"Grindhouse" Lesson #1: A Chick Needs a Gun

By Lucia Bozzola, Apr 13, 2007
First, a preface. Whoever decided that the Robert Rodriguez-Quentin Tarantino double feature Grindhouse should be released Easter weekend needs to have his head examined. Of course it was a “disappointment.” Easter weekend is Family Time. Didn’t the Weinstein Company realize that Blades of Glory’s gay panic jokes and incest gags are far more wholesome entertainment than zombies and Kurt Russell? I mean, duh.

Not only did such holy day requirements as stuffing one’s face with as much chocolate and ham as humanly (or inhumanly) possible make it difficult to set aside more than three hours for the flicks, but you also couldn’t bring Grandma and Junior to see Bruce Willis sporting gooey pustules and Vanessa Ferlito shaking her booty. Will Ferrell finding new uses for his jockstrap and Will Arnett and Amy Poehler making out like the couple they are instead of the siblings they play? Hey, that’s just good clean fun for all ages. And you’re out (mercifully) in 90 minutes.

Harvey Weinstein should be smacked silly for that miscalculation because Grindhouse deserves to be seen in all its grimy glory in a theater. It’s funnier than Blades (my cat sleeping is funnier than Blades), more impressive technically than 300 (Tarantino even gets in a dig at CGI), and just as prone to blood-gushing ultra-violence as those Spartan hordes. The humor isn’t exactly highbrow, either. When you see the jar of amputated testicles in Planet Terror, you know its contents will be skittering around the ground sooner rather than later. Eli Roth’s hilariously vile faux horror trailer Thanksgiving is the stuff of Johnny Knoxville’s wildest, grossest dreams. In short, it’s just the kind of cheesy exploitation entertainment that the audience apparently loves. And yet…oh, bother. As usual, the mass in the middle of America can’t seem to handle truth in advertising. An exploitation film that actually cops to being an exploitation film? Perish the thought. And then line up for the next iterations of Saw and Jackass.

Unfortunately, that exploitation label, as well as the Rodriguez-Tarantino pedigree, might be turning off a potential audience for Grindhouse: women. Chicks. Gals. That’s too bad. Grindhouse itself provides a clue to why that may be so in the fake trailers that start it off and divide it up. Machete features a one-man killing machine who gets to relax with topless girls. Werewolf Women of the SS features more topless girls. Thanksgiving perpetrates all sorts of grotesque violence on female bodies. Big yuck. Rodriguez’s top half of the bill Planet Terror initially promises to be more of the same as Rose McGowan’s go-go dancer Cherry Darling puts the grind in Grindhouse under Planet Terror’s opening credits. Tarantino’s B feature Death Proof also begins rather inauspiciously with prolonged close-ups of Sydney Tamiia Poitier’s well-manicured bare feet. But then as the movies progress, and the reels that ostensibly contain the naked ladies and dirty dancing are “missing,” the boy directors’ ids let the girls go wild. And wouldn’t you know, the girls come out on top. With a vengeance. In the process, RR and QT deliver a cinematic lesson in female bonding, self-reliance, and kicking ass that puts most “chick flicks” to shame. It all boils down to three things.

1. A chick needs a gun. Tracie Thoms’s stuntwoman Kim says as much in one of Death Proof’s “Tarantino dialogue” scenes. And Planet Terror banks on it. Yes, plenty of heavily armed, if sparingly dressed, ladies join the fight against the zombies unleashed by macho military man Bruce Willis. But we all know what the money shot is: Cherry’s machine gun leg. She doesn’t disappoint. She can shoot that thing from the back of a motorcycle, spinning on the ground, and flying through the air. It isn’t just that she’s a great shot, either. When her shady true love Wray snaps it on her zombie-amputated thigh, he declares that he is giving her what she needs to fulfill her destiny. To be all she can be. And what does she use that tool to become? Why, the savior of humanity, complete in a Cherry of Arabia get-up that covers the Gatling she occasionally needs to wipe out a few leftover ghouls. That’s some destiny. Kim is a bit more small scale in her explanation for why she carries a piece: protection. She wants to do her laundry whenever she damn pleases, and she won’t allow the fear of a laundry room perv to get in her way. Granted, one can take issue with the use of weapons at all. But the lesson of Cherry and Kim is this: when the chips are down, girls, don’t hesitate to do what’s necessary to protect yourself. A girl can use a gun if she needs to—because as Kim notes, a girl with a knife facing a man with a gun is dead. It’s like one of those Ashley Judd thrillers…but clever.

