Written and directed by Robert Rodriguez

Starring: Rose McGowan, Marley Shelton, Freddy Rodriguez and Josh Brolin

Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino

Starring: Kurt Russell, Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Vanessa Ferlito and Rosario Dawson

192 min. in CinemaScope

Nowhere in the press notes do Quentin Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez, creators of Grindhouse, properly define the term. If they had, their movie might have been, well, less of a grind. As it stands, it’s an endurance marathon to watch this bore fest for the three-plus hours it takes to finish.

Just for the record, a “grindhouse” was a neighborhood picture theater equipped with antique projectors that literally “ground out” the prints.

As soon as one film ended, the grindhouse would go straight to trailers and/or short subjects followed immediately by the second (or third, or fourth) feature. The lack of an intermission is what put the “grind” in grindhouses.

The film is presented in two full-length segments, one is Planet Terror, written and directed by Rodriguez, and the other is an action film, Death Proof, written and directed by Tarantino, with fake trailers advertising fictional films preceding each segment.

The Rodriguez half of the film is unwatchable. He came up with the idea of a great money shot, a hot legless chick fitted with a prosthetic machine gun whirling around the floor killing everything that crosses her path, and worked backwards. Along the way he pads the proceedings with endless castration gags, uninspired zombies and enough sub-juvenile material to choke a Stephen King devotee.

Battered prints were a grindhouse staple, but Rodriguez spared all effort to give his film that slashed-up look. Unlike Orson Welles, who dragged his film Citizen Kane across the RKO parking lot to age it, Rodriguez merely made digital scratches and splices (that don’t match from shot to shot) to line the print. I never thought I’d live to see the day where I longed for an enormous yellow or green Eastmancolor gash.

Fans desiring to see this material properly done (in addition to how far Rodriguez has fallen since teaming with Tarantino) need to track down a VHS copy of Roadracers, which he made in 1994 when Showtime commissioned a bunch of young directors to each remake a classic American International Pictures program for its Rebel Highway series. It’s 50 times better.

Tarantino’s half is only marginally more palatable. At least one of the actors (Kurt Russell) decided to hand in a performance. And there are, of course, plenty of the director’s patented (and endless) pop culture round tables, this time delivered by a band of Faster, Pussycat…Kill! Kill!-inspired babes. (Note to QT: We got it the first time. No need to have one of your bimbos parade around in a FPKK T-shirt.)

But don’t think that camera whore/pastiche master Tarantino resisted casing himself in bit roles for each segment. Looking more and more like the love spawn of Grandpa Munster and puppeteer Wayland Flowers’ Madame, QT couldn’t refrain from winking at the audience by playing two of the most misogynistic characters in a film rife with woman hating.

However, the film does have one redeeming scene: The climactic car chase (tribute to Vanishing Point) featuring real-life stuntwoman Zoe Bell, is truly spectacular. There has also been a lot of talk about the fake intermission trailers, one of which, Werewolf Women of the S. S., was guest-directed by Rob Zombie. Overall, however, you’d be better off renting Roadracers and Zombie’s House of 1,000 Corpses than snoring your way through Grindhouse.

Directed by D. J. Caruso

Written by Christopher B. Landon and Carl Ellsworth

Starring: Shia LeBoeuf, Sarah Roemer, David Morse and Carrie-Anne Moss

104 min.

Shia LeBoeuf has been making the talk show circuit swearing up and down that Disturba is not a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window.

But so far, so Hitchcock.

It all begins peacefully with Kale (LeBoeuf) and his dad bonding on an idyllic fishing trip. But the bucolic scene soon turns sour when, with Kale at the wheel, their car overturns on the way home, killing his father.

(Make sure to notice the Coca-Cola cans. Not only is this great product placement, but they inform us that the cause of dad’s death was accidental, not a DUI.)

Flash forward to a year later and we see Kale belting a teacher who has asked what his father would think of his son’s indolent behavior. The punch earns Kale three months house arrest complete with a government issue anklet.

Initially Kale whiles away the days watching TV and consuming quantities of peanut butter, Hershey’s syrup and Red Bull. Even though his mom Julie (Carrie-Anne Moss) insists that he keep the place tidy, the hardest work Kale does is stomping on the doody-filled plastic bag the pesky neighbor kids set ablaze on his porch and testing the limits of his leg bracelet.

It’s then that Kale notices Ashley (Sarah Roemer, who’s more Kate Hudson than Grace Kelly), the pretty new next door neighbor whose bedroom he can peer into from his dead dad’s office. (Kale’s scoptophilia doesn’t go into remission for sexy neighbors.) He also has a hunch that Mr. Turner’s (David Morse) dented blue Mustang is the same one belonging to a serial killer being talked about on the evening news.

Even though, despite LeBoeuf’s protests to the contrary, this movie was indeed a flagrant rip-off, instead of trusting the characters, not to mention Hitchcock’s foolproof blueprint, LeBoeuf dead ends with a thing-that-wouldn’t-die formula. In order to frame the boogeyman, Kale’s friend Ronnie (Aaron Yoo doing a damn fine Wendell Corey) sneaks a camcorder into Turner’s garage to get video evidence of a blue recycling bag filled with guts. Yet, instead of sustaining suspense, D.J. Caruso delivers Blair Witch visuals and an ill-timed goof by comic relief Ronnie. I’m afraid that the most disturbing thing about the AMC Mission Valley screening that I attended was the projector’s sloppy presentation.