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Grindhouse
Dimension Films / The Weinstein Company


7.3

based on 36 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 234 votes
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FILM:

MPAA RATING: R for strong graphic, bloody violence and gore, pervasive language, some sexuality, nudity and drug use

Starring Rose McGowan, Freddy Rodríguez, Josh Brolin, Marley Shelton, Jeff Fahey, Michael Biehn, Naveen Andrews, Stacy Ferguson, and Nicky Katt

An homage to exploitation B-movie thrillers that combines two feature-length segments into one double-bill designed to replicate the grind house theatergoing experience of the 70s and 80s.

GENRE(S):	Action \| Crime \| Horror \| Sci-fi \| Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	Robert Rodriguez (segment Planet Terror and fake trailer segment Machete), Quentin Tarantino (segment Death Proof), Eli Roth (fake trailer segment Thanksgiving), Edgar Wright (fake trailer segment) and Rob Zombie (fake trailer segment Werewolf Women of the S.S.)
DIRECTED BY:	Robert Rodriguez (segment Planet Terror) Quentin Tarantino (segment Death Proof)
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: October 16, 2007 Theatrical: April 6, 2007
RUNNING TIME:	185 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

Also known as "Grind House"

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

Village Voice Nathan Lee

This monumentally pointless movie is best summarized by a line from Planet Terror: "At some point in your life, you find a use for every useless talent you have." Rodriguez, Tarantino, and Co. aim for nothing more noble than to freak the funk, and it's about godd--- time. Go wasted, go stoned, go without your parents' permission. In paying homage to an obsolete form of movie culture, Grindhouse delivers a dropkick to ours.

100

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Grindhouse, like "Ed Wood" and "Boogie Nights," celebrates how certain low-grade entertainment, viewed in hindsight, looks different now than it did then, since we can see the ''innocence'' of its creation -- the handmade quality of it -- in a world not yet ruled by corporate technology.

100

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

I suspect that Death Proof will throw some of its director's admirers for a loop, though it may be the most revealing thing Tarantino has yet done -- a full-throttle expression of a singular artistic temperament disguised, like so many gems of grindhouses yore, as a glittering hunk of trash.

Film Threat Mark Bell

The only criticism that seems to merit any real discussion is whether directors Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino actually did make real grindhouse-style fare. To whit, I can easily say: yes, they not only made two on-point grindhouse films, they did them to painful perfection.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

We need filmmakers who can move us forward even as they maintain a sense of the past. To that end, Grindhouse captures a bit of rowdy movie history in a bell jar.

Slate Dana Stevens

You don't need to be an exploitation fanboy to appreciate the energy, imagination, and spirit with which Rodriguez and Tarantino pay homage to the cheapo cinema they love.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Tarantino and Rodriguez want you to cover your eyes in disbelief and get the unholy giggles at the same time. You do, but in two very different ways, and that's the movie's strength.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Critics are already comparing the two movies and largely agreeing that Tarantino?s story about a psychopathic stuntman who targets women for highway carnage is the best. I disagree.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

By stooping low without selling out, this babes-and-bullets tour de force gets you high on movies again.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

As much as I enjoyed much of it, I hope Grindhouse doesn't start any trends. Exploitation cinema is combustible stuff that only highly trained professionals should be permitted to play with.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

In all, it's a fun exercise in nostalgia but a three-hour homage to grade Z movies is a long sit. Grunge overload sets in early.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

Like the best of its forebears, Grindhouse contains thrills to keep viewers in their seats, plus moments to think about on the ride home, which will probably seem unusually fraught with peril.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

The fun is in the one-thing-after-another delirium the movie induces, and in our breathless anticipation of what they'll hurl at us next.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Planet Terror delivers only momentary kicks...while Tarantino's Death Proof is a juicy, delicious treat, its pleasures stem much less from the play with genre conventions than from great dialogue and electric performances.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Value has been added as well -- the most thrilling car chase ever committed to film, a sequence that also shows, by cutting to the psychosexual chase, why fans embraced the tawdry genre in the first place.

Los Angeles Times Dennis Lim

A fascinating exercise in genre reinvention, a showcase for two radically different approaches to homage.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Gives dumpster-divers a chance to slum in the antiseptic safety of a multiplex. (Planet Terror ** (out of four) / Death Proof ***1/2 (out of four).

