Planet Terror
4 out of 5I watched this in a double-bill with it's Grindhouse twin, Death Proof. It's great fun and actually far more successful as part of the experiment than Tarantino's contribution.
The story could just about work as a genuine stand-alone multiplex movie, but it's characters and effects frequently defy logic and could only work as seats of the pants grindhouse style filmmaking. I loved it. Rodriguez has long been a favourite of director for me because he's the sort of filmmaker who could make anything watchable. Send him two elastic bands and a milk bottle top and he'll give you something worth paying to see. His style has always been grindhouse exploitation and the 10 minute film schools you usually find on his DVDs are always a joy.
The story is... erm, something about some sort of chemical weapon... er... Sod it. Zombies. That enough for you?
Raging viruses, body parts swimming in gore, hilarious characters with fantastic dialogue and questionable ethics, it's just great fun. No motivation of any kind except to entertain and take the piss out of cliches. That said, on one of the Death Proof featurettes, they mentioned that they were inspired to hire Kurt Russell after thinking of this movie as the one Carpenter should have made between Escape From new York and The Thing. I know what they mean, and the spirit certainly is there, but surely he never made anything quite this mad?
Look, there's a girl with a gun for a leg. Think about it just for a moment. She could have stuck with the peg leg (hilarious sex scene because of that!) and used both of her working hands to aim and fire properly, but that would have been far too sensible. And just how does she fire the damn thing? Who cares? Watching her spin on her arse while blowing heads of zombies is far more important than mere logic!
Don't bother trying to follow the story. There's even a missing reel and when it rejoins the movie a fair bit seems to have happened. I know Pete reviewed this film before and was disappointed that so much effort was made on this score. But I really got what they were trying to do and I reckon I could watch this thing every week! It's not as good a film as Death Proof, but it's certainly more fun and more successful as a grindhouse flick.
