rated R 

Carefully crafted Oscar contenders are a dime a dozen, but there’s something rare about a trashy, blood-soaked B-movie that’s hard to explain. Actually, those B-movies aren’t rare at all—hundreds of them made their way through the run-down grindhouse theaters of the ’70s and ’80s, movies like “Maniac,” “Women’s Prison Massacre” and “Emmanuelle in America.” But with the advent of big-studio blockbusters and major movie theater chains, reliving the grindhouse experience is all but impossible. Directors Quentin Tarrantino and Robert Rodriguez skillfully resurrect that feeling in “Grindhouse.” The film is scratchy, the sound spotty and the features interrupted by missing reels. The only things missing are the sticky floors, broken seats and skuzzy theatergoers. Taken as a whole, “Grindhouse” is a masterpiece in style and aesthetic, a little pocket universe complete with ads for fake movies and fictional restaurants. It’s a sublimely fun movie-going experience, and even though it’s a big gimmick (a double-feature, with Tarrantino and Rodriguez each directing a film, along with some fake trailers), it’s an exercise in excess that works.

Rodriguez’s contribution to this cinematic cesspool of awesomeness is “Planet Terror,” a goopy, gory mess of a zombie film. It’s as high-concept as you can get: a toxic gas created by the military is released over an unsuspecting Texas town. The gas turns the populace into boil-covered, pus-filled, flesh-craving zombies. Meanwhile, former go-go dancer Cherry (Rose McGowan) meets up with her ex-boyfriend, the mysterious Wray (Freddy Rodriguez). Battles with ill-tempered zombies deprive Cherry of a leg, which she replaces with a wooden table leg. When she loses the replacement limb, Wray comes up with a solution that’s arguably the excessive masterstroke that sends “Planet Terror” into the grindhouse stratosphere: a high-powered, grenade launching machine gun appendage.

Rodriguez packs so much sleaze, slime and one-liners into the movie that a machine gun leg is the only logical end point. That said, “Planet Terror” is a bit of a mess, not only for all the exploding guts, but because Rodriguez tries to jam so much into the movie’s 80 minutes. Numerous subplots make for a heavy load, though Rodriguez manages to tie everything together in the end.

As for the acting, it’s about as uneven as you’d expect. McGowan comes across as stiff and bored for the first half of the film, but is infinitely more engaging once she starts packing heat and kicking ass. The rest of the cast pitch themselves into the ridiculousness, especially Naveen Andrews and Freddy Rodriguez.

Tarrantino’s “Death Proof,” is not quite as true to the grindhouse tradition. Seeing the two directors’ styles side-by-side reveals an important distinction. Despite his major studio backing, Rodriguez carries a low-budget aesthetic. Not so with Tarrantino. Although he is a veritable encyclopedia of trash cinema, Tarrantino remains a stylist at heart, and his efforts, while good, are just too damn polished.

“Death Proof” follows two groups of four women and their separate encounters with Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell), a psychopath who stalks women with his “death proof” Chevy Nova, a supercharged, reinforced beast of an automobile straight out of the bowels of Detroit. In the first half of “Death Proof,” Stuntman Mike meets, stalks and ultimately kills his quarry. The dialogue is snappy and there’s a certain amount of suspense, but “Death Proof” doesn’t get interesting until the second half, when Stuntman Mike fixes his eye on a new quartet of females. This time, the girls are savvy Hollywood types: stuntwomen Kim (Tracie Thoms) and Zoe Bell (as herself), makeup artist Abernathy (Rosario Dawson) and actress Lee (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). While joyriding in a souped-up Dodge Challenger, Zoe, Kim and Abernathy encounter Mike. The girls quickly turn the tables, and a white-knuckle chase ensues.

The last 40 minutes or so of “Death Proof” are unquestionably awesome. But the first 40 minutes, in which we meet Mike’s first group of victims, is slow and talky. Tarrantino undermines himself first by introducing a group of likable characters only to kill them off, and then by introducing a second group of even more likable characters who make you forget about the rest of the film. It’s not quite a grindhouse film, either—the acting is too good, the characters are too engaging, and, apart from a pretty ugly car crash scene, it never strays too far over the top. But despite that, “Death Proof” is still a fun ride.

And then there are the trailers—Rodriguez, Eli Roth (director of “Hostel” and “Cabin Fever”), Rob Zombie and Edgar Wright (director of “Shaun of the Dead”) all contribute trailers for fictional movies that will probably never actually make it to film. Like their feature-length counterparts in “Grindhouse,” the trailers advance the true lesson of “Grindhouse”—nothing succeeds like excess.