COMIC-CON 2006: Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez Reveal Grindhouse Footage

Today at the 2006 Comic-Con International Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino presented a clip from the Robert Rodriguez portion of the their double feature Grindhouse.

Titled Planet Terror this 4-5 minute clip opened with the same Technicolor type opening that "Kill Bill" had. Riffing on the old AIP pictures that delivered so many exploitation films from the past, the logo has been changed to RIP (Rodriguez International Pictures) and seems to uphold the tradition honorably. This film was shot digitally yet it featured all the grain cheapness that we have come to expect from these older movies.

We open with Tom Savini playing a sheriff. He runs into the police station revealing his bloody hand where a finger was taken off. After bantering a bit with prisoner Freddy Rodriguez and Michael Biehn (another police officer), the officers leave the station to find out what's going on. All they find is an abandoned car with the glass broken and Savini's ring. Music is going the whole time which very much recalls the scores created by John Carpenter. This and the dirty images on screen seem to mesh perfectly.

Suddenly, we were treated to a faux trailer for a movied called They Call Him Machete with Danny Trejo as the star. We find out that "He kills the bad guys..." and "He gets the women." Trejo is shown readying his knives and fornicating around with scantily clad babes. We also see him mounting a machine gun to his motorcycle and riding around on his bike shooting at things. There is a real 1970s feel to this clip as well which makes sense the filmmakers seem intent on replication the "grindhouse" experience.

We next moved to a scene in Planet Terror of Rose McGowan without a leg and Freddy Rodriguez trying to help her escape a hospital. He gives her a table leg as a stump and then we quickly moved into a scene of Rodriguez engaged in a knife fight as he tries and get them past these zombies. According to the director, these things look like zombies but that isn't what they are. Rodriguez kills a few of them and then as more descend upon him he runs up the wall, does a Hong Kong style flip and gets away.

After that we moved into a shot of Quentin Tarantino (playing a weird doctor) outfitting McGowan's stump with a machine gun. She and Rodriguez are next seen in a bevy of fight scenes that culminate with both of them on a motorcycle and McGowan shooting any beasts that get in their way.