Final Girl Film Club: Grindhouse (Spoilers alert!)

So I had already seen Grindhouse once before and interestingly enough at the time I found myself favoring Planet Terror over Death Proof, but after another round of gorey Tarantino goodness I must say the tables have definitely turned.

Death Proof I thought was pretty excellent for the most part, a film containing two separate plots centering around bootylicious babes getting stalked by this creepy dude who calls himself Stuntman Mike, who uses his "death proof" car to slice and dice his victims. I really enjoyed the first set of girls, the writing was obviously geared to be cliche girl bitchiness that strangely didn't annoy me much at all. The characters are engaging and edgy (not to mention provocative), the lap dance scene is raunchy and I love it, basically everything leading up to the inevitable climax of the plot where Stuntcreep Mike finally gets his kill on totally hooked me in. And holy crap, the way his car totally pulverized them was FANTASTICALLY gruesome! Rose McGowan is weird looking as a blonde and I felt sorry for her that she was dumb enough to get into a car that looked like THAT. I mean, come on, could you BE any easier to kill?? And with names like Jungle Julia and lines like "kinda cute, kinda hot, kinda sexy, hysterically funny, but not funny-looking guy who you could fuck", it was kind of hard not to love this movie. The second half of the film I did not like as much as the first, I don't know about everyone else but I'm certainly tired of the stereotypical kind of hot girl who's kind of really loud and obnoxious and makes her less hot, it's a vicious and tiresome cycle. However the ending where they kicked Stunt guy's ass was pretty superb.

As for Planet Terror, I remember really liking it the first time around but re-watching it I felt a little differently. Still good, and as most people in my life know I just cannot deny a zombie flick it's physically impossible for me! Anywho, the plot synopsis is as follows: after an experimental bio-nerve gas is accidentally released at a U.S. military base somewhere in butthole, Texas, those exposed to it turn into flesh-eating, puss-filled zombies that start eating everybody, natch. This ultimately brings a rather unique group of people together who have to join forces in order to survive. Rose McGowan (her character is named Cherry, p.s.) is back to being a badass brunette thank god, and Freddy Rodriguez is seriously amusing as a motorcycle riding, tattoo and leather jacket wearing "tough guy". The amount of gore in this film was actually a bit too much for me and the dialogue in some places was a tad too silly. However I loved the plot bunnies involving sexy big eyed blonde doctor, her psycho Josh Brolin hubby and stupid ass kid (or maybe stupid ass mom for giving him a gun in the first place, seriously you kind of asked for that to happen idiot) and Rose with a machine gun as a leg was just too amazing for words. This movie was totally campy and I loved it just for that. Camp is my fav. Other than that, the movie was a little TOO intentionally cheesy for my taste. I know I know, I've spent many posts on this blog gushing about how much I LOVE cheese. I also know that intentionally bad is kind of the whole point of these movies and I'm usually on board with the intentionally bad, but this I just had trouble dealing with. But still, good mindless action packed-ness in both films and like I said any zombie movie I really, truly enjoy. So I still had fun watching these movies despite how annoyed I was w/ loud mouth Tracie Thoms and how genuinely grossed out I was every time a zombie squeezed a puss-filled legion off its face. Ew.

In summary: As excited as I was to watch Grindhouse the first and then the second time, I think I've come to realize that it's just not up to par with most of the Tarantino films that I've come to know and love. But I don't regret watching it!