New York Post Lou Lumenick

To get to the best part first, Tarantino's adrenaline-pumping "Death Proof" is actually a good movie that - unlike Rodriguez's "Planet Terror," - rethinks its genre in ways that say something to contemporary audiences. And it's got some of Tarantino's best dialogue since "Pulp Fiction."

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Overall, Grindhouse may well be the Beatlemania of sleaze-movie viewing, but since the real thing is gone it's the best that many fans will ever have.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Where Planet Terror is all hollow, self-conscious homage, Death Proof is the work of a director striving to make something original while remaining true to the movies that influenced him. It is also, once it gets going, terrific, sensational fun -- precisely the vibe Grindhouse aims for, but only sporadically attains.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The kind of movie where it's necessary to put aside pretensions and enjoy the product on its terms, with all the sexiness, violence, gore, and camp as part of the parcel. This is three-plus hours of gleeful-but-guilty escapism.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Though it could probably use an intermission, Grindhouse is three hours of mostly campy fun.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

What's not to love?

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

It's inconsistent fun, and it's a little too layered with self-congratulatory irony to be truly transporting.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

The Rodriguez segment is terrific; the Tarantino one long-winded and juvenile.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

The obsessive crosshatching of allusion, spoof and homage that gives Grindhouse its texture is the product of a highly refined generational sensibility.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

If you were keeping score, it would be Quentin Tarantino 1, Robert Rodriguez 0.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Grindhouse raises the bar for a certain kind of movie lollapalooza (and also for the kind of filmmaker who is also a showman, along the lines of a William Castle or Cecil B. De Mille). It's this injection of playfulness and fun and attention to the entire movie-going gestalt that will probably become Grindhouse's lasting contribution to movie history rather than any on-the-screen content of the movie itself.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Cool. Stupid. Juiced-up. Feeble. Stripped-down. Self-indulgent. Clever. Sophomoric.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

The best fake trailer, and Grindhouse's high point, is Edgar ( Shaun of the Dead) Wright's tone-perfect parody of inviting taboos, entitled "Don't."

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Their exhaustive tribute to hungry zombies, fast girls and faster cars is . . . exhausting, if intermittently entertaining.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Both impressive and disappointing. From a technical and craft point of view it is first-rate; from its standing in the canon of the two directors, it is minor.

The New Yorker David Denby

The movie won't do much for anyone who doesn't have an academic or fanboy absorption in junk.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

I enjoyed the invented trailers the directors fold into the mix, but despite the jokey "missing reels," these two full-length features are each 20 minutes longer than they need to be, and neither one makes much sense as narrative.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

The films are bloody, stupid and buoyant in a kind of infantile way, celebrating mayhem, flesh and gore. Planet Terror is by far the livelier.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

The mock trailers are for impossibly schlocky Z-movies with titles like "Machete," "Don't Scream," "Thanksgiving" and "Werewolf Women of the S.S." They're by far the funniest part of the program, possibly because they're mercifully brief.

The average user rating for this movie is 7.3 (out of 10) based on 234 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

the dude gave it a9:
Great movie. You can watch it as it was shown in theatres (both movies together, with fake trailers) on Starz On Demand.

Mike C. gave it a10:
garbage, absolute rubbish. tarintino needs to go back to the drawing board and realise what was good about pulp fiction, jackie brown, resovoir dogs and the like was the fact that they were more than just mindless violence. hes trying to hard to be retro and harking bk to old horror flicks but failing miserably

