Following the abysmal U.S. box office performance of the movie Grindhouse, a double feature comprised of Robert Rodriguez’ Planet Terror and Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof, the decision was made to split the movies up for international theatrical release. Eventually they dropped Planet Terror and decided to only go with Death Proof on the big screen. I suppose that the studio thought that the Quentin Tarantino name was strong enough to put bodies in the seats, so they decided to release only his movie theatrically overseas and save Planet Terror for DVD only.

I won’t go into why Death Proof sucked again, but a few months ago I commented on the fact that for foreign audiences they were going to make the film even longer, and thus even more excruciatingly boring than it was as part of the double feature.

No suprise here: It bombed big time.

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In my review of Grindhouse, I strongly urged viewers who were not die-hard Quentin Tarantino fans to leave after the first half of the double-feature, Planet Terror. The scenes involving nothing but inane conversation by the female leads almost literally put me in a coma due to the fact that they were excruciatingly boring and as far as I’m concerned, almost pointless. I say almost, because the point was to give us some insight into the characters, but the characters were not deep or interesting enough to warrant what felt like 30 minutes straight of inane conversation.

Grindhouse has had a pretty rough weekend at the box office, earning only $11.6 million. The studio was expecting much bigger numbers for this three hour gore-filled extravaganza.

By Vic Holtreman

Short version: While Planet Terror was a wild ride and a retro blast, Death Proof was a crushing disappointment and absolute torture to sit through.

It really stinks that I have to give a rating to Grindhouse as one film, because the two movies within that make up the double feature are so incredibly on the opposite ends of the scale in terms of a viewing experience. While Robert Rodriguez’ Planet Terror was an absolute BLAST, Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof was excruciatingly boring. We’re talking boring to the point where if I didn’t have to review it I would have walked out. Boring to the point where I wanted to gouge my eyes out just to keep myself occupied, and frankly, that sucks.