My mother believed the first movie I ever saw in a theater was Herbie the Love Bug. Technically the first movie I really saw was Barbarella with Jane Fonda. I was 5 and snuggled up with a load of pillows, blankets and sleeping younger siblings in the back of our station wagon. I was supposed to be asleep and was by the time the drive-in showed the second feature. But my movie tastes were forever molded by the time I saw a room full of dolls with sharp teeth attack Jane Fonda.

So I guess this explains why my best friend and I were in a theater with only about 15 other people to watch Grind House. There is no way I could take my husband as Pulp Fiction was a little much for him. Although he handled The Rocky Horror Picture pretty well. The pictures in the album will help the person to identify the sindarin names in the drama. The interest of the person is growing with the watching of the movies of the drama. 

Grind House, written by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodiguez is fun. It isn’t deep, and the cinematography will make you gasp, not in a Lord of the Rings way but more in a Jeffery Dahmer kind of way. If you can handle a one legged stripper with a machine gun leg then this is your kind of movie. I know exactly which scene I would use for my desktop if I weren’t a mommy and in charge of not scarring my kids for life.

The one thing I always take away from a Tarantino movie is, that he really shouldn’t be in his own movies. Really, really. I don’t think he can act and he looks like the Jack-o-lantern in my back garden I left there last Halloween. Thankfully he just plays a couple of irritating characters that have little screen time.

Grind House is over 3 hours long, so plan accordingly. We bought regular size pop and visited the bathroom right before the movie started. Save some snacks if you like, if not there is a perfect place in the film to leave and take care of business.

The style of the movie is paying homage to 70’s grind house flicks, the type of movie with lots of action, cleavage and little dialog. Well except for the fact that Tarantino doesn’t know what little dialog means. We will come back to that later.

Planet Terror was awesome. It was exactly like a movie I would have watched back in the day. Or I guess a movie I would watch today, since I just did. You get to watch Rose McGowan dance around a stripper pole as Go Go dancer Cherry Darling. She is gorgeous but used to date Marilyn Manson so you have to wonder about her childhood.

Stripping apparently makes her sad because she cries when she grinds. Aww. Strippers are always misunderstood and have hearts of gold and never take your husband away from you and well lets get on with the review.

Cherry is so sad that she gives the finger to her boss and quits. We follow her on her journey and begin to meet the other victi…um characters. Fergie, Bruce Willis, Kurt Russel, Freddy Rodriguez, Rosario Dawson and her Rent friend Tracie Thoms and way too many other yummy people to list. Just to see how good you are, try to spot Tom Savini, special effects wizard.

Somehow the military got a hold of some zombie juice and let it loose on the world, let the screaming begin.

Planet Terror is a fun, loud horror movie. But it is still a satire of a genre, don’t go expecting perfection or polish. Missing reels are deliberately planned into the movie and scratches and flaws have been added digitally.

After Planet Terror don’t leave yet for your potty break. Trailers for nonexistent movies are shown during the intermission and are worth watching. Wait until the second movie, Death Proof starts.

I love Kurt Russell, I mean how can you hate him after Big Trouble in Little China, and he really wasn’t the one responsible for Kate Hudson.

The movie starts out slowly. Very slowly. You know the kind of night when you go out with the girls but get to the bar too early for anyone to even be there, including the band? You wait for something to happen, talk about nothing and drink and are bored, well that’s what this part of the movie is like. Exactly.

We open with a group of girls celebrating and they just talk and drink. They talk a lot. Go the the bathroom. Get nachos. Play air hockey. You won’t miss anything. I promise. Then Kurt Russel comes in. He is a bad guy. You kinda know that from the start because his car is so growly, and has a skull on the hood. He is also the oldest person in the bar. But not the ugliest because darn it all if Tarantino didn’t cast himself as the bartender.

So now the bartender is talking to the young lovelys and talking and honestly I don’t know what he said because I had to make a nacho run. But 5 minutes later he was still jabbering so I guess I didn’t miss much. I am not against talkie movies, I loved The Royal Tennenbaums and all of that Emma, Jane Austin hooha. It’s just that this dialog was so random. And boring.

So the gist of Death Proof is there is a horny old man (Russell) who likes young women, especially in pieces. Legs fly, well a leg, cars chase, there’s blond hair, bouncing boobies and a lot of blood.

Planet Terror was definitly the stronger movie, it had more action and Rose McGowan in these really bitchin’ boots. I would totally love a pair. Death Proof had a strong start with Kurt Russel and the pretty death car. The movie should have been cut by at least 40 minutes of boring dialog and we wouldn’t have missed anything.

I left this movie feeling empowered. Even though women in this movie were victimized, objectified and persecuted,they also were strong and fought back. We are strong we are proud and we are able to stomp in the head of perverts with the heels of our bitchin’ boots.