Grindhouse

It seemed like a movie geeks wet dream. Tarantino, and Rodriguez together indulging themselves in an obsessively faithful recreation of the cheap bad-ass action and horror flicks they grew up on and studied so much.

But alas it crumbles into a disappointing genre exercise in self satisfaction as both filmmakers fitfully recreate a film breaking and the faded scratchy prints of old, but sadly forget to add any interesting stories or snappy dialogue.

The highlight of the three hour experiment is the fake trailers before and in between the film.

These are not available on the extended DVDs but you can watch the whole freaking exercise in its entirety on Starz, or you can find the trailers online and save yourself about three hours. I have a fondness for "machete," but Eli Roth's "Thanksgiving" gets points for pushing the disturbing factor to a giblet vomit inducing point.

Rodriguez' "Planet Terror" is first off. It dials up the sex immediately by starting things off with rose McGowan doing a pole dance. It only takes about 15 minutes or so before balls get chopped off, a deadly gas is released into the air and zombies start a chewing. While Rodriguez obviously has tried his best to cram all the sex, blood, guts, guns and big ass fast cars he can into this film, the results are just so so. I expected this to hit it out of the park, but instead it's just an infield single. I do give him props for devising a scene where McGowan has had her leg gnawed off by a zombie, and gets a Gatling gun attached in its place.

Tarantino's "Death Proof" is considered the better of the two, but I found it to be an even bigger disappointment.

I love good car crashes and all those good old fashioned chase scenes, but there's not enough pure action in this mindless exercise for me. The flimsy excuse for a story involves the maniacal Stuntman Mike who uses his reinforced stunt car as a deadly weapon to murder groups of hotties he sees come into town. I know stories are just supposed to be a clothesline to hang the car crashes on, but this just didn't cut it for me. There's are far too few car crashes, and when the big chase scene does come I found it strangely underwhelming. There aren't even any good Tarantino dialogues in this film either, it's all just dumb girl chatter. It's just plane boring.

Grindhouse: C