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Grindhouse is a 2007 film. In the United States, the film is presented as a double feature of two full-length segments, one being a zombie film, Planet Terror, written and directed by Robert Rodriguez, and the other being a slasher film, Death Proof, written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, with faux trailers advertising fictional films preceding each segment. In much of the rest of the world, the film will be split in two and each feature will be released separately.[2][3]
History and development
The film's name originates from the American term for theaters that would play "all the exploitation genres: kung fu, horror, Italian horror—also known as giallo—sexploitation, the "good old boy" redneck car-chase movies, blaxploitation, spaghetti Westerns—all those risible genres that were released in the 70s."[5] According to Rodriguez, "The posters were much better than the movies, but we're actually making something that lives up to the posters."[4] Rodriguez first came up with the idea for Planet Terror during the production of The Faculty. "I remember telling Elijah Wood and Josh Hartnett, all these young actors, that zombie movies were dead and hadn't been around in a while, but that I thought they were going to come back in a big way because they’d been gone for so long," recalls Rodriguez. "I said, 'We've got to be there first.' I had [a script] I’d started writing. It was about 30 pages, and I said to them, 'There are characters for all of you to play.' We got all excited about it, and then I didn't know where to go with it. The introduction was about as far as I'd gotten, and then I got onto other movies. Sure enough, the zombie [movie] invasion happened and they all came back again, and I was like, 'Ah, I knew that I should've made my zombie film.'" The story was reapproached when Tarantino and Rodriguez developed the idea for Grindhouse.[4] During the time Planet Terror began to come together, Tarantino developed the story of Death Proof. Tarantino was fascinated by the way stuntmen would "death-proof" their cars so they can be driven headfirst into a brick wall at 60 mph and still protect the driver—as long as he's in the driver's seat. This inspired Tarantino to create a slasher film featuring a deranged stuntman who stalks and murders sexy young women with his "death-proof" car.[4] Tarantino remembers, "I realized I couldn't do a straight slasher film, because with the exception of women-in-prison films, there is no other genre quite as rigid. And if you break that up, you aren't really doing it anymore. It's inorganic, so I realized—let me take the structure of a slasher film and just do what I do. My version is going to be fucked up and disjointed, but it seemingly uses the structure of a slasher film, hopefully against you."[5]
ProductionRodriguez began filming Planet Terror in Austin, Texas, in March 2006. Director Tarantino began filming Death Proof in June 2006. The first ever footage was shown at 2006's Comic Con and then was aired a few months later, on October 10, 2006, on Spike TV's Scream Awards. Rodriguez and Tarantino were also honored with awards. Quentin Tarantino attempted to cast both Kal Penn[6] and Sylvester Stallone[7] in Death Proof, but both were unable to work due to prior commitments. Originally, Rodriguez and Tarantino had planned to make all of the film's fake trailers themselves. According to Rodriguez, "We had so many ideas for trailers. I made Machete. I shot lobby cards and the poster and cut the trailer and sent it to Quentin, and he just flipped out because it looked so vintage and so real. He started showing it around to Eli Roth and to Edgar Wright, and they said, 'Can we do a trailer? We have an idea for a trailer!' We were like, 'Hey, let them shoot it. If we don't get around to shooting ours, we'll put theirs in the movie. If theirs comes out really great, we'll put it in the movie to have some variety.' Then Rob Zombie came up to me in October at the Scream Awards and said, 'I have a trailer: Werewolf Women of the SS.' I said, 'Say no more. Go shoot it. You got me.'"