The Plot:

  Grindhouse is a double feature and both “flicks” pay homage to the low-quality, horror/action pictures of the seventies and early eighties. 
  Planet Terror, directed by Robert Rodriquez (Desperado, Spy Kids and Sin City) gets things started with a tale about a government engineered airborne weapon that turns victims into zombies. Cherry Darling (Rose McGowan),  an exotic dancer with a penchant for cracking jokes, and her knife wielding, martial arts expert ex-boyfriend Wray (Freddie Dominguez) must lead a band of survivors into  the heart of the “old military base” to abscond with a pair of helicopters in an effort to get to safety. Standing in their way is the sadistic Lt. Muldoon (Bruce Willis) and his platoon of evil zombie soldiers.
  After a brief intermission of fake movie trailers including a memorable Werewolf Women of the SS, the second feature, Deathproof (directed by Quentin Tarantino) introduces the audience to Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) a movie stuntman/serial killer who has developed a talent and desire to pick up beautiful women in bars, then trash his “death proof” car. Of course the car is only death proof for Mike.

The Point:

  Besides being more thrifty than a leprechaun with a high-yield savings account, I’m all for trying new things or even bringing back old things and trying them again in a different way. So the concept of paying for one movie and getting two instantly appealed to me. However, I didn’t count on both movies being full-feature length. If there is one thing I have learned in my years in the entertainment/media business (plus my very brief stint in the fast food business) it is that people tend to like information in small digestible bites. This is my only real complaint about this movie. If either, or preferably both, movies had been edited to a shorter overall runtime I believe the movie would have a lot more marketability and retention for its target aud Ex-wife, ex-woman wants alimonyience. 
  Most critics agree that Deathproof (Tarantino) is far and away the better of the two features in Grindhouse. I am not one of those critics. Deathproof is very good and manages to be far less gory and repugnant than Planet Terror (probably one of the reasons I didn’t like it as much). But the former is way too long. In act the first half hour of Deathproof is a waste of time to demonstrate the mere fact that Stuntman Mike is charming yet psychotic. This is something that was reiterated with two minutes of screen time and one line of dialogue later in the film.
  Planet Terror, on the other hand, left me in just the right frame of mind to “get the joke” that the director (Rodriguez) was trying to tell me.
  While this film had two features each directed by a different guy, three other directors: Rob Zombie, Eli Roth and Edgar Wright, each directed a fake movie trailer for the intermission. Of course the one thing this movie didn’t seem to have was an editor.