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Life & Arts

Double the blood with ‘Grindhouse'

Movies on biblical plagues, the Holocaust serve as alternatives for those who want to avoid vivid gore

by JACOB BRISSE 
The Daily Cougar 

Few studios would be so brazen as to schedule their films for release at the same time, as is the case with Grindhouse.

What is this Grindhouse of which the television speaks? It takes its name from theaters known for showing nonstop double feature B-rated exploitation films. Grindhouse is divided into three parts. The first is fake trailers for bad movies, which come before and between the two films. The second is Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror, complete with added film scratches, missing reels and gore that's equal parts amusing and disgusting. 

Cherry Darling (Rose McGowan), a go-go dancer in a parallel-universe of Austin, runs into her aggressive ex-boyfriend El Wray (Freddy Rodriguez) just as the town is struck by a chemical weapons attack. Those resistant to the plague are left to fight off the infected as they try to escape while a married team of doctors works overtime to find a cure. Zombie heads fly, and Cherry's leg is torn off and replaced with a machine gun that doubles as a rocket launcher. 

The third part of the Grindhouse is Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof, which slows things way down with lengthy sections of nothing but four women sitting in a bar talking Tarantino-speak. Then Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) shows up. He's got a stunt car that's "death proof" and a personality that's part serial killer, part lecherous old man. 

He follows the girls around, making conversation and killing them with his car. Then the whole thing starts over again with a different set of girls. This time, though, Mike's messed with the wrong chicks. One of them (Zoe Bell) just happens to be a real-life stuntwoman, and the four go after Stuntman Mike, resulting in a colossal car chase sequence.

There are, however, a few other films coming out this week. Black Book follows Rachel Stein (Carice van Houten), a Jewish orphan, and her exploits as an undercover agent for the Dutch resistance in WWII. It's a story full of greed, lust, conspiracy, counter conspiracy and counter-counter conspiracy. It's also quite possibly the most glamorous movie ever made about the Holocaust.

The Reaping features Hillary Swank as a Christian missionary who lost her faith and now works as a myth buster, traveling the world and disproving religious phenomena. She hasn't found a case she can't solve until she travels to a small Louisiana town beset by the biblical plagues, where she realizes perhaps only her faith can save her.

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