Grindhouse Double Feature: Machete and Piranha 3D

A few years ago, possible life partners Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez teamed up to create "Grindhouse" a silly send-up to the seedy 70s exploitation films of their youth.  The "Grindhouse" movies were supposed to be silly exercises in lowest common denominator entertainment.  What we were promised was simple:  action, humor, and fun.  What we got were intentionally awful movies that perhaps were less homages than jokes.  Jokes on the audience.  If Tarantino and Rodriguez wanted to prove how bad 70s and 80s B-movies were, I suppose they succeeded, because both of those movies stank and stank badly.

Tarantino's "Death Proof" is a wonderful test of endurance:  how long can you watch these chicks talk about nothing while thinking you're about to see some gore?  I passed, but clearly some serious damage has been done to my brain because of it.  As for Rodiguez's "Planet Terror", though considerably more entertaining, was just a giant mess of a movie with some of the most bizarre casting I have ever seen.  Why is Federico from "Six Feet Under", a guy who is an inch away from being a midget and about as threatening as Paddington Bear, trying to be a badass action star?  "Planet Terror" was simply bad.  Its the ugly step-child of cinema that you just never can never love no how hard you try.  It was as bad as "Snakes on a Plane" and twice as stupid.  Yeah, I know 70s Grindhouse movies were never going to be "Citizen Kane" but that's not a license to half-ass your work.  Both Tarantino and Rodiguez have done better.

Luckily in our new decade two new silly exploitation-style films have been released, and these actually manage to do it right.  "Machete", also by Robert Rodiguez and technically within the Grindhouse label, is a high-action fiesta of Mexican rage and ridiculous excitement, and "Piranha 3D" is a glorious bloody celebration of the good ol' days of monster movies.  These are movies where Danny Trejo rides a motorcycle armed with a front-mounted gatling gun, two porn stars take a naked underwater swim, and intestines are used as rope.  Just like a nasty Taco Bell burrito, these movies are grimy, disgusting, and impossible to not love.  Yeah you might complain about the stomach pains, but you know that next week you'll be back for more.

"Machete" (pronounced with the thickest Mexican accent you can manage) is the tale of Danny Trejo who is playing the same Angry Mexican Man that he plays in every movie he's ever been in - which not so coincidently contains the entire Robert Rodiguez filmography.  Life partners much?  Most recently we saw Danny Trejo get murdered by aliens in five minutes flat in "Predators 3", probably because he was conserving all his raw badass for this film.  Based upon one of the better fake trailers from the "Grindhouse" theatrical release*, "Machete" recreates virtually every shot of the joke trailer it was inspired by.  Of course, unlike the other Grindhouse movies, this one uses fake film damage only in the opening sequence, keeping the rest of the movie normal looking, though extremely orange tinted for some reason.

Machete is a former Federale - "he's FBI, CIA, and DEA all rolled into one mean burrito" - who fought and lost against a great Mexican drug lord (Steven Seagal who wisely chose to do this instead of the awful "Expendables").  Now he's an illegal immigrant hired to kill a racist senator (Robert De Niro) who is out to build the great Border Fence.  But turns out the entire assassination was just a set-up to convince America to build the Fence... which is actually a great scheme by Steven Seagal to take complete control of the drug routes into the US.  Machete must gather up the forces of all the illegal immigrants to fight this threat against their very lives.  The villains clearly have just messed with the wrong Mexican.

Along for the ride in this strange little movie is a Best Hits style cast of Robert Rodiguez's movies, along with a few great newcomers.  Of course, there's Danny Trejo, being just as mean and ugly and Mexican as ever.  Then there's Tom Savini, the guy who played "Sex Machine" in Rodiguez's awesome vampire film, "From Dusk Till Dawn".  Cheech Marin plays Machete's priest brother, who despite his Cloth still enjoys his marijuana "Mexican" cigars and killing badguys with a shotgun.  Jessica Alba is an ex-ICE agent with a cute haircut, but still its Jessica Alba and she's as terrible as she always is.  Far better is Michele Rodiguez who plays "She" (a distant cousin of Him) a Che Guevara-style revolutionary that runs an immigrant army called the Network out of a taco van. One of the Spy Kids has a small cameo too, not that anybody cares about him.  Robert De Niro is great, switching accents George W. Bush style and being generally a nasty guy.  Jeff Fahey is badass too, taking out an entire drug house with just one clip.

And then there's Lindsay Lohan.  She's the kind of actress who after years of riding the paparazzi circuit has forced my brain to react to her presence with a primordial "KILL IT" instinct.  I don't know if she was that bad in this movie, she even made fun of herself quite well (though her clearly fake body double in her nude scene was a really bad effect) but just the fact that she's Lindsay Lohan offended me.  Lohan needs to find a new career, may I suggest something where she doesn't actually appear on camera.  Like being a veterinarian, or a traffic cop.  Anything that gets her out of movies.

