Today I’ll be talking about both Death Proof and Planet Terror.  There is really no way to separate the two for those of us who remember the theatrical experience.  Thus, a two day post.

As I’ve discovered many times in my life so far, I don’t know everything geeky.  Every single day there’s a good chance I will discover a whole new world of delights.  Sometimes its a brand new property.  Other times, like this time, its my opening into a whole new world that has existed for decades.  And yes, this can happen every day.  Just yesterday I found out about the trippy world that is the TMNT anime.

Anyways, as publicity for this film builds I learn about the Grindhouses.  Movie theaters that showed the sexy, the bloody, the over the top, but the nonstop fun movies of the day.  I had heard of some of the bigger titles, but had no idea this was a genre.  Suddenly cheap public domain sets began springing up for sale everywhere.  I wasn’t sold yet.  I needed to have this marathon experience in a theater.

I went with a group of fellow geeks, and we took massive pees just to be sure that nothing would interrupt our, ahem, flow, of enjoying 3 to 4 hours of this film.  It started out with a bang and never let down.  First the trailers, and forgive me for forgetting the order in which they aired.  But that doesn’t really matter.  It was like a short film class taken by all the great genre directors of today.  Rob Zombie and Eli Roth.  “Don’t” and Machete and of course Hobo with a Shotgun (or did that come later?).  Thanksgiving is still one of the grosser yet hysterical things I’ve ever seen.

Then that classic 70s groove plays, the kind I love so much when its sampled on the Danger Doom CD (Danger Mouse and MF Doom’s Adult Swim tribute album.  Amazing.)  Tonight’s feature presentation is about to begin.

Planet Terror starts off with a bang.  Then never stops.  Even quiet moments have an aura of something will happen any second.   You cant relax for a moment.  Gun runners and crazy doctors.  Affairs and sex.  Then of course there’s the zombies.  Its so gross and sexy and beyond over the top.  Every moment someone is getting their head or balls shot off.  Someone loses a leg, or breaks their hand, or a kid dies.  Then the zombies come and its shoot in the most violent bloody way possible or be eaten.  Right in the middle there is the now classic “missing real” gag.

Then Death Proof comes roaring in.  Its the exact opposite and yet so similar.  It starts off very quiet, with a lot of talking.  There’s relationships built, characters developed.  Its really rather deep.  Then they all fucking die in a horrible crash.  And the whole first act of the movie doesn’t mean a damn thing.  So we follow a new group, and the same now more than established villain.  There’s a lot more talking to be sure but now we want that build up again.  We need the tension to mount just to make it all the more exciting when we get to it.  This has become so big it is now a capital IT.  The car chase of all car chases.  Its dramatic, scary, and Zoe Bell has the biggest balls of anyone on earth, man or woman, for doing the stunts she did.

Friend and fellow Hellions, Sweet Matty Treats, said of the movies: “Planet Terror is like going to McDonalds.  I wanted something and I got it, fast and cheap and all over me.  Death Proof is like ordering a fine steak and then waiting, growing in anticipation, being patient until it comes out.  Both are enjoyable meals, but in vastly different ways.”  That has become my opinion of these movies.  I love them both dearly.  However the steak and hamburger platter of the full movie is the best way to go about watching them.