So yesterday I'm sitting at home...bored out of my mind...but it's too cold and windy to go out for a walk or anything. So I think "why not take a ride up to the mall?" I figured I'd grab a slice of pizza there and just hang around, check out a few of my favorite stores. Just to get out of the house and kill some time.
The bus is pulling into the mall parking lot where I notice there are very few cars. It's then that I remember it's Easter Sunday and all the stores are closed ! D'oh ! Now what do I do? I go into the mall anyway and see that the movie theater at least is open. Not much playing that sounds interesting...but "GRINDHOUSE" is set to start in just about 20 minutes. Got a ticket and headed in--but still haven't eaten and I know that this movie runs for 3 hours ! I hate to pay the ridiculous prices at the movie snack bar, but need something to hold me 'til I get home. I settle for a hot dog and medium Coke, which ends up costing $8.75 ! Ouch! And the so-called "medium" Coke is at least a quart of soda (free refills too, who needs that much to drink?) I hate to think what a large must be. They probably just hook you up directly to the soda machine and pump the soda to you through a tube.
Anyway, it turned out to be worth it ! GRINDHOUSE is a surprisingly entertaining double feature consisting of "Planet Terror" and "Death Proof", along with several fake movie trailers. Planet Terror is a very gory zombie movie so if exploding zombies and flying body parts is not your thing, you would not want to see this movie. Death Proof has it's share of gore too, but to a lesser extent, but has plenty of action and explosions as well.
This type of low-budget horror action films were shown a lot during the 1970's at drive-in theaters. But what I was reminded of was when I bought my first VCR (a Sanyo Betamax format) back in 1985. At that time the major movie studios would not allow their films to be put out on videotape as they thought it would keep people from going to theaters to see them. So about the only movies you could rent (other than porn) were old horror/sci-fi flicks or these type of "grindhouse" movies. A friend and I rented a number of these types of movies at the time--I was the only one with a VCR. Most of them had very little in the way of plots, just lots of action, violence and gory scenes. "Grindhouse" fits that bill perfectly.
While this double feature is not for everyone, I found them to be a mindless, entertaining fun time and the 3 hours went by so quickly I barely noticed. The violence and gore is so over-the-top that it becomes comical--sort of like an "Itchy & Scratchy" cartoon from "The Simpsons". And the audience in the theater responded with plenty of laughter throughout the movie.
By the way, that poster at the top--I designed it at the GRINDHOUSE website. It's a pretty cool site, check it out if this movie sounds good to you.
And speaking of grinds, tomorrow it's back to the grind for me as I have to return to work after Spring Break week.
Talk about HORROR !!!
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