Common Sense

I’ve read a lot of kvetching about Grindhouse’s poor showing in the box office — it’s 3 hour running time or ineffective marketing from the Weinstein company — but this, this, I think is just borderline retardo.

I don’t mean to opine on a topic that’s been better opined upon, but objectively, is it so surprising a niche genre movie based on a host of obscure niche genre movies* fails to resonate at all with wide audiences? Fact is, ticket sales bore out the sad truth: only genre/movie geeks like us wanted to see the experimentation based on a hyper-nostalgic fantasy of two filmmakers.

That was the whole point!

This was never really about introducing the “grindhouse experience” to a wider audience, this was about people like Rob and Q getting to see the kind of movies they wish were still getting made.

It’s also about guys like me and Space Monkey. We were born after that era so we never got to go to those drive-in double features or have our parents buy reels of the old movies like lucky bastard Harry @ Ain’t It Cool News. No, we had to become movie geeks the hard way: Scouring the movie store shelves for some odd-sounding titles, staying up waaaaaayyy past our bedtimes to watch Joe Bob Brigg’s Monstervision on TNT, pestering our parents to get cable so that when some movie channel inexplicably showed something other than Sleepless in Seattle we would be ready. For fuck’s sake, we put up with Gilbert Godfried and Rhonda Shear with USA’s Up All Night to watch Troma movies. This movie was for us, damnit!

If somebody told the Weinstein brothers they were going to make a lot of money at the box office with this, well they just got Punk’d. They might make a killing with the DVD sales, who knows.

The point is, I understood the gag. Two guys with wide, eclectic tastes in movies offering a little something to that loyal fanbase. They pulled a little wool over the money men’s eyes and gave us something many of us have never gotten to experience before (unless they drive to Austin for the Alamo Drafthouse’s Weird Wednesdays).

I was going to write a review for Grindhouse tonight before I saw this column. Space Monkey and I went to see it Saturday and I was too swamped the rest of the weekend and Monday to try and really write something worth reading. Instead, I’ll just give you the high points.

Machete trailer

• Mexican day-laborer-as-hired-assasin!
• Cheech Marin as ass-kicking priest!
• I love how Rodriguez sort of copies himself from Desperado with Danny Trejo throwing machetes into the top of a limo instead of throwing knives.
• It’s great the way that the Pink Dome is in the background in that shot, too.

Planet Terror

• Every movie should start with Rose McGowan go-go dancing!
• Ah, nut’s! A Pakistani scientist/terrorist who sells chemical weapons and collects men’s testicles. That is some bad shit, too. It puts hemorrhoids on your face and balls in your mouth. Wait, that guy looks an awful lot like Sanjaya…
• I loves me some Fergie, I don’t care if she is a tranny.
• I could have gone the rest of my life without seeing that picture of a guy’s crotch herpes.
• Where can I get me some of those “little friends?” (Not to be confused with that previous bullet point.)
• That joke is as funny as a kid getting shot in the face. What, too soon?
• I’m ready to propose marriage to the crazy babysitter twins. I’m totally serious. Electra, Elise, if you read this, email me, please.
• Tom Savini back in front of the camera; suspiciously on the weekend after Friday the 13th.
• People are losing limbs, oh the humanity.
• I’m definitely not eating at JT’s now. I’ll stick the largely zombie-free Rudy’s Bar-B-Q.
• Did Quentin Tarantino’s dick just melt off?
• Nooo, not El Rey!
• It slices, it dices, it even flies survivors the fuck outta here!
• Space Monkey gives it two enthusiastic, herpes-blistered thumbs up!

Werewolf Women of the SS trailer

• All I really need to say is Sheri Moon Zombies’ ass. Bomp chica bow-wow.

Don’t trailer

• Don’t turn around, wo-a-o. Der Komissar’s in town! Wo-a-o!

Thanksgiving trailer

• Finally, another movie about a holiday. Once the trailer poster is available as a .jpg I’ll add it in with all the others in this review post.

Deathproof

• Baby got back.
• It’s about time a really good movie is set in Austin. I’m glad to see Spaghetti Warehouse made it into the shot (as well as the Alamo Downtown).
• Yea! Texas Chili Parlor.
• Was that Tarantino behind the bar? It was!
• Dude, Jager shots always gets you some fuzz.
• Stuntman Mike is on the prowl! (annoyingly loud Wolfman Jack howl). To me he seems both cool and super lame at the same time. I mean, he’s at ease with himself and he certainly knows what he’s talking about. But, he also reminds me of those guys who used to wear their letterman jackets and go to our high school drinking parties even though they were in their 30s and 40s. Just sadly old and pathetic.
• Well, at least he has the balls to murder people by crashing into them.
• I loves me some Rosario Dawson.
• Zoe Bell is so cool, I wish I was friends with her instead of Space Monkey. Wouldn’t that be funny, a stunt chick who can’t get hurt hanging out with a guy who can barely walk. I smell a sitcom in there somewhere.
• I also smell Jasper’s armpits.
• A vintage Challenger, just like in Vanishing Point.
• What the hell is Ship’s Mast? Whatever it is, it sounds like a hell of a lot of fun and I want to do it.
• I changed my mind.
• You just don’t see enough scary car chases in movies anymore. I do see it on my commute to work, however.
• Nevermind, one .38 slug to the shoulder and Stuntman Mike turns into Super Pussy! Faster than a one-way bus ticket out of town. More wussy than a scifi convention. Able to cry like a bitch with a single slap. Dun duh duh.
• Payback time, bitches!
• I’m confused. Should I be getting aroused by these hot chicks get all aggressive even though Kim’s there talking about “tapping that ass?” ‘Cuz I was getting all aroused.
• BAM! SPLAT! ZOOM! TWIST! And various other onomatopoeia!
• Space Monkey asked an interesting question: How the hell do they go back to Jasper when the Challenger is all fucked up like that? We agreed we would just leave Lee to her own fate if it was us.
• I give it two dislocated-on-the-steering-wheel thumbs up.

All in all, I’d have to say Grindhouse get’s 5 out of 5 ‘I Heart Midgets’ t-shirts.

Why, you ask? “Why not,” I reply confidently.