fsafasfafdgdfgfger3 gave it a4:
This double feature was overall pretty poor. The best parts, with out doubt, were the trailers. I loved 'Machete' and everything about that two minute clip was gold. "Planet Terror" took a little while to heat up and for the first half I was seriously contemplating leaving as I was that bored. However after a sex scene stops abruptly due to 'lost footage', the movie becomes an entertaining and over the top gory horror comedy. Even the terribly cliche characters and intentionally bad dialogue works well in both mimicking the zombie - genre films and in achieving laughs from the audience. The film carries Robert Rodriguez's trade mark of over the top gore, wacky and comedic violence and pretty outrageous and funny characters. Quentin Tarantino's 'Death Proof' starts mundane and ends pretty much the same way. A poor attempt of trying to mimick the the slasher / thriller genre. Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction were clearly Tarantino's pinnacle in script writing, as they were packed with cleverly well written dialogue. Jackie Brown was a bit long winded and Kill Bill Vol.1 and 2 were pretty much a waste of time, with some fun action but poor and unlikeable characters and useless and drawn-out banter. Death Proof marks Tarantino's fall as a great script writer. More or less the movie focuses on two seperate groups of 4 girls girls. The first four girls hang around a bar and just talk endlessly about scoring weed, their boyfriends, lapdances and their opinion of the movie's antagonist , Mike the Stuntsman, who is hanging around the bar. The dialogue is completely unintelligent and pointless and the characters poorly developed. The second half focuses on a completely unrelated group of girls and their attempts of trying to convince a man in allowing them to test - ride his car. Overall there's maybe around 10 minutes worth of action in Death Proof and it's atrociously bad, mainly involving the antagonist purposely crashing his car into victims or knock them off the road. It takes absolutely no inspiration from similiar and much better movies, such as Spielberg's 'Dual'. This is without doubt the most boring thriller / slasher movie ever made and overall 'Death Proof' truly deserves its total score of 0 (the score of 4 was given to Planet Terror only, while Death Proof doesn't deserve anything). Both movies were also plagued by Tarantino's presence, as he played semi - leads. In Terror Planet he played a zombie with a lot of dialogue, but his voice is far too soft and feminine to play this badass, touchy and aggresive character. In Death Proof he played a bar owner and clearly demonstrated his poor acting ability. Overall Rodriguez's Planet Terror get's 4 / 5, as it was a bit slow to begin with but overall was more satisfying and fun than most zombie movies preceding it. Death Proof gets 0 as it was one of the worst movies I've seen in years, a thriller that doesn't even fulfill the basic criteria of it's genre - lots of action and not too much discussion. Even then the level of dialogue would have been fine if it was interesting, but it wasn't, instead maintaining a continuous monotonous boring drawl.

Helena I gave it a7:
I can only talk about 'death proof'. Forget the first story and enjoy the second.

Lizzy S. gave it a0:
Trash!!!its not worth my time,and my money! Completely useless!very indecent!full of exploitation,violence,not worth seeing, I'm sorry,but that's what i think of this movie.

Rayna S. gave it a0:
I don't like this movie,in fact i hate it!!!!! i dont see why the other users gave it 8,9 or 10?what is so fantastic about this movie?Zombie's eating flesh?!!!wow.that's really awesome!!! i personally gave it a 0 mark because for me its a trash!!! ok,its a horror,but can't we have a decent horror movie?(yuck!!!)the acting,the dialogue etc!what is it the others comment?funny and great?it surely was!!!

Some Guy gave it a9:
Unlike most Australians, I got to see the full Grindhouse double feature in a special screening. My question is, why didn't the Weinsteins just release the film as it was intended, when it was intended (April 30)? The cinema was packed on the second last day of screening so clearly I'm not the only person who wanted to see this film. Personally, I loved the double feature, I thought it was just pure fun and a great night out. Planet Terror was the best part of the package, a ridiculously fun, over-the-top action film with a decent plot and a wonderfully realised visual style. Cherry was a great character too, I just wanted to reach out and give her a hug. The fake trailers were fantastic, they set the mood perfectly and had me in stitches (though the Werewolf Women one was a bit too random). Death Proof was pretty much a sucky film with a couple of good lines. Sure, it was a tribute to a time period where many films were 3/4 talking and 1/4 action, but the film didn't look degraded like PT (it was mostly shown in perfect picture quality) which killed the feeling of watching a film from the 70s (which was really the only thing that could have saved it). It's like Tarantino half-assed the visual style and half-assed the film (and I am a big Tarantino fan), whereas Rodriguez nailed the visual style while making a tight film that I think could be enjoyed on it's own. I feel sorry for fellow Aussies like Douglas B who only got to see DP on it's own, that must have sucked. It's not so bad when watched as part of the package, but without PT and the fake trailers it just seems like a boring load of nothing. If the Weinsteins wanted to make money back on this film, why did they wait until all the hype had died down, and then release only the worst part of the feature seemingly out of nowhere? Yeah, that'll bring people to the cinema in droves! If they weren't going to release the double feature, they should have at least shown the seperate films (BOTH of them, not just DP) in June or July while everyone was still talking about them and hyped up for them. And I bet Planet Terror would have made way more money than Death Proof, yet it's not scheduled to be be released here at all!

Grindhouse Dimension Films / The Weinstein Company

Grindhouse
Dimension Films / The Weinstein Company