After all the fun we had in our discussion about Death Proof, I broke down and watched Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror. If I was tepid on Tarantino’s films before Death Proof, my feelings towards Rodriguez’s work was bordering on hostile. Once again, however, I found myself enjoying the other Grindhouse movie immensely. I personally favor Death Proof because the narrative is so much crazier in many ways and the feel is much rawer and less produced. Nonetheless, I thoroughly enjoyed Planet Terror, and particularly for scenes like the one below:
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Riffing on the clip, Planet Terror (unlike Death Proof) is very much a filmed video game in terms of action, narrative time, and violence. More than that, Rodriguez was not only quoting other horror/alien zombie films he was mashing them up. During the scenes in the hospital I couldn’t help thinking about how he was crossing Dawn of the Dead with Halloween III: Season of the Witch (my favorite Halloween by the way). In fact, these films are moving further away from referencing other films, and closer to actually mashing the originals up. Isn’t that the logical next step?
I agree with what you say entirely, is it so hard to do, or so much to ask, for a film maker to spend more time being creative and think up something mor eoriginal? The older horror movies (and i knwo that death proof and planet terror are by no means horror, more like pseudo-horror mach-funny) from the 60s, 70s, and evene arly 80s, are the true gems of the horror genre in my opinion. At least, they are the most disturbing ones in my opinion.
cheers!
Landon,
I’m with you on this. And while Tarantino and Rodriguez are over-th-top as you suggest, they have a real affection for those films that very few other filmmakers do in our moment. With all the bad films coming out now, I would imagine some of them would capitalize on the tradition of bad movies, but they act like they are making their bad movies in a vacuum, the worst kind of bad movie in my opinion.
I dare say that I have lost faith in Hollywood in recent years. We see things cut and put in the wrong place, a person who only had one line originally is suddenly a main character, or something else happens to detract from the overall worth of the movie. That’s the reason I stopped going to movie theatres. If I want to see crap, I could go to any restroom in the world for a lot cheaper.
I shudder at the thought of some of my favorite books becoming movies – like the Hunger Games – and am wary of it. I also am almost glad that they weren’t able to detract from Halo by making a movie.