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“We had a pact!” You can almost hear Robert Rodriguez whining after his directorial gang-bang with pop-culture crotch-sniffer Quentin Tarantino failed to produce the collective audience orgasm they both expected. For his half of the double-feature - Planet Terror - Rodriguez delivered a frenetic, pus-filled time-waster that fit perfectly into the contemporary zombie zeitgeist. Pops, hiss, scratches and missing reels help sell the concept but it’s Rose McGowan and her machine-gun gam that gives you something to remember. At its most inspired, Grindhouse makes good on its promise of a unique recreation of the back-row, ripped-seats, shit-cinema two-fers that folks enjoyed on both coasts. QT, however, doesn’t bother to play by the Grindhouse rules, wasting a truly man-size performance by Kurt Russell and focusing on his puerile fascination with Zoe Bell (Uma Thurman’s stunt double in Kill Bill). Death Proof is a throwback, not to the exploitation hey-day, but to Tarantino’s immature, masturbatory dialogue; sticky with egotistical name-dropping (just cut Vanishing Point into the goddamn movie and do us all a favor!) and tired urban black-speak that would embarrass Samuel L. Jackson. Had this thing actually played on a real 42nd street theater they would have lit the screen on fire after Tarantino’s cinematic sabotage. As it is, we’ll all have to be content with the 21st century protest: a two-month DVD window. Or just walk out after the fake trailers, of which Edgar Wright’s Don’t is the most authentic of the bunch, passing itself off as the sort of post-gothic British import you wish Hammer had actually produced instead of shite like To The Devil A Daughter.