[4] During editing, Tarantino and Rodriguez came up with the idea of inserting "missing reels" into the film. "[Quentin] was about to show an Italian crime movie with Oliver Reed," Rodriguez recalls, "and he was saying, 'Oh, it's got a missing reel in it. But it's really interesting because after the missing reel, you don't know if he slept with a girl or he didn't because she says he did and he says that he didn't. It leaves you guessing, and the movie still works with 20 minutes gone out of it.' I thought, 'Oh, my God, that's what we’ve got to do. We've got to have a missing reel!' I'm going to use in it in a way where it actually says 'missing reel' for 10 seconds, and then when we come back, you're arriving in the third act. [...] The late second acts in movies are usually the most predictable and the most boring, that's where the good guy really turns out to be the bad guy, and the bad guy is really good, and the couple becomes friends. Suddenly, though, in the third act, all bets are off and it's a whole new story anyway."[4] Grindhouse is rated R in the United States for strong graphic bloody violence and gore, pervasive language, some sexuality, nudity and drug use. On March 15, 2007, The New York Post reported the film may require heavy and extensive cuts in order to avoid an NC-17 rating.[8] Shortly after, the film officially received an R rating from the MPAA. According to Ain't It Cool News, only minimal cuts were made which ended up totaling 20 seconds according to Tarantino.[9] Musical scoreRodriguez revealed at Comic-Con 2006 that inspiration for his score came from music composed by John Carpenter. Rodriguez said that during the filming of Planet Terror, Carpenter's music was often played on set.[10] Planet TerrorPlotSpoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
Two unhappily married doctors, William (Josh Brolin) and Dakota Block (Marley Shelton), find that their small Texas town is overrun by people covered in suspicious sores. They come across a wounded woman by the name of Cherry Darling (Rose McGowan), a go-go dancer who lost her leg in a creature attack, and her boyfriend El Wray (Freddy Rodriguez). As the 'zombies' become more and more aggressive, Wray and Cherry - after Cherry is outfitted with an automatic weapon doubling as a prosthetic leg (a M4 assault rifle with an attached M203 grenade launcher) - lead a group of survivors to a nearby military base and encounter a rogue military unit, led by the deranged Lt. Muldoon (Bruce Willis). The unit - infected with the chemical weapon catalyst of the outbreak - quarantines the survivors, convinced that within them lies the answer for a concrete cure. Eventually an escape plan is hatched, during which Wray and a number of others die. The last surivors, including a pregnant Cherry, escape by helicopter and establish a refuge on the coast of Mexico. Spoilers end here.
. Cast
Soundtrack
The soundtrack to Planet Terror was released on April 3rd from Varèse Sarabande, though the score managed to sell on iTunes a week early.
Death ProofPlotSpoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
Death Proof features a psychotic killer named Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell), whose modus operandi is to kill young women with his souped-up cars (a 1971 Chevy Nova SS and a 1970 Dodge Charger). He achieves this by "death proofing" the cars; reinforcing the driving compartment in a manner similar to stunt drivers in action films. After stalking and brutally killing local Austin D.J. Jungle Julia (Sydney Tamiia Poitier, her friends Arlene and Shanna (Vanessa Ferlito and Jordan Ladd), and hitchhiker Pam (Rose McGowan), Stuntman Mike flees to Tennessee and finds a new group of girls. Among his new targets are actress Lee (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), makeup artist Abernathy (Rosario Dawson), and stuntwomen Kim (Tracie Thoms) and Zoë Bell (who plays herself in the film). After a failed attempt to kill the girls while they test drive a 1971 Dodge Challenger, Stuntman Mike is badly injured in a wreck, after which he is beaten to death by Zoë, Kim, and Abernathy. Several actors from Planet Terror make appearances in Death Proof, including Rose McGowan, Quentin Tarantino, Michael Parks, Electra and Elise Avellan, and Marley Shelton. The "Skull & Lightning Bolts" logo used on the car in the film's Death Proof poster is inspired by the "Skull & Chopsticks" logo used in the international kung fu comedy tv and dvd series known as Kung Faux. Cast
Soundtrack
The soundtrack was also released on April 3 from Maverick Records. It also includes trademark audio snippets from the film.
