Lately, I've been seeing various articles about a new movie called Grindhouse. Virtually all of those articles feature photos of an attractive young woman who, having lost her leg when a zombie chewed it off, decided to replace her real leg with a machine gun rather than getting a nice looking prosthetic leg. Sure. That happens every day of the week, right?
I've seen bits and pieces of other movies (such as the nauseatingly violent Pulp Fiction) with which Quentin Tarantino has been associated in the past. But I've never paid to see one of his movies. It's unlikely that I ever will. From what I've seen, he's a perpetually adolescent, mentally disturbed individual who thinks that gratuitous violence represents the epitome of the movie maker's craft.
On one level, I'm rather glad that he's able to make movies. If he didn't have that outlet, it's likely that he'd be acting out his disturbing fantasies in real life, and we'd have another Jeffrey Dahmer on our hands.
Apparently, however, Quentin's friend Robert Rodriguez is responsible for the Planet Terror portion of Grindhouse, which features the aforementioned machine gun leg. Guns, girls and gams. What a combination. Maybe we should call it a "gamgun".
Meanwhile, there's a recent MSNBC story about a criminal named Gregory Daniels. Gregory's prosthetic leg allegedly fell off while he was trying to swipe a 1,500 pound ATM machine. Apparently, in the real world, prosthetic legs are a bit of a liability when it comes to activities involving extreme physical exertion. Yet, Rodriguez would have us to believe that it would be feasible for a woman to effectively wield a gamgun as a weapon, even though she has not spent months and months training herself to use such a weapon, and even though it is far more likely that the gamgun would fall off at the most inopportune moment, just as Gregory Daniels' prosthetic leg fell off during his attempted escape from the police.
Sure, I know that movies are often escapist fiction which feature scenes which could never happen in the real world. I enjoy such fare from time to time. But the fantasy movies I've liked, such as Lord of The Rings or Star Wars, have generally had an undercurrent of morality. Grindhouse, on the other hand, is a movie which revels in its sleaziness. I feel sad for people who have nothing better to do than pay to see such movies.
As for those who would object that I have no business criticizing the movie unless I've seen it from beginning to end, I can only respond by saying that I don't have to gargle battery acid to know that doing so would be bad for my health. But I should probably watch my words here. If Rodriguez and Tarantino ever read this blog post, they'll probably see it as a source of inspiration, and their next movie will feature someone who prefers battery acid to Scope.
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