Film: Creature Feature

HOW much overlap is there between the readership of this magazine and the intended audience for Grindhouse, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s double-feature homage to the low-budget schlock films of their youth? I’m not sure. The two 80-minute movies, one by each director, winkingly recreate the kind of down-at-the-heels moviegoing experience that’s been more or less killed off by the multiplex and the video store. The result is a long in-joke for B-movie aficionados, complete with grainy footage, soundtracks that fade in and out, and big “Missing Reel” moments near the middle of each film. There are ads for fictional local restaurants filling the intermission, and trailers for imaginary exploitation films as well, with titles like Machete and Werewolf Women of the SS. And then there are the movies themselves: a zombie story from Rodriguez and a serial-killer flick from Tarantino, both of them raucous celebrations of speed, carnage, and pneumatic, a**-kicking babes.

Nothing much to see here, in other words, unless you’re itching to get in touch with your inner 13-year-old (and I’m not saying I wasn’t), or nostalgic for Times Square moviegoing circa 1977. Except that this is Quentin Tarantino, one of the most talented filmmakers of his generation, and so attention must be paid, if only to bear witness to the continued squander of a promising career.

About the Author

Ross Douthat

Ross Douthat is a former National Review contributing editor.

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HOW much overlap is there between the readership of this magazine and the intended audience for Grindhouse, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s double-feature homage to the low-budget schlock films of their youth? I’m not sure. The two 80-minute movies, one by each director, winkingly recreate the kind of down-at-the-heels moviegoing experience that’s been more or less killed off by the multiplex and the video store. The result is a long in-joke for B-movie aficionados, complete with grainy footage, soundtracks that fade in and out, and big “Missing Reel” moments near the middle of each film. There are ads for fictional local restaurants filling the intermission, and trailers for imaginary exploitation films as well, with titles like Machete and Werewolf Women of the SS. And then there are the movies themselves: a zombie story from Rodriguez and a serial-killer flick from Tarantino, both of them raucous celebrations of speed, carnage, and pneumatic, a**-kicking babes.

Nothing much to see here, in other words, unless you’re itching to get in touch with your inner 13-year-old (and I’m not saying I wasn’t), or nostalgic for Times Square moviegoing circa 1977. Except that this is Quentin Tarantino, one of the most talented filmmakers of his generation, and so attention must be paid, if only to bear witness to the continued squander of a promising career.