After the high-profile miscarriage of Rodriguez’s and Tarantino’s Grindhouse last week, Weinstein Company’s co-namesaked full-figurehead Harvey Weinstein mulled over the idea of splitting the double-feature into two 90 minute films (as reported here).

Well according to JoBlo, after testing the circumcised Grindhouse in a few markets the Weinstein Co. has nixed the idea, as it resulted in no noticeable improvements in box office returns. Not only does this leave the 3-hour genre flick to wither and die on the domestic front, it does not bode well for the international markets, where splitting the films in two had been the plan all along.

EDITORIAL

I finally got around to seeing Grindhouse this weekend. As something of a cult movie connoisseur myself, I was looking forward to what I felt (at the time) was a noble experiment. The runtime didn’t scare me. I’d subjected myself to enough double and triple bills to know that so long as I had my jumbo-size box of Mike n’ Ikes and a fresh tube of model glue I could sit immobile for hours.

Planet Terror did not fail to disappoint. It had everything I’d ever wanted -– out of life — and more: Gratuitous gore, zombies, Bruce Willis, ball-snatching Geri-curled cholo scientists, more zombies, Fergie suffering a grizzly death, Quentin Tarantino’s dick rotting off, yet even more zombies, an amputee stripper, Tom Savini and barbeque. If only there’d been one real-life snuff and a couple of midgets it would have been the greatest film of all time, surpassing Hot Dog: The Movie and Up The Creek on the AFI’s Top 100 Awesomest Movies List.

The fake trailers were great. Werewolf Women of the SS — Rob Zombie’s spin on the Ilsa flicks – was inspired. Even Eli Roth (who is to horror what Fred Durst is to metal) impressed with his fake turkey-day slasher Thanksgiving. And Machete, of course, was pure genius.

Then we had Death Proof. Which should have been called Entertainment Proof. I nearly walked out. The only reason I didn’t was because I feared I’d leave the theater in a “South Korean engineering student” style murderous rage.

Where do I begin with Death Proof? First of all Quentin, we get it: You like feet. I’m only thankful you don’t have a scat fetish. Or maybe that would explain all the shit I had to wade through to get to the 10 minutes of actual enjoyable cinema. All of which involved Kurt Russell either killing or attempting to kill the vacuous, bubble-headed tramps whose pointless jabbering you’d subjected me to for the other 75 minutes. Up yours, Tarantino. Go fuck a wheat thresher.

See, the only “grind” Quentin Tarantino brought to the “Grindhouse” table was the sound his jaw made when he wrote 70-odd-pages of coke babbling nonsense to pad the 10 pages of completely unmotivated (albeit awesome) action sequences. The dialog was terrible. Like Kevin Smith’s comic-geek ideal of what “liberated” women talk like, minus them having anything interesting or intelligent to say. It was awful, awful, awful. Torture even. And what’s worse, it felt like QT was under the impression that anything he wrote – by the nature of it being written by him – would automatically be genius. Well you were wrong, doucheface. Fuck you. Go smash yourself in the balls with a hammer.

Don’t get me wrong: I know a lot of people who liked Death Proof. A lot of people whose opinions I genuinely respect liked Death Proof. Which only makes the matter worse. Death Proof was a personal insult to my sensibilities. Quentin had somehow tapped my pre-conscious mind and figured out how to make the exact movie that would piss me off the most. You’re a fucking asshole, Quentin. Go get raped by a hobo.

I’ve liked every Tarantino movie up until now too. Not in a gushing fanboy sort of way, but I’ve liked them and liked most of them a lot. This movie was a turd and a waste of a completely fucking awesome character (Stuntman Mike), who turned out to be a whiny little pussy, just like Quentin Tarantino. It was a waste of a great concept: I LOVE all the car-chase movies QT referenced in dialog instead of paying actual homage to in action. And it was a waste of my fucking time. Fuck you, you moon-headed, gank-mouthed video store clerk. Go dance barefoot in a field of AIDS-infected junky needles. I want six of my twelve dollars back.

Tags: Grindhouse, Quentin Tarantino, Death Proof, Planet Terror, Tom Savini, midgets, South Korean engineering student, Weinstein

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