There's an attempt to make some kind of argument about immigration, but I can't actually be sure if Robert Rodiguez is being serious here.  With terrible lines like "we didn't cross the border, the border crossed us!" how can you take any of it seriously?  I'm glad to see an American movie deal with the plight of illegal immigrants in this country but I think that the message is kinda lost when the hero of the movie solves his problems by gathering up an armada of bouncing cars driven by dishwashers.  Or making jokes about how Mexicans can get into anybody's house if they own brought gardening tools**.

But the star of the movie is Machete and his giant machetes of death.  Danny Trejo cuts his way through waves of random White bad guys in his quest for justice, ultimately leading to a bizarre giant machete vs. katana battle against Steven Seagal.  Unfortunately for the bloated Seagal, Danny Trejo hasn't spent the last twenty years turning his body into whale blubber and so he wins pretty easily. Despite somehow actually being uglier than ever, Trejo manages to bed every single woman in this film, including riding off into the sunset with Jessica Alba.  Oh well, Trejo deserves it after playing second-fiddle for two decades.

In the end, this movie does promise two more sequels "Machete Kills" and "Machete Kills Again".  It might be a joke of some kind, but if Rodiguez can actually deliver, I'll see them.  But first he better get moving on "Sin City 2", dammit.

That in no way leads me to my next movie, "Piranha 3D":

"Piranha 3D" is the third sequel (or maybe a remake, I can't be sure) to "Piranha", a lame 70s horror film that was basically "Jaws" with fish.  I saw the original movie recently and I gotta say that "Finding Nemo" was actually far scarier.  Not really worth seeing.  Anyway, "Piranha 3D" is a send-up to those classic underwater monster movies from a by-gone era.  It even opens with Matthew Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) from "Jaws" - I swear to God its the same character - enjoying a nice fishing trip alone in a lake in the American Southwest when, you guessed it, he gets eaten by a giant swarm of feral piranhas.  From there the swarm moves up to attack stupid teenagers enjoying their Spring Break.  And so the table is set and the piranhas chow down.

The climax of this movie is easily one of the most fantastic massacres in the history of monster movies.  The piranhas eat everybody, hundreds of people.  If you need something nice and gory and R-rated, "Piranha 3D" so delivers.  Ving Rhames fights down the entire piranha army with nothing but a speedboat motor - I'm still not sure if he actually survives.  People get their legs eaten off, their arms eaten off.  One girls gets her hair caught in a motor and her skull ripped out.  Its great.  And if you're still pissed off over his horrible movies, Eli Roth gets crushed by two boats.

Sheriff Elizabeth Shue and her love interest(?) Adam Scott from "Party Down" have to fight this menace all alone.  However her teenager son has gotten involved with some underwater porn producers led by Jerry O'Connell, the actor who is definitely having the most fun with this movie.  In between scenes of fully naked porn stars swimming around to opera music ("if fish looked like that I would fuck fish!"), piranhas are eating the entire crew.  Jerry O'Connell definitely suffers the most though, having his penis eaten and then burped out in close-up for everybody to enjoy.

"Piranha 3D" is the movie that the SciFi channel has been trying to make for years and failing every time.  This is what Robert Rodiguez tried to make with "Planet Terror" and completely missed the mark.  Bloody, high nudity fun.  I don't know if the 3D effects actually did anything because I only rented it.  Honestly it can't make a difference.  "Piranha 3D" is so much fun already, I can't see how anything could ever improve it.  There are plans for a "Piranha 3DD", a direct sequel.  This time I honestly doubt they can ever top the original, but with a title that awful, maybe the movie has promise?  We'll have to see.

So there we are:  "Piranha 3D" and "Machete", two awesome hard Rs.  PG-13 is for whimps.  R is where you get the real tits and explosions - accept no substitutes.  Play them together and you can have "Grindhouse" done right.  I'm so happy to be living in a time where not only can I see classy Oscar Noms like "The King's Speech" and love them, not only can I see silly kids animated films like "How to Train Your Dragon" and "Tangled" and love them, but also I can see grungy B-movies like these two and love them just as much.  Movies today have so much to offer, and so much of it is so good...

Good to be alive...

[cue rabid horde of piranhas]

AHHHHHHHHHHH-HHHHHH!!!

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* Not the best on though, which was clearly "Eli Roth's Thanksgiving".  Unfortunately if "Thanksgiving" actually was made into a movie I'm pretty sure Eli Roth would find a way to screw it up.  Probably with a giant bunny that flips pancakes.  One of the worst trailers, "Hobo With a Shotgun" is actually being made - starring Rutger Hauer!  "The Hitcher" with a shotgun!  Need I say more?

** Having never been rich enough to actually afford to hire gardeners or knowing anybody who was this joke is absolutely meaningless to me.  And if I did, I'd probably bother to learn their names and faces.  Honestly, have any you readers actually let a Latino into your house just because he or she was carrying a hoe and sheers?  Does this actually happen in the real world?