'Death Proof' on DVD in September, Sans 'Planet Terror'
Filed under: Action, Horror, Distribution, Home Entertainment, Remakes and Sequels
First, there was the growing, incessant Grindhouse buzz. Then, the film came out and the numbers weren't all that the Brothers Weinstein and the filmmakers were hoping for. How should they fix the dilemma? First, the idea was batted around to re-release each feature stateside, and hope for better numbers. That was abandoned, but then Cannes got a partial serving of Grindhouse -- Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof on its festival platter. James Rocchi said it was the same feature, with lots of added "jibber jabber." (Could the film really hold any more?!) The Terror end of things slipped into the shadows. Now with the theater experience all said and done, attention has turned towards the DVD release, and plans are still annoyingly split.Bloody-Disgusting has posted that Death Proof is getting released on September 18, with absolutely no word about Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror. Assuming that the failure of the film is its length, why cut it on DVD? There's these great features called pause and stop, and these days, you can even turn your player off and have it start up where you left off just by hitting the "on" switch. What fan will want to buy two separate DVDs (and which disc would get the trailers?!), and have to switch discs just to try and recreate the experience? Yeah, there's the whole money angle, but I bet that the people itching to add Grindhouse to their collections aren't going to want them separated.
Besides, why in the world did Planet Terror fade away so easily? It was a wonderful, ridiculously fun homage -- one that Nick Schager called the victor of the two films -- and it's getting treated like chopped liver. Most of the people I talked with and reviews I read seemed to agree that it was the more enjoyable of the two, so what's the deal? It's annoying to have them split on DVD, but it's even worse to have the machine-gun-legged, bloody, maniacally wonderful serving wiped off the plate.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-13-2007 @ 8:22PM
Joe said...
I am a big fan of grindhouse, I loved the experience
and I would still buy both movies if separated but I WONT be happy about it, and yes I agree Planet Terror was, in my opinion the more entertaining of the two.
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6-11-2007 @ 12:00PM
Alex said...
Most of the people I've talked to liked both halves of Grindhouse, and since it's a theatrical experience, there's NO benefit (except for posterity's sake) to keeping them together on DVD. Watching a movie on DVD takes away the cinema experience and since the double feature doesn't work on a format where you can watch anything that is at your disposal whenever you want in the privacy of your own home on a smaller screen, I'm 100% OK with splitting the movies up. I don't mind buying both, and I bet a lot more people than we might think feel the same.
However, if they put out the theatrical cut of Grindhouse first and THEN did the split up, I'd be annoyed at the double dip. But since they're splitting the movies, both DVDs should have all the trailers. It's only right. No one who liked one and not the other would buy the other just because their favorite trailer is on it.
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6-11-2007 @ 1:31PM
dan said...
I would guess that if we wait long enough, there will be a "collectors edition" with the double feature experience on it.
Even better would be a double feature with extended movies on it. I'd like to see the movies before they were trimmed for an "R" rating.
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6-11-2007 @ 2:31PM
Eric said...
honestly the first hour of death proof was boring, Planet Terror is the awesome!
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6-11-2007 @ 4:11PM
NS said...
Sucks that there is no news regarding RR's Planet Terror...I'm itching to see that over and over again. Death Proof..Not so much. But I have no doubt they will come out with a double dip double feature version of movie eventually...Preferebly on HD-DVD.
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6-11-2007 @ 4:52PM
Cincinnati Mike said...
My memories of the Grindhouse genre are vague, "12-year-old at the drive-in" recollections. But having seen the double feature in theatrical release, it seems that Rodriguez delivered the goods. He made a grindhouse schlock-o-rama, and Tarantino made...a Tarantino film--and not a good one. I think it was the director's comments for Pulp Fiction where Tarantino says one of his big fears is that his dialogue will "sound like someone who is trying to be Tarantino." That's Death Proof. Miles and miles of hipster yak punctuated by car mayhem. Must give props to the car chases, and Kurt Russell is GOLD. But they get lost in the tedium.
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6-11-2007 @ 4:58PM
Ian said...
"there's NO benefit (except for posterity's sake) to keeping them together on DVD. Watching a movie on DVD takes away the cinema experience"
Erm, some of us have HD front-projectors and very large screens and in that case we get the full-on cinema experience without the audience talking and eating all the time... I'd love to have Grindhouse complete on DVD, particularly as we're never even going to see it in that form here in the UK.
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6-11-2007 @ 4:58PM
Ian said...
(actually make that complete on BluRay and/or HD-DVD)...
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6-11-2007 @ 5:05PM
Cincinnati Mike said...
PS... The snub against Planet Terror blows, and I hope it's a temporary thing. But ever since they announced they were splitting the ticket, I wondered how they would handle the fact that Planet Terror was just a better film. You can bet the Weinsteins have no interest in making their franchise player look bad!
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6-12-2007 @ 6:12PM
Ray said...
OK, not to step on any toes here, but Cinematical refers to "Bloody-Disgustung.com", which refers to "DavisDVD" (as does a site called "Worst Previews") which.... doesn't site any sources whatsoever. Not the writer/director, not a producer, nor a studio exec, not even a ex-caterer for the Weinsteins In short I'm not exactly worried. (Mind you I'm not going to buy every version that comes out either.)
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6-12-2007 @ 8:17PM
mike_brown said...
Great article
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6-17-2007 @ 8:20AM
Jeb said...
I was afraid they were going to do this. In my mind, each movie in it's own right were good, not great, but good. But combined into the Grindhouse experience, it was one of the best cinematic experiences I've had in a long, long time. I won't be buying the seperate movies, I don't care how much they put back into each film. They could at least give me a bare-bones Grindhouse DVD before they came out with these seperate features. But I guess they think they'll recap their loses this way. I won't be buying into it.
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7-22-2007 @ 1:20AM
Azrial_Igor said...
I just looked at Amazon. com and it does have a listing for Death proof on a seperate dvd but i noticed that if you look up grindhouse itself, a picture of the a Planet terror/ Death proof dvd comes up take a look for yourself. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-images/B00005JPNF/ref=cm_ciu_pdp_images_all/103-3319618-1056622?ie=UTF8&s=dvd#gallery
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7-26-2007 @ 4:50PM
Indico said...
It's been said before, but Planet Terror seemed to be done by a guy that HEARD about grindhouse films, and Death Proof was iself a grindhouse film. RR's half was more an homage to grindhouse films, and Tarantino's actually came off as a true as any grindhouse movie I've seen in the past few decades.
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