Plot: Kill Bill director Quentin Tarantino and Sin City director Robert Rodriguez join forces to offer a cinematic tribute to the blood-soaked exploitation epics of yesteryear with this hyper-violent coupling of two full-length features punctuated by a collection of outrageous trailers.
The first segment, directed by
Rodriguez and entitled
Planet Terror, details the violent struggle between a ravenous army of zombie-like humanoids who have taken control of the planet and the remaining survivors who refuse to go down without a fight.
Freddy Rodriguez,
Naveen Andrews, and
Rose McGowan headline a cast that also includes
Marley Shelton,
Michael Biehn,
Josh Brolin,
Bruce Willis, and
Tom Savini. In
Death Proof -- director
Tarantino's take on such peddle-to-the-metal shockers as
White Line Fever --
Kurt Russell stars as an engine-revving psychopath who prefers to take out his beautiful victims at 200 mph. With a list of potential roadkill candidates that includes
Rose McGowan,
Jordan Ladd,
Rosario Dawson, and
Vanessa Ferlito,
Death Proof takes viewers on an adrenaline-infused drive that's as sexy as it is shocking. Its tantalizing title borrowed from the term frequently used to describe the seedy, 1970s-era inner-city movie theaters that screened excessive, low-budget independent films containing copious amounts of violence and nudity as a means of offering counter-programming to the decidedly more restrained big-budget studio films,
Grindhouse takes its love for these unabashedly sleazy efforts one step further by offering a jaw-dropping collection of fake exploitation trailers from such directors as
Rob Zombie,
Eli Roth, and
Edgar Wright. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide.