2. A chick needs a sweet ride. Okay, this is more Death Proof than Planet Terror (although Cherry’s “useless” motorcycle-riding skill proves to be quite useful when she’s confronted with a pimped up chopper). Nevertheless, Death Proof is quite clear on this point and it’s the seed for one of the best action sequences to be had since Kill Bill Vol. 1. The two halves of Death Proof cover the same basic storyline: Kurt Russell’s malevolent Stuntman Mike stalks a group of four female friends in his black Dodge Charger because he intends to kill them for reasons known only to Tarantino and his therapist. The groups even consist of the same racial/ethnic mix: one African American woman, one Latina, and two white girls, at least one of whom is blonde. Tarantino is nothing if not equal opportunity in his fantasies of ass-kicking women. But it’s pretty clear that the second quartet (which includes the heat-packing Kim) may have a different fate from the first as soon as we see their car: a Mustang. A Mustang of approximately the same muscle car vintage as Mike’s Charger. Quite a change from the first group’s crappy red Honda Civic. The odds get even better when the girls temporarily trade up to a white Vanishing Point Dodge Challenger with the big block engine. As the adrenaline rush final chase deliriously shows, Stuntwoman Kim in the white Challenger is just as able to raise iron-crushing hell as Stuntman Mike in his black Charger. She, however, has an edge that Mike lacks: the other ladies in the car. Which leads to lesson number 3…

3. A chick needs her girls. This is one of the twists in Planet Terror that is quite refreshing. For all her sexy back, tough girl posturing, Cherry isn’t a catty bitch to other women. She forms a bond under pressure with Marley Shelton’s Dakota that is life-saving. Yes, lesbian Dakota probably thinks that Cherry is hot, but nevertheless, they are there for each other. And when Wray leaves Cherry one permanent companion with whom to take on the world, it’s their baby girl. Cherry may have the big gun, but she also has Dakota and her daughter (besides, men always do something flaky like die or become psychotic zombies). Death Proof takes it one better. It isn’t just the Honda that dooms Jungle Julia and her pals: it’s their eye for guys. Their desire to attract guys, whether it’s for a lap dance or some other assignation, constantly diverts their attention. They do keep their promise to each other for an all-girl weekend away, but by that point, it’s too late. Kim’s friends, including ace stuntwoman Zoë Bell as herself and Rosario Dawson as a makeup artist with a secret wild side, aren’t so distracted. They even get their own version of the legendary opening scene of Reservoir Dogs, as the camera tracks around their diner table in long takes while they chew the fat about all sorts of topics major and minor. That’s quite an honor in Tarantino land. They earn that honor as they band together to fight off Mike, with Kim driving, Zoë wielding assorted weaponry, and Dawson’s Abernathy joining in the verbal assault. The final scene is a double-barreled coup de grace for Mike. He’s reduced to shrieking like a girl as the Girls converge on his un-death proofed car. Then the Girls take turns beating the crap out of him. There’s no Thelma & Louise fate for these hard-driving ladies. Why? Because they’re in it together, and they are pissed.

So don’t let the gelatinous gore, copious weapons, teen boy titillations, and muscle car roar fool you, gals. Grindhouse is as much for you as it is for the guys whooping and hollering behind you. Now how cool is that?