Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s exploitation double feature pays homage to the 1970’s grindhouse cinema style.

With Grindhouse, writer/directors Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction) and Robert Rodriguez (Sin City) successfully recreate the 1970’s B-movie-going experience where low-budget film reels would show in dingy, sticky, smokey theaters across the country. Typically, there’d be only a handful of film prints that would have to “tour” to each theater (unlike today where digital prints are shipped simultaneously to each venue), causing major wear-and-tear. By the time the reels made the journey to your town, the footage would be discolored, scratched, and out-of-focus, and oftentimes, the “good” reel (that is, the one with the sex scene) would be mysteriously missing.

Grindhouse is actually two feature-length films, Rodriguez‘s Planet Terror and Tarantino Death Proof, sandwiched together by three gorey, yet hilarious trailers for fake movies made by Rob Zombie (Devil’s Rejects), Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead) and Eli Roth (Hostel).

Of the two features, Rodriguez‘s gorefest is by far the better offering and more faithful to the “grindhouse” experience. After government chemical testing turns the residents of a Texas town into brain-feasting zombies, go-go dancer Cherry Darling (Rose McGowan) and her mysterious gunslinging former lover El Wray (Freddy Rodriguez), along with a handful of town survivors, must shoot their way to safety through a legion of undead.

Terror serves up plenty of blood, guts, bullets, and even humor with its big wink to its viewers in the know. Each survivor has their own way of dealing with their dire situation, like Dr. Dakota Block (wonderfully portrayed by Uma Thurman lookalike Marley Shelton) who fights off zombies — and her abusive doctor husband (Josh Brolin) — with a holster of numb-inducing hypodermic needles; and Cherry goes badass when she’s outfitted with a machine-gun prosthetic leg after her limb is chomped off by zombies.

I’m not sure if it was intentional, but the survivors are all so charming and endearing, you can’t help but root for them — and that’s what’s missing from Tarantino‘s Death Proof. Aside from Kurt Russell‘s scene-stealing former stuntman turned serial killer Stuntman Mike and real-life stuntwoman Zoë Bell appearing as herself, the rest of the cast is so expendable that you don’t mind if they get killed off. Actually, you can’t wait for them to die, that’s how boring and unentertaining they are.

Death Proof is split into two acts. The first follows four girls on a night out on the town. For most of this act, nothing much happens. We get to know a little bit about the girls as they drink, smoke, talk, and text message. Enter the creepy, yet somehow charismatic Stuntman Mike who begins to develop some chemistry with the ladies, that is, until he decides to off them with his “death proof” muscle car.

Next act: go to sleep, go directly to sleep, then wake up for the last 15 minutes because there’s really no reason to have to sit through yet another group of four girls who are basically just talking. Talking and talking and talking about nothing remotely interesting.

At this point, you’re starting to come down off that high you got from the 85 spectacular minutes of the first movie, plus the fake trailers, and that’s just not right. Bring back the first set of girls, at least we already know them. You want some Tarantino magic, muthafucka!

And you finally get some when Bell — Uma Thurman‘s Kill Bill stunt double — rides the hood of a white Dodge Challenger for kicks and ends of holding on for dear life when Stuntman Mike shows up to ram her and her friends off the road.

Why can’t I wait for Stuntman Mike to off these chicks already? Please, just do it so I don’t have to hear them talk anymore!

Now, Rosario Dawson‘s name and likeness has been pushed to the forefront of the film’s promotion, yet in the 3-plus hours that make up Grindhouse, her screen time is minimal. Honestly, there is absolutely no reason for her character Abernathy, a movie make-up artist, to even be in the movie, as she has nothing witty or provocative to say and nothing useful to contribute. Obviously, that’s not Dawson’s fault. It pains me to say this, but much like when she participated in the ass-to-month discussion in Clerks II, Dawson proves that she cannot pull off lengthy dialogue and she certainly can’t do it if it’s written by Tarantino. But again, in her defense, I don’t think what Tarantino scripted for her to say was really any good.

Perhaps if Tarantino‘s had been the first feature, the slow build-up to the action would have flowed better. We’ll see if Death Proof‘s planned solo DVD release with the extended director’s cut proves any better. Perhaps it will, as long it’s not the dialogue that’s extended.