continues to introduce bad-ass kung-fu truck driver Freddy Rodriguez, a testicle-slicing mad scientist played by Sayeed out of Lost, evil doctor Josh Brolin, Fergie out of the Black Eyed Peas as the good doctor’s wife’s secret kesbian lover and – oh yes – Bruce fucking Willis. John McClane himself is actually in this film. Conversley, at around this point in Death Proof…the boring girls were still sitting around talking.

Planet Terror really does deliver on the schlocky, OTT action promised by Rodriguez and Tarantino when these films were originally announced – there’s exploding heads, bags of balls (yes, those kind) and even a melting wang. Quentin Tarantino’s, actually.

Rodriguez’s reference points are obvious – the forboding mood and synthy score recalls John Carpenter (back when he was good), and the zombies are in thrall to Romero’s Living Dead series – Tom Savini, said series’ make-up maestro, appears here as a cop – and countless others. The film is also pretty straight-faced, in spite of it’s ridiculousness – Willis’ army general claims to have killed Osama bin Laden himself – which is a breath of fresh air in an age of tongue-in-cheek action films. And it just serves to make this film all the more like the awesome Grindhouse movies this is based on.

Oh, and a kid dies, which is always good. It makes up for the Haley Joel Osmonts and *shudder* Dakota Fannings of the movie world.

So, Death Proof – boring as shit, but has Kurt Russel.
Planet Terror - melting genitalia, machine gun legs, go-go dancing, zombies, lesbiabns, Bruce Willis

I think we have a clear winner, don’t you?

Grindhouse Double Bill! Part One: Death Proof

Since I was still slightly bitter about the debacle about the separate releases given to Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s Grindhouse over here in the UK, the other night I staged my own “Grindhouse Night” with some friends, where we watched both of the featured films, Tarantino’s Death Proof and Rodriguez’s Planet Terror, back to back: the way they were meant to be seen.

So, anyway, as an extension of this whole double-bill love-in, it’s time for the Second Hand Popcorn Grindhouse Double-Bill Review. First up – Death Proof!

Death Proof
On DVD now

Despite the fact it was Tarantino’s idea to do the whole schlocky, gory, exploitative Grindhouse movies in the first place, Death Proof…well, isn’t really schlocky, gory, or exploitative. In fact, it’s boring. Really, painfully boring.

For the first 40 minutes of this 114 minute portion of Grindhouse, absolutely bugger all happens. Really. Nothing at all. Just a group of women sitting around talking bollocks. Now, I know Tarantino is no stranger to excessive dialogue. The thing is, I enjoyed his witty banter in…well, pretty much all his other films (excluding Kill Bill). But that’s because the people who were talking were both likeable, and damn awesome. Hitmen, jewellery thieves, psychos, crooked cops, boxers…the characters of Death Proof are nowhere near as interesting. They’re just people. And they are incredibly boring, completely uninteresting people.

Now, if I wanted to some up the equivalent viewing experience of these first 40 minutes of Death Proof within a handy image and an over-used saying, it would be this;

At least in that scenario I could bet on which drip of paint would dry fastest, or something. There are no such luxuries with Death Proof. The film, up to this point, is (to paraphrase a Monty Python sketch) appallingly dull, unimaginative, tedious, has no sense of humour and is “irrepressibly drab and awful.

Luckily, though, Snake Plissken turns up to make things exciting for a bit.

Kurt Russel, who plays the character of Stuntman Mike (who is a stuntman. Named Mike.), turns up in the bar that the incredibly boring trio of women have been hanging around in, being boring. After some flirting, he manages to somehow get Rose McGowan (who wasn’t even in the boring group of friends) to get in his ‘death proof’ car – no matter how battered the car gets, he’s fine. It’s the people in the other seats that get messed up.

So, the film turns awesome for a little bit; well, about 2 minutes, since that’s about how long it takes Mike to roll his car over and kill Ms McGowan. Then, in the tradition of films such as The Devil Wears Prada, I fast-forwarded for a bit. And you know what? The whole time used to build up the boring, annoying ladies’ ‘characters’ was a complete waste of time, since they are completely inconsequential to the rest of the film. Because they all die. And get replaced by a whole other set of boring, annoying girls.

Then, 1 hour and 40 minutes into the film, it turns awesome again (after a pointless car chase that could have easily ended if the girls just pulled over), annnnnnnd that’s it. Out of 114 minutes of film, about 10 minutes is of any entertainment value. And about 4 minutes of that is a lap-dancing scene.

Quentin, for the love of God; just make another crime film. Stop messing about with all this cult movie malarkey. This is, well, like an intervention. It’s for your own good.

Anyway, tommorrow, get ready for: Planet Terror! (which is a hell of a lot better)

A lobotomised goldfish. With boobs.

Resident Evil: Extinction
On DVD now

This film is really stupid. Really, really stupid. It’s stupefyingly stupid. Resident Evil: Extinction is the cinematic (and I use that term loosely) equivalent of a lobotomised goldfish. With boobs.