Faux trailersSpoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
Before both segments there will be trailers advertising fake films. According to Rodriguez, it was Tarantino's idea to film fake trailers for Grindhouse. "I didn't even know about it until I read it in the trades. It said something like 'Rodriguez and Tarantino doing a double feature and Tarantino says there's gonna be fake trailers.' And I thought, 'There are?'"[5] MacheteImage:N503701224 33711 16.jpg Danny Trejo in Machete. In an interview with Danny Trejo, the actor said that he will be in a fake trailer for a movie called Machete. It was later announced that the trailer will be made as a direct-to-DVD feature film.[11] This continues a theme for Trejo's characters in Rodriguez movies who often have knife-like names, such as Razor Charlie in From Dusk Till Dawn, Razor Eddie From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money, Navajas (Spanish for knives) in Desperado and indeed Machete in Spy Kids.[12] Rodriguez wrote Machete in 1993 as a full feature for Trejo. "I had cast him in Desperado and I remember thinking, 'Wow, this guy should have his own series of Mexican exploitation movies like Charles Bronson or like Jean Claude Van Damme.' So I wrote him this idea of a federale from Mexico who gets hired to do hatchet jobs in the U.S. I had heard sometimes FBI or DEA have a really tough job that they don't want to get their own agents killed on, they'll hire an agent from Mexico to come do the job for $25,000. I thought, 'That's Machete. He would come and do a really dangerous job for a lot of money to him but for everyone else over here it's peanuts.' But I never got around to making it."[5]
ThanksgivingImage:N503701224 42725 6621.jpg Vendula Kristek in Thanksgiving. Eli Roth contributed a promo for the slasher opus Thanksgiving, starring Jeff Rendell as the villainous Pilgrim, Jordan Ladd, Jay Hernandez, and Roth himself as his intended victims, and Michael Biehn as the Sheriff. According to Roth, "My friend Jeff, who plays the killer pilgrim—we grew up in Massachusetts, we were huge slasher movie fans and every November we were waiting for the Thanksgiving slasher movie. We had the whole movie worked out: A kid who's in love with a turkey and then his father killed it and then he killed his family and went away to a mental institution and came back and took revenge on the town. I called Jeff and said, 'Dude, guess what, we don't have to make the movie, we can just shoot the best parts.'"[5] The design for the titles in Thanksgiving were based on a Mad magazine slasher parody entitled Arbor Day.[5]
Werewolf Women of the S.S.Image:FuManchu1.jpg Nicolas Cage in Werewolf Women of the S.S.. Rob Zombie contributed a faux trailer called Werewolf Women of the S.S., featuring Nicolas Cage as Fu Manchu, Udo Kier as SS officer Franz Hess, and Zombie's wife, Sheri Moon Zombie, and Sybil Danning as SS officers/sisters Eva (The Black Widow of Berlin) and Gretchen Krupp, along with wrestlers Andrew Martin and Vladimir Kozlov, and Olja Hrustic, Meriah Nelson, and Lorielle New as the Werewolf Women. According to Zombie, "Basically, I had two ideas. It was either going to be a Nazi movie or a women-in-prison film, and I went with the Nazis. There's all those movies like Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS; Fraulein Devil; and Love Camp 7—I've always found that to be the most bizarre genre."[5]
Don'tShaun of the Dead director Edgar Wright contributed a trailer called Don't, a 1970's Britsploitation meets Mondo trailer.[13] The trailer features appearances from Jason Isaacs, Matthew MacFadyen, singer Katie Melua, Georgina Chapman, Emily Booth, Stuart Wilson, Lucy Punch, Wright regulars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost and a voice-over by Will Arnett.[14] According to Wright, "In the '70s, when American International would release European horror films, they'd give them snazzier titles. And the one that inspired me was this Jorge Grau film: In the UK, it's called The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue. In Spain and in Italy, I think it's called Do Not Speak Ill of the Dead. But in the States, it was called Don't Open the Window. I just loved the fact that there isn't a big window scene in the film—it's all based around the spin and the voiceover not really telling you what the hell is going on in the film."[5]
Spoilers end here.
Grindhouse split controversy
During the 2007 Berlin Film Festival, Glen Basner, responsible for international releases for The Weinstein Company, made clear that the film would be split in two in non-English speaking countries. The films would be called Grindhouse: Planet Terror and Grindhouse: Death Proof, and will be released approximately 2 months apart.[15] The Faux trailers for Death Proof will be directed by Rodriguez, while those for Planet Terror will be by Tarantino. No mention was made of the trailers by Roth or Zombie.[16][17] European fans of Tarantino have expressed their outrage in film forums and with online petitions, with many suggesting they will boycott the films, or possibly illegally download them. While The Weinstein Company has stated that the film will be split because non American audiences have no experience with the concept of double features, many in Europe see it as an attempt to increase profits by forcing audiences to pay twice for a film that is shown as a single entity in the United States.[18] Sequel possibilitiesBoth Rodriguez and Tarantino have said that they are interested in making a sequel to Grindhouse.[19] Tarantino said that he wants to shoot an "old-school Kung Fu movie in Mandarin with subtitles" for his segment.[20] References
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