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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 243 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 243 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

James O gave it a4:
I saw both of these movies through Netflix on separate occasions. I thought Planet Terror was awesome, but Death Proof was completely awful. Seriously, what's so great about a movie where 75 minutes of the film is dialogue between a bunch of women who talk about absolutely nothing (e.g. their daily lives, their occupations, their boyfriends, etc.)?! I don't get it. Planet Terror, on the other hand, was radical in every respect and didn't try and pretend to be something it wasn't: that is, a balls to the wall zombie/action movie. Tarantino is a highly regarded director by both critics and the public, but with this one he just fails miserably. I'd give Planet Terror an 8 and Death Proof a 0. So, using the power of averages, the overall score for Grindhouse comes out to a 4.

f308gt gave it a5:
The best bits = Rose McGowan and especially the soundtrack of Planet Terror. The worst bits = Tracie Thoms and the fact she lived (unforgivable) Planet Terror. Rose McGowan and especially the soundtrack were the best bits of a sexy, witty and enjoyable film. The timing of the dodgy movie craft missing reels etc. was spot on “I got it" did I mention the soundtrack? Deathproof. The first bad Tarrantino movie? What happened? Tracie Thoms was excruciatingly irritating she could have single-handedly ruined the movie. The only thing that kept me interested was to watch her character killed. I never want to hear her voice again But no, this movie needed no help from Ms Thoms. The dialogue was neither clever, witty, retro, shocking, interesting etc etc. It was at best embarrassing and always boring. None of the girls were sexy in any way. I could not have cared less if she gave the lap dance or not and when she did it was tame and lame. Enough now I’m getting as tedious as Deathproof this movie should have been one the 5 minute fake trailers.

T K gave it a10:
Great movies from 2 great directors, Rodriguez and Tarantino have their own, imo cool styles in story. Good actors, and a film thats actually senseless, but still so cool to watch. and the cars in death proof are like dreams of my sleepless nights. Actors are great, too!

John gave it a1:
Trailers were great. I was really excited to see this. But it was just not good. I loved Pulp Fiction. But people talking in cars for 90 minutes. Why wasn't I warned? The king has no clothes metacritics. You are usually reliable. Put this with Titanic and Independence Day as movies that were just bad, but no one wants to look uncool so they say they are edgy. I love edgy, this was just a snooze. Made for TV at best.

john f gave it a10:
I don't think what people realize is that these movies are supposed to be bad reliving the old days of an actual grindhouse movie. Planet Terror was one of the greatest zombie movies I've ever seen and the car chase's and buildup to Death Proof was phenomenal. It might've been 3 and a half hours long but I could watch this over and over again. Every trailer had the theatre laughing with the most frightened looks on their faces, (watch Don't and Thanksgiving and you'll see why). The point of the movies are the mindless violence and exploitation so if people are saying that the movie was bad because of this then it had succeeded because thats what it was looking for. I was on the edge of my seat the entire night either scared as all hell or laughing as hard as I can.

Randy M. gave it an8:
A fascinating homage to exploitation movies. "Death Proof" was particularly fun to watch.

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.

Grindhouse Dimension Films / The Weinstein Company

Grindhouse
Dimension Films / The Weinstein Company