A Grindhouse Divided

When two behemoths of postmodern cinema collaborate on a double-feature, it’s inevitable that the back-to-back films will be compared. Such is the case with Grindhouse, the self-consciously hip, exploitation fest that begins with Rodriguez’s zombie flick, Planet Terror, and ends with Tarantino’s take on the slasher movie, Death Proof. Can you appraise each film individually? Of course. But when it comes down it, if you’ve seen the films, you have a decision to make. Are you in the Rodriguez camp or the Tarantino camp? Before seeing the movie, I had asked a number of friends their opinion, and at every turn, I heard nothing but resounding endorsements for Rodriguez’s Planet Terror. In my case, all the hype surrounding Planet Terror created expectations that the film could not measure up to. But I think that even if I had not gone in with preconceived ideas about the films, I would have still ultimately fallen into that other camp, the less popular, less accepted Tarantino camp.

The Rodriguez joint does have the irrefutable cool factor—machine gun extremities, glossy overtures of violence, Bruce Willis cameos. The tight editing only amplifies the titillation level of the film. Quick cuts heighten the gun-slinging, knife-wielding, general badass-ery. As far as spectacle is concerned, Planet Terror delivers. But beyond the striking visuals, it fails to engage. I'll admit that Planet Terror resembles the bygone exploitation films much more closely than Tarantino’s Death Proof. Exploitation films are, first and foremost, defined by titillation and not by their substance. But I was hoping for something more. Instead of playing with the conventions of exploitation films and challenging the paradigm, as I wish he had done, Rodriguez merely created a new, more exaggerated exploitation flick. I could go on about other aspects that bothered me—biggest among them being the over-sexualization, visual dismemberment (through camera work) and flat affect of the female characters, which as a girl, felt instinctively misogynistic—but if I were to go into every point, I would be typing all day to the detriment of all else. When it comes down to it, my biggest gripe is that Planet Terror relies on its outlandish (though often ingenious) visuals to mask flat characters; and for a genre film, it doesn’t bring anything new to the table.

By contrast, Tarantino’s motorist killer film changes the rules of the game. Unlike the dime-store, slice-and-dice murderers featured in most slasher films, Tarantino chose a different kind of killer—a maniacal driver who stalks and gruesomely mows down beautiful girls. To be fair, the car-as-antagonist concept behind Death Proof isn’t the first of its kind. We’ve seen it before in Spielberg’s early film Duel and even, to a lesser extent, in arguably worse movies like Joyride. But regardless of how novel the concept may or may not be, the car enables Tarantino to experiment with his characters by erecting a necessary distance between the victims and the pursuer. The barrier of the car—this mediator between the killer and the victims—frames the story through the lens of sadistic voyeurism. Unlike, Rodriguez's film, where women are objectified for the viewer's pleasure, Tarantino objectifies women to expose the killer's twisted perspective. The viewing experience and the objectification are not about pure arousal, but about understanding the characters. Aside from all this, Tarantino's women are also much richer than Rodriguez's women. Tarantino's female victims are not slasher film archetypes. They are not flat, but rather dynamic. And it's not just the girls that are dynamic. The victim/predator relationship is not starkly defined, but is rather muddy and changeable. Tarantino is more concerned with nuance, less concerned with the obvious. But just in case you needed something that would really hit you, Tarantino gives you a killer closing shot, one that is nothing short of satisfying. I know this might make me unpopular, but at the end of the day, Tarantino gets my vote.