Movie Review: Grindhouse

"... and Nicolas Cage as... Fu Manchu!"

You gotta' admit, those are not words you would normally think you would hear in a movie today. You need to be aware of what Grindhouse is before you go in, or more specifically, what it is not. It is not a chick flick, it is not a morality play about good and evil, it is not a 'good lesson' to be learned by all.

Now, what it is — it is three and a half hours of blood, gore, explosions, car wrecks, automatic weapons, zombies, blood, gore (I mention those twice because well, there really is a lot of blood and gore) and some of the funniest written lines I have heard on the screen in almost 30 years.

Now, both these movies deal with sex, drugs and even some rock and roll. And if you have a problem with that, why are you thinking about going to see it? Is Grindhouse a movie for kids or even younger teenagers? Christ, no. Leave the children at home folks.
If you don't like gore, I suggest you go watch Firehouse Dog instead.

In addition, if you thought Saw or its brain-numbing sequels were gory, I suggest you watch something else.

When I was a kid, "grindhouse" films were almost all I ever went to see. I saw blaxploitation films like Abby, Black Mama, White Mama, and Five on the Black Hand Side, among many others. I would go in on Friday morning and usually sit until late in the evening watching a double or even triple feature of films that I thought deserved a lot more credit then they actually got from critics or "people who knew about movies." Sure, none of them were going to win a whole lot of awards, but they did what they were supposed to do — they entertained, and provided a way for theaters who were struggling back in the late 1960s through early 1980s to stay in business.

Therefore, when I first heard about Grindhouse I was not sure what to expect. I mean, I knew what the word brought up in both uses to my mind, the older movies I used to watch and the idea of a poor, cheesy horror movie of the last few years. Little did I know that it was going to be both.

Article Author: Larry Stanley

Raised in Arkansas and born in Tennessee, Larry Stanley is just a good old boy who still acts like a kid. He writes reviews of movies, books and videos and in his spare time works at inventing a time machine and proving the belief in Supeerman.
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