Truth be told, “Grindhouse,” the double-feature exploitation homage by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, is not the first big-budget revival of 1970s oddity and spectacle. A stream of remakes in recent years have drawn from high-profile pictures of the period (“Poseidon” and “Stepford Wives” come to mind) and the sort of drive-in classics (“Walking Tall” and “Gone in 60 Seconds”) that help fuel “Grindhouse.” With such a poor track record of remakes, even the “Grindhouse” gambit of 42nd street authenticity, replete with fake trailers, seems foolhardy at best.

“Grindhouse” is not sleaze reborn so much as selectively stylized but, really, who cares? When a film features a repulsive baddie who staggers to rape and kill someone as his suppurating testicles slowly detach and ooze to the ground, the filmmakers have already fulfilled the quota of memorable perversities that justified many traditional grindhouse pictures. And when the infected zombie is played by Quentin Tarantino, you get perhaps the most indelible metaphor of the year — the very picture of the indefatigable fanboy that powers the eye-catching project.

The scene, like the rest of Robert Rodriguez’s half of the show, “Planet Terror,” is actually more interested in cartoonish gross-out and comprehensive freakery than in disturbing the audience. With happy incoherence, this murky tale of toxic zombies in rural Texas piles together elements of 1970s and, to this viewer’s eyes, ’80s B-movie fare: a go-go dancer (the one soon outfitted with a machine gun prosthesis), a backwoods outpost, shadowy paramilitaries, a menacing doctor, and clunky old-flame exposition.

All of which distills into Mr. Rodriguez’s typically serviceable mix of action movie and comic book horror, glowing with a deft sense of absurdity about its ramshackle forebears. An initial stand-off at an abandoned military base, pitting a grizzly Bruce Willis against a mad genius, succeeds in explaining everything and nothing about zombie phenomena. Mr. Willis soon disappears, and the rest of the movie sees a motley crew of zombie-fighters dealing with the messy consequences: the dancer (Rose McGowan, a modern queen of the B’s in her weary sarcasm), her sharp-shooting old flame (Freddy Rodriguez), and a murderous, and feuding couple of doctors (a perfectly scuzzy Josh Brolin and a wide-eyed Marley Shelton). Local color comes courtesy of a sheriff (Michael Biehn) and his chef brother (Jeff Fahey), guardian of a secret barbecue recipe.

The movie’s brand of short-attention span theater (splattery shootouts! bubbling flesh!) cannily eases us into lower expectations. The stylized throwback of erratic editing and plotting turns out to be its own delight, more so than the much-advertised scratches that digitally adorn every frame. Mr. Rodriguez has stitched together an entertainment no worse than what Hollywood churns out and, though essentially just as preprocessed, it’s much more honest about its defects.

On the second half of the bill, Mr. Tarantino’s “Death Proof” might seem like the less grindhouse of the two films, or, as one fellow viewer put it, the result of Mr. Rodriguez taking the project way too seriously while Mr. Tarantino did his usual. But the relaxed pace and good-time chatter that make up most of “Death Proof” evoke the longueurs and lags of drive-in movies — only in this case, with dialogue and assuredly tight filmmaking by Mr. Tarantino.

The two acts of “Death Proof” luxuriate in playful dishing and posturing in bars and cars. First, a post-collegiate bunch, led by DJ Jungle Julia (Sydney Tamiia Poitier, daughter of Sidney), does some barhopping. That’s followed by the misadventures of a quartet of movie-business professionals (including Rosario Dawson as a makeup artist and actual “Kill Bill” stuntwoman Zoe Bell). Kurt Russell plays the charmingly grizzled exstuntman (named Stuntman Mike, naturally) who stalks them as prey for his specially outfitted car, which serves as the movie’s killer gimmick — a crashable stunt car that infallibly preserves its driver.

Although care is taken with production detail, the retro soundtrack, and the pop-culture detritus that constitute the Tarantino universe, “Death Proof” is still initially a comedown after the immediate gratification of “Planet Terror” and the fake trailers that precede each feature. (Of these coming attractions, Simon Wright’s perfectly tuned parody of repackaged Hammer horror is almost worth the cost of admission by itself.)

But Mr. Tarantino’s long-game approach to the paradigms of carchase and slasher films pays off. Even without one of his characteristically fractured narratives, the director showcases his usual flair for revenge and reversal that seems to enmesh characters and audiences alike. On a technical level, the action is nuts-and-bolts impressive: Ms. Bell’s hair-raising stunt work with a Dodge Challenger is a worthy tribute to car-chase classics like the original “Gone in 60 Seconds” from 1974.

Like “Planet Terror,” “Deathproof” steers clear of outré material, unless one counts Mr. Tarantino’s gratuitous self-casting (this time, as a barman) and more obsessive fetishization of hot chicks kicking butt after a trauma. Mr. Tarantino’s movie is in an endearing state of being once removed from its shocking material; even his characters are self-aware movie fans: Zoe is dead set on getting the same model of car featured in the 1971 cult road movie “Vanishing Point,” while Stuntman Mike tries to impress women by reeling off the names of obscure TV action shows in which he claims to have performed.

“Grindhouse” may raise some of the same questions as “Kill Bill” — about the intended audience for highly referential spectacle. But you really don’t need to know a thing to enjoy the genial excess and gutsy heroism on display here. And if the Weinstein Co.’s $55 million indulgence of two superfans goes even a little ways toward revivifying communal movie-going or maybe even double features, it’s hard to complain about directorial narcissism. Messrs. Tarantino and Rodriguez are fans just like you and me, but whereas the rest of us just Google “hixploitation” and are done with it, they happen to make feature-length films — fortunately for us, entertaining ones.