Film Review: PLANET TERROR (2007)

 PLANET TERROR (2007)

USA/Mexico 1hr 45mins

Dir: Robert Rodriguez

"I'm gonna eat your brains and gain your knowledge" Tony Block

"I was gonna be a stand up comedian... who's gonna laugh now?!" Cherry Darling

A bio chemical outbreak and test subjects are unleashed at a military base in a remote part of Texas. Chemical engineer and allround dodgy guy with a penchant for collecting his enemies testicles, Abby (Naveen Andrews) was working with a team of corrupt soldiers led by Lt. Muldoon (Bruce Willis)  and had made a transaction to create a bio chemical agent known as DC2 but Muldoon soon found out Abby had a secret stash and was looking to sell it on the black market. So they take him hostage, in the ensuing carnage the deadly gas and test subjects are released on the unsuspecting townsfolk. Meanwhile, Cherry Darling (Rose McGowan) quits her job as a go-go dancer and grabs a ride out of town with her ex, El Wray (Freddy Rodriguez). Swerving to avoid something in the road they crash and Cherry is grabbed from the vehicle by zombies and gets her leg ripped off. Rushed to the nearest medical facility by El Wray they find that the hospital is getting inundated with curious cases of infected bites and corpses missing various important body parts, "Looks like a no brainer... brain scooped clean out of her skull!" -hospital orderly. Soon enough the town is getting overun by zombies and El Wray, Cherry and a small group of survivors hole up at the towns BBQ house "The Bone Shack" as they attempt to figure out the source of infection and get the hell out of town.

Written and directed by Robert Rodriguez who is responsible for a whole host of different offerings from Sin City, Spy Kids 2, the From Dawn Til Dusk series even something to do with a Lady Gaga video. With PLANET TERROR  he has created a great looking 70's style exploitation movie. In fact, this was originally released with Quentin Tarantinos similarly styled movie DEATH PROOF as a double feature known as GRINDHOUSE. The two films featured together with some great 70's style trailers and shorts. PLANET TERROR as a stand alone release has a great fake trailer for Danny Trejo's MACHETE which came to fruition a few years later in 2010 also written and directed by Rodriguez. PLANET TERROR has a grainy, glitchy 70's film reel feel to it with moments where there are missing scenes and parts where the tape is totally destroyed. This looks so good but was also filmed this way as a clever money and time saving tactic by Rodriguez. It has tons of gore, from well shot zombie attacks to body horror and a whole heap of explosions. KNB EFX had a lot to do with the design of the zombies and created the amazing make up effects with Troublemaker doing the majority of the visual and digital effects. The visuals on both are superb but a massive hats off to Rodriguez and the team for creating the effects on Rose McGowan who looses her leg early on only for it to be replaced by a table leg and later on that awesome machine gun!! 

The cast boasts some great names in the main crew, some already mentioned but lets not forget Josh Brolin and Marley Shelton as disfunctional Doctors William and Dakota Block and Jeff Fahey as J.T and Michael Biehn as Sheriff Hague, brothers that like to argue over the perfect barbeque. I enjoyed Naveen Andrews in this as hadn't really seen him in anything since LOST and never in anything with such sense of humour. Then, there are the cameos; not just from Willis but Fergie, Tom Savini and Quentin Tarantino! With Rodriguez' son Rebel as the Blocks son Tony. The sense of humour throughout is predominantly deadpan especially between Rodriguez and McGowan which works really well. The sub plots between Brolin and Shelton and Biehn and Fahey are highly entertaining and work well within the plot of the movie. The zombies have two kinds of looks; the soldiers need the DC2 gas to look normal so when they remove their masks their skin starts to bubble and blister ending up in them melting and mutating into zombie like creatures that wouldn't look out of place in John Carpenters THE THING (1982) or Stuart Gordons Lovecraftian FROM BEYOND (1986). The fresher zombies still have the great blistering skin effect but become more of your conventional type zombie ranging from shamblers to the faster type. The scenes at the hospital have some of the best gruesome wound detail and icky syringe shenanigans. The soundtrack is fabulous and crosses numerous genres with a few tracks written by Rodriguez and performed by Rose McGowan. As well as this it features that Dead Kennedys classic "Too Drunk To Fuck" and a track written and performed by John Carpenter.

For me PLANET TERROR is all about the effects, the gore and the wonderful glitchy grindhouse feel. The cast is great and the acting is top notch. It is also a movie I don't hear alot about these days so I felt it was well worth digging up and bringing back to the front of peoples mind, it's a great one to just kick back and get drawn into. It's loud, funny and hugely entertaining. It gets a solid 4 brains out of 5 from me!