Schlock value

* * * 1/2

By the time Fergie is dismembered by zombies, you know you're in good hands. She tastes Fergalicious , I'm guessing.

The Black Eyed Peas singer is far from the only casualty in "Grindhouse ," Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's cheerfully reprehensible ode to '70s exploitation movies. Good taste also dies a screaming death, along with half the enthusiastic cast, two classic muscle cars, and the audience's ability to resist. At 3 hours and 11 minutes, your rear end may also cry uncle.

But it works. This Frankenstein monster -- two homages to craptastic drive-in movies stitched into one shambling feature -- transports you to the outer limits of creative schlock. The classic exploitation films from which "Grindhouse" takes its name and geysering life blood only wanted to shock the money out of you. Tarantino and Rodriguez are after both more and less: They want you to cover your eyes in disbelief and get the unholy giggles at the same time. You do, but in two very different ways, and that's the movie's strength.

"Grindhouse" essentially offers a complete night at the movies: two 85-minute feature films, coming attraction trailers (directed by modern horror stalwarts Eli Roth , Rob Zombie , and Edgar Wright ), missing-reel title cards circa 1968, and disgusting ads for the burrito restaurant next door to the theater. The print is lovingly scuffed and scratched -- the cinematic equivalent of stressed jeans.

First up is Rodriguez's "Planet Terror ," a mutant-zombie-attack movie with a soupçon of "General Hospital " thrown in: There are married doctors (Josh Brolin and Marley Shelton ) with bonesaws to grind, a sheriff (Michael Biehn ) and his barbecue -shack owner brother (fellow '80s action survivor Jeff Fahey ), a foulmouthed pair of identical twin teenage Mexican baby sitters (Rodriguez's nieces Elise and Electra Avellan ), and hordes of pustulous zombies. Oh, and Bruce Willis .

Mostly, though, there's Cherry Darling (Rose McGowan ), a go-go dancer (not a stripper, thank you) with a hard heart, a quivering lip, and -- as "Planet Terror" progresses -- several usefully lethal prostheses where her right leg was, before it got bitten off. By her side is Wray (Freddy Rodriguez ), a pint-size mystery man who acquires more and more mojo until he's quite logically leaping off the walls, Bruce Lee -style.

"Planet Terror" is shallow, but it may be Rodriguez's most consistent piece of work, and some people will like it a lot more than Tarantino's "Death Proof ." (Trailers for "Werewolf Women of the SS " and a horror movie called "Don't! " are sandwiched between.) Some will prefer the Tarantino. Others probably ran screaming from this review after the first paragraph; let 'em go. To my mind, "Death Proof" has lower lows but much higher highs -- where Rodriguez is happy to play in the fields of genre pastiche, his partner just can't help making a Quentin Tarantino movie.

At first, that seems like bad news, as "Death Proof" settles in with a quartet of tough-talking women -- Jackie Brown times four -- and lets them jaw amusingly but aimlessly. The key figures are played by Sydney Poitier (daughter of film legend Sidney ) and Vanessa Ferlito ("CSI: NY" ), and the dialogue feels like a retread of the banter in "Pulp Fiction " and the "Kill Bill " movies. The tone ambles between comedy, suspense , and something harder to pin down. Our attention begins to drift.

But wait: What's Kurt Russell doing in the corner of that bar? The onetime Disney kid and "Escape From New York " hard case plays Stuntman Mike , a smiling lady-killer with a deadly hot rod -- all Freudian symbolism gleefully intentional. And here are three more women for him to potentially entrap: a movie stuntwoman named Zoe (played by the real New Zealand stuntwoman Zoe Bell ), her colleague Kim (Tracie Thoms ), and a nail-spitting make up girl named Abernathy (Rosario Dawson ).

Tarantino name checks a number of car-crash exploitation classics: "Vanishing Point ," "Dirty Mary Crazy Larry ," "Gone in 60 Seconds " ("the real one, not that Angelina Jolie [expletive]," says Kim). Soon enough, though, it becomes clear that he's driving straight into the valley of "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, " Russ Meyer's mighty 1965 sleaze opus about power-babes on a revenge kick. The segment begins to pick up speed. Then it goes faster, and funnier, than you thought possible. Then it goes further.

By this point, all the campy '70s touches have fallen away, and Tarantino's just grooving on speed and on the sight of women in charge (all three actresses are just wonderful). If "Grindhouse" has any precedent, it may be the 1967 concept album "The Who Sell Out ," which Pete Townshend sequenced like an actual AM radio station, with pimple-cream ads wedged between the Who songs. Like the album, "Grindhouse" loses interest in its own concept toward the end and simply lets the creative juices flow. That's not a bad thing.

Ultimately, the movie is just about clever boys (and girls) playing with their toys (and girls), at times to delirious effect. Never does "Grindhouse" play for keeps, though -- never do you feel that transgressive tug that says you're watching something you shouldn't.

Except once. One of the fake trailers is for a horror movie called "Thanksgiving ," about a serial killer who strikes on turkey day. While it's an obvious "Halloween " parody, the segment's sickly, washed-out footage and shots of crudely filmed violence make one genuinely uneasy. I don't think I'll ever get the final image out of my head, and I'm not even sure what's happening in it.

"Thanksgiving" is an unclean thing, in other words, and it's the handiwork of Eli Roth , director of "Hostel " and Mrs. Roth's boy from Newton . Alone in the merry moral wasteland of "Grindhouse," he understands that schlock without a sense of sin is just playing dress-up.

Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com. For more on movies, go to boston.com/ae/movies/blog.