Smash hit

Some critics clearly favoured only parts of Grindhouse, but Nathan Lee, in the Village Voice, loved every second of the whole package. “From first rude frame to lascivious last, Grindhouse guns to be the last word in fanboy fetishism. There may not be any house left to grind in New York, skuzzy little theatres having gone the way of subway tokens, smoking in bars, and, you know, fun. But as nostalgia trips go, at least this one goes all the way. You can practically taste the mold and smell the celluloid.”

As A.O.Scott in the New York Times explains, at its heart, Grindhouse is a “tribute to the spirit of trash cinema”. Tarantino and Rodriguez use all manner of devices to evoke “a lost ambience of moviemaking”, even down to some fictional technical glitches. “The prints are full of scratches, bad splices and busted sprocket holes, and the images are not always in focus. It’s a pretty good joke”, says Scott, “especially since most of these glitches artefacts of an earlier technological era, have been produced digitally.”

Scott wasn’t blown away by Grindhouse, but tells readers of the New York Times they should “be sure not to miss the trailer for Thanksgiving – not for the squemish or the humour impaired, and not that you’d necessarily want to see the movie, if it existed.”

Sitting between the two gore-fests, these fictional trailers were, for William Arnold writing in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, “by far the funniest part of the program, possibly because they're mercifully brief.” Harry, writing on Ain’t It Cool News, especially liked the Edgar Wright’s trailer for “Don’t”. “It’s the momentum that the trailer reaches… it’s a fever paced giggly bit of insanity. It makes you want to ask people innocuous questions and scream DON’T at them. It’s a wonderful trailer that leaves you stunned thinking WHAT THE HELL SORT OF MOVIE IS THAT? But then left me desperate to find out. Fantastic.”

Finally, with an almost audible sigh, Glenn Kerry, in Premiere, asks whether “this three-hour-plus extravaganza is a genuine formalist coup, or just a case of indie moguls indulging their favorite sons in an elaborate in-joke? That's a question a review can't really answer. I must say, 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."

Peter Travers in Rolling Stone disagrees. “There is not a minute in this three-hour-plus tribute to all that’s unholy in cinema that is good for you” he says gleefully. “Grindhouse is a double dose of lowdown, dirty, blood-splattering fun that pummels you with sluts, slashers, serial killers, zombies and killer cards that all serve to reveal of soul of the purest scuzz”.

He quotes legendary New Yorker critic Pauline Kael: “The movies are so rarely great art, that if we cannot appreciate great trash there is little reason for us to go.”

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