Somehow, when I first saw the trailers for it, I was somehow suckered into getting excited about it – zombies! In the desert! Milla Jovovovovovovovich chopping ‘em up! The schizophrenic gal out of Heroes! Awesome!

(Yes, I thought this despite the fact that the first two Resi films were shite)

Then I went to see the film. And it was bad.

The film opens with Milla driving around the desert (somehow the zombie virus has, uh, killed the world. It would have been far more entertaining if the world turned into one giant zombie. That Ms Jovovovovovovovich would then fight), when she runs into some hicks who decide, for some reason, to kidnap Milla and stick her in a cage with a badly-CGI’d zombie dog. Maybe they’d seen Ultraviolet.

Eventually, after somehow developing psychic powers (making her about as powerful as Jesus, if not more so) our intrepid heroine meets up with a CONVOY of retards, who drive trucks around and sometimes get attacked by zombie crow. And then decide to kill them with a flamethrower, which inevitably goes out of control, instead of, uh, hiding.

All seems well – they drive along, singing songs and spitting tobacco into buckets (or whatever truckers do) – but they don’t know that the sinister Umbrella company, who released the virus, and made Milla, are following them. I don’t know why. Apparently they want to take over the world – despite the fact that it consists mostly of zombies and sand. And traumatised teenagers who change their name to “K-Mart” because that’s where she was found by the convoy.

“K-Mart”? Really? If you had the chance to change your name, you wouldn’t change it to bloody K-Mart. You’d change it to “Dr Awesome MD” or “Professor Robocop”, or somethin. Not fucking K-Mart.

So, that’s all pretty on par with the absolute idiocy of the other two films.

Oh, but also, at one point the CONVOY come across a big old shipping container. And decide it’s a good idea to open it and look inside (I don’t even know where they’re driving to – or why). Guess what? There are zombies inside! Dropped by Umbrella! Christ knows why!

And someone gets snuck up on by a zombie. HOW THE HELL DOES A ZOMBIE SNEAK UP ON YOU? Basically, a zombie somehow manages to climb on top of the shipping container, tip-toes along, then jumps on some lady with her back to the container. What the hell, man?

And the only good character dies! That awesone black dude from the second film, who was driving around in a low-rider, running zombies over! I can’t even remeber how he dies. Maybe I just don’t want to admit he’s gone.

How can this film be so stupid? Really? It’s not hard to get the formula of zombies+girl in hot pants wrong, is it? Then again, when you get a film written by Paul WS Anderson (persumably for crayons), you can’t expect too much, eh? Expecting  ole’ WS to make a good film is like expecting a racoon to ski.

One night of sweaty, nerdy sex

Eagle Vs Shark
On DVD now

Eagle vs Shark is the first film from New Zealand I’ve seen that wasn’t directed by Peter Jackson (this is the first film from Kiwi comedian Taika Waititi, aka Taika Cohen). Despite the fact it comes from the Kiwi country, it feels pretty…well, American.

The plot revolves around Lily (Loren Horsley, Waititi’s real-life partner), an somewhat unattractive (mainly due to the mole above her top lip) young fast-food worker, who, for some reason, falls for the nerdy, socially awkward Jarrod (Jermaine Clement, one-half of “fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo” Flight of the Conchords), who is also somewhat unattractive (mainly due to the mole above his top lip; but the overbite and badly-cut mullet don’t help either).

After one night of sweaty, nerdy sex at Jarrod’s “Dress as your favourite animal” party (he goes as an eagle, Lily as a shark – hence the film’s title), Jarrod seems to get cold feet, and the newly redundant Lily (she was fired, at random, after her name was drawn out of a hat) joins him as he drives to his home town to kill his high school nemesis.

And that’s the plot of Eagle Vs Shark in a nutshell. Which means I should probably now explain that bit about how the film seems like an American production, which I’m sure you’ve been waiting for with baited breath (or you forgot, since I rambled on for so long).

Basically, Eagle vs Shark is like a Kiwi version of Napoleon Dynamite – except, in this case, pretty much all of the principal characters are socially-awkward, badly-dressed weirdos. There’s even Dyanmite’s weird sense of, well, oldness – it’s obviously not a period piece (Jarrod makes reference to going to see the as-yet unmade Wolverine movie starring Hugh Jackman – so I guess it’s set in the future?), yet Jarrod’s genius computer-hacker friend seems to be using a PC from the early ’90s, and the “Fight Man” videogame Lily plays at Jarrod’s party seems to be a 16-bit Mortal Kombat knock-off.

Unfortunatley, the aformentioned awkwardness is also kind of distracting – while in Napoleon Dynamite this was remedied by the humour, the laughs are somewhat spaced out, which means you get prolonged periods of these characters who you just want to smack around the head and tell them to start acting…well, normal.

While it’s very funny in parts, Eagle vs Shark may be too awkward and derivative for it’s own good.