Review of Planet Terror (2007) by Allan C — 25 Feb 2017

I think this might arguably be Robert Rodriguez's best, and he has some pretty ones ("Sin City" is probably a close second). Rodriguez is not an arthouse director by any means, but he is a director of wildly entertaining films and I think this may be his most entertaining, though I'll also say this film probably has the narrowest audience appeal.

The story is a zombie one about a government experiment gone wrong that infects the populace of a small Texas town, but this film is unique in that it was one half of Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's "Grindhouse" double feature, that tried to recreate the experience of going to rundown theaters and watching low budget explorations films of the 1970s, complete with fake exploitation film trailers, damaged film prints, and missing reels to round out the experience.

That's what I think limits the film's appeal to a wide audience, because not only does Rodriguez embrace the visual aesthetics of these films, he also fully embraces the ratcheted up sex and violence of these same exploitation films that he's celebrating, which is not going to appeal to all audience members.

I can't speak from personal experience in regards to attending grindhouse theaters, but I can attest to watching many of these films during the VHS heyday. Those VHS video gems did include cheesy trailers for cheap low budget films and often did include poor film transfers that included damaged film prints, so even for a gen-xer like me, this film provided a lot of nostalgia.

Freddy Rodríguez is the hero of the film who helps save his stripper girlfriend, Rose McGowan, from zombies. In the process McGowan loses her leg, which is eventually replaced with an M-16. Josh Brolin plays a terrifically villainous doctor after his ex-wife Marley Shelton.

I think this was the first film I saw him in where I realized this guy can really act and isn't just the guy from "Goonies" and "Thrashin'". You also have Jeff Fahey, Michael Biehn, Fergie, Nicky Katt and Bruce Willis.

A great touch is that Willis is never shown in the same shot as the rest of the cast, which was a favorite trick of exploitation films who would hire one major (usually fading) start to film one or two days worth of footage that could be inserted into the rest of the film, then giving producers the opportunity to boast about the films' fabulous cast.

Rodriguez pretty much summed up this love letter to exploitation films of yore when he said, "The posters were much better than the movies, but we're actually making something that lives up to the posters.

" and he absolutely did!