By Tristan Bishop
Grindhouse. It seems to be becoming as reviled a term in horror/cult circles as ‘found footage’. Much has been written on the co-opting of the term from the original meaning (24 hour theatres showing everything from second-run commercial releases to kung fu to XXX films) to the current usage to denote 70s (or 70s-styled) gritty exploitation pictures. It’s fairly strange that a film generally perceived to have been a commercial failure (Tarantino and Rodriguez’s Grindhouse) should have kicked off such a massive wave of cash-ins, from low budget thrillers using fake emulsion scratches for that ‘projected 2376 times in a smoke-filled room’ feel, to the re-releasing of old sci-fi, horror etc. films on DVD under the banner of ‘Grindhouse Collections’. As a lifelong fan of (especially 70s) exploitation cinema, it feels like a mixed blessing – yes, there have been a glut of re-releases of films I am interested in, but there have also been far too many low budget films jumping on the bandwagon, and a bad film without the benefit of historical context is unfortunately just a bad film.
I was a fan of the aforementioned Grindhouse – or more specifically, the two separate films it was released as in the UK. Tarantino’s Death Proof was obviously made by a fanatic of the gritty 70s thriller, shot through with Ozsploitation references, razor sharp dialogue and an ineffable sense of cool, whilst Rodriguez’s Planet Terror was just plain over-the-top fun. If you’re going to make a retro exploitation pic, these show the way to do it. Unfortunately, Chilean film Bring Me The Head Of The Machine Gun Woman is the way not to do it. The rather unwieldy title makes it sound like a cross between the aforementioned Planet Terror and Sam Peckinpah’s slimeball classic Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia (incidentally one of my personal favourites), but any hopes for this being a similar classic are soon dashed.
We are introduced to Santiago, a young DJ and gamer who works at a club frequented by the gangster Che Sausage (sadly this is as funny as the film gets). One evening, whilst using the club bathroom, he overhears Mr Sausage plotting to kill The Machine Gun Woman, one of the near-super-powered hitpersons that seem to populate the city. When he is discovered in the cubicle, the gangsters are all set to snuff Santiago’s candle for having heard too much. In a desperate attempt to save his own life, Santiago states that he will track down and deliver the Machine Gun Woman himself, which Sausage, rather surprisingly, agrees to.
The film then plays out in the style of a computer game – Obviously Grand Theft Auto, with ‘new missions’ flashing up on the screen, and ‘mission completed’ or ‘mission failed’ messages appearing as Santiago’s adventures continue, as well as other stylistic touches such as all car journeys being filmed from the driving perspective of the GTA games, and characters having ‘bounties’ appear over their heads. Whilst this might work if used sparingly (and indeed did raise a knowing smile on first appearance), it soon becomes tiresome, and every time it repeats it brings the viewer out of the film a little more. Not that there is much film to come out of – The entire proceedings seem flat, obvious and repetitive, and, despite a little violence, never quite get down and dirty enough to deserve the grindhouse tag. The Machine Gun Woman herself, played by Chilean TV star Fernanda Urrejola, cuts an impressive enough figure in what amounts to leather underwear, but she belongs in a Rodriguez film, and, stripped of said director’s talent for bullet ballet, she’s merely a badass in search of better material. The film is just over 70 minutes long, but, sad to say, drags so badly it feels twice the length.
I’m ashamed to say I haven’t yet seen the previous films from the director, Ernesto Diaz Espinoza, namely Kiltro (2006) and Mirageman (2007) – although their combination of social realism and all-out action sound like a sure thing. Unfortunately, after the combination of Machine Gun Woman and his damp-squib entry in ABCs Of Death (2012) I think I might be looking elsewhere for my adrenaline fix.