Planet Terror Review
Written by: jamhorner
Knowing how wacky and loony Robert Rodriguez can get, I’m not surprised that he wrote and directed this lovely piece of zombie film. In fact, I’ll go further and say that this is probably one the best zombie homage that I have ever seen, with the exceptions of the classics. The tale is quit simple and “the usual,” accidental bio-chemicals, or in this case gas, is accidentally released and the people who are exposed to it turn into “sickos,” and its up to a group of strangers and enemies to band together and fight there way through it. What I like about this movie is some of the most gross, gory and action packed randomness that is used to heighten the action of this film. The acting is pretty good, there aren’t scares as much as it is gross and disturbing and the pinch of silliness that Rodriguez adds to his films. I think we all know what that is, Once Upon A Time in Mexico fans.
To get started, there is a lot of randomness in this movie that overlaps all the categories that make this film worth watching. However, I think that the best random scene in this movie is the point were they are all in the bar and tension rises between two enemies and the film cuts out and the real is lost, then the real is found and put back together and everybody is friendly and the whole bar is burning. What the heck! I love that they added in that extra Grindhouse feel to it. Randomness like the iconic “leg gun” was handled quit well or the helicopter scene. But the randomness is also accompanied with silliness. The humor in this film is greatly exaggerated and well done, and for the most part, this aspect lightens up the scariness this movie may or may not have. A great example of humor is when everybody is riding around in jeeps and pickup trucks and the main character is riding on a moped. The humor is great but it can steer away from the film, many of the people in the audience were laughing rather than jumping, but I guess that is Robert’s intention.
The acting, to say the least was pretty good, not the best, but pretty well. I enjoyed the performance by Freddy Rodriguez, especially in the hospital when he goes ninja on the zombies. I enjoyed the vixen/dominatrix style that Rose McGowan brought to Cherry Darling’s character. I really enjoyed the subtle, quite and evil charismatic character of Dr. William Block, as well as Josh Brolin who played him. It seems as though that Bruce Willis is there just to be there, and just to be a famous face, and he is, but in this film he plays a great part and his performance is vastly different from his other heroic side of acting. I loved the insane acting of Naveen Andrews and his sick obsession as well as Michael Biehn, who I’m glad is finally getting the limelight again. I haven’t seen him since The Terminator. I was also quite fond of Tom Savini and Michael Parks as Earl McGraw.
As I said before, there aren’t many “jump out” scares as there were “gross” scares, and that works pretty well in this film, especially given the genre and plot. In this film there are zombies but they are more than just zombies, they are horribly mutated zombies. The reason why this film seems so original to the zombie genre is because dead in this film have large welts, tumors, cysts and puss pockets that gradually grow in size for time. Soon, they end up looking like someone with Proteus Syndrome. I also enjoyed the excessive gore that was used in this film, people being torn apart, zombies eating brains, the most disgusting tongue horror that I have ever seen. The gore is very, very excessive in this film and a bit too over the top; however, it just wouldn’t be Planet Terror without it.
I do want to add my 2 cents in about the action. To start off, I think that the leg-machine-gun will go down in cinematic history, as the most ridiculous form of action ever imaginable. In fact, this whole movie has its share of random action and ridiculous amount of explosive comedy. Examples from the trailer are using a helicopter to chop the heads off of zombies (Dawn of the Dead?), using the rocket-launcher-leg to propel oneself into the air, using a pocket rocket to shoot zombies, it’s all great action-packed fun. I personally think that it ranks up with the Looney Toons style of action like Hot Fuzz and Shoot’em Up.
Overall, I think this movie is a good natured, ol’ fashion zombie flick with a few Rodriguez twists and turns to it. It has pretty good acting, great gory action and ridiculous amount of randomness and zombie carnage. Hopefully this zombie flick will go down in history as one of the best dead rising homage to the genre. This movie is just plain great! I would strongly recommend it for those horror fans that enjoy films like Slither or any kind of Troma based film. This film has that touch to it. I would also recommend this movie to those who enjoy zombie flicks as well as Romero flicks, I would go as far to recommend this one to black comedy fans and of course, Rodriguez fans. It’s just a great action packed comedy-horror film that really ignites any television or theater screen.