| Product: |
Planet Terror (DVD) |
| Date: |
19/03/08 (110 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Some laughs
Disadvantages: Might put you off pizza
Planet Terror is a spoof movie in the guise of the zombie flesh eating horror flick. It is a kind of tribute by Director Robert Rodriguez to all his favourite B-movies. The story is told of a small town whose inhabitants become infected by an experimental bio-nerve gas after it is accidentally released at a remote US military base in Texas. Those exposed to it become flesh eating, mutating zombie like creatures. The infection is further passed on by those unfortunate enough to get a nasty zombie bite. For some reason, the zombies seem to prefer sucking the brains out of their victims first... mm lovely.
There is plenty of gore, fountains of blood and dripping flesh. It's the kind of film that I usually avoid or switch off after the first five minutes, but as it had Tarantino's name on the DVD case, I thought I'd take a chance and for some reason I decided to keep watching. I hadn't heard anything about this film before watching it, so it took me a while to work out if this really was a truly trashy movie or just a movie about trashy movies. After watching it I'm still not really sure. I suppose there are a few funny scenes. In particular the wooden leg in the bed scene, Tarantino's dripping genitals and Bruce Willis with his bulging pizza head. You might never want to eat another thick crust pizza after watching this.
Rose McGowan plays Cherry, a happy go lucky go-go dancer. Unable to get a lift home, she has to walk it and ends up getting attacked by a nasty vicious zombie; serves her right. She survives only to awake to find she's missing a right leg. She's hardly devastated on discovering this and her ex-boyfriend, Wray (Freddy Rodriguez) is a dab hand at carpentry and whittles her a wooden leg. This she later hilariously substitutes for sawn off automatic machinegun which she is somehow able to fire at zombies simply by pointing. Don't miss the scene where she hobbles along and jumps on a moving truck.
Other whacky characters are a psychopathic doctor and his cheating lesbian nursy wife who has a fetish for syringes: she likes sticking them in people, that is, until she gets her wrists broken. One thing I learnt about this film is just how important your wrists are and the things you can't do when your wrists are broken: for example, trying to open the car door and turn on the ignition when you're being chased by zombies. This bit was funny but the floppy wrist joke goes on too long and like the film, it all gets a bit limp in the end.
Conclusion
I felt that this movie could have been a lot funnier than it actually was. It seems at times as if the directors and writers were just messing about too much and kind of adding on scenes as they went along. One thing I did like about this movie was some of the cinematic trickery to make the film appear at times like an old 1970s style B-movie with grainy pictures. It's a pity they didn't expand a on this theme - maybe if they'd have made all the characters wear 1970s clothing it would have been a bigger laugh. Planet Terror was originally released as part of a Grindhouse double feature along with Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof. I've not seen the other film so I can't compare. I'm sure some of you will enjoy watching this gory jokefest, but for me it went on a bit too long and they kind of over did it with the pizza special effects and fountains of tomato sauce. But watching this after a few pints on a Friday night might have you rolling over with laughter.
Summary: Zombie spoof movie
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