“”Planet Terror””
By Autumn Schuster – Staff Writer
There’s nothing hotter then a luscious-lipped stripper taking out a legion of undead with an impromptu machine-gun leg. This vision is just one of the beauts that Robert Rodriguez cooks up in his tribute to 1970s exploitation film, “”Planet Terror.”” The piece is one half of the double-feature gorefest that is “”Grindhouse,”” a time-warp to the good old days of horror, when bad dialogue abounded and no one seemed to mind. But rather than a cheap combination of every zombie movie ever made, Rodriguez’s film is a ridiculously inflated homage. Full of obscene language, delicious nudity and pulse-pounding violence, “”Planet”” delivers all of the subtle promise of a terribly great movie.
The film opens on the delightful stripper, Cherry (Rose McGowan), jiggling her ass and winding her way down the pole of a Texas no-panty palace. An exotic dancer with a meandering life plan, Cherry quits her demeaning job and wanders into a BBQ hut owned by JT (Jeff Fahey), boasting the best BBQ recipe in the entire Lone Star State. It is here that she also runs across old flame Wray (the hunky Freddy Rodriguez), and asks for a ride into the night. Throw in an unhappily married doctor couple – two-timing lesbian wife Dakota Block (Marley Shelton) and psychotic husband William Block (Josh Brolin) – and a plague-infested town, and the result is a statewide meltdown courtesy of the aforementioned undead.
After a military deal goes south, a mysterious green gas is let loose upon the country hamlet, turning its citizens into boil-ridden cannibalistic maniacs. When loved ones are slain and limbs lost, the rag-tag group of survivors (including a sheriff and some feisty Latina twins) gathers at JT’s BBQ to formulate an escape plan. Led by Wray, his one-legged lover Cherry and the shell-shocked Dakota, the crew fumbles through enemy territory only to discover they have more in store than the mindless creatures in the woods.
“”Planet”” may not be driven by brainpower, but what it lacks in intellectual brilliance it makes up for in smokin’ celebrity and cultish cool. There’s not an ounce of originality to be found in the plot, but when a stoic Bruce Willis whispers, “”You want the story? Let me spin it for you quick,”” a suppressed shiver can’t help but run down our spines. Around every corner a mischievous A-lister is lurking, waiting to jump out of the bushes and offer another bad line or two. Even Fergy-Ferg gets her act on in a couple of very busty, unsurprisingly glamourless scenes. The film is a veritable campfire-Kumbaya of cameos, and Rodriguez appears to have busted out his Rolodex and called every famous face he’s ever known.
Despite its pricey cast, the charm of the film is not star power or its disgustingly vivid dismemberments, but rather its true channeling of nostalgia for the films that rocked the disco era. Guts, gore and sensational fun tumble out of the screen like sensory candy to delight the soul and nullify cognitive thought. There’s no complicated distress as things blow up left and right, or as an ex-stripper arches her leg to spit round after round of death-dealing justice – not even during the dying quips of campy casualties.
Just as it was meant to be, “”Planet”” is outrageous, impossible, stupid and divine. Rodriguez answers to no one but his own desires while recreating a time when movies were about quantity over quality – poorly planned and a fucking blast.
“”Death Proof””
By Chris Mertan – Associate Hiatus Editor
With his gradual slide into retro art-house film, it’s no surprise that Quentin Tarantino would choose to hone his almost masturbatory fixation on the stylistic genre with “”Death Proof,”” the second entry in the double-feature throwback “”Grindhouse.”” The premise is simple: Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) is a, well, stuntman, who likes to kill pretty young girls with the car he refers to as “”death proof.”” It’s all running pretty smoothly until a buxom foursome of gear-shifting, rough-and-tough gang girls (the queen bee being Rosario Dawson) decide to teach him a lesson.
So is the stuntman really death proof or just completely insane? Or are the girls insane? Or maybe just the director? The first flick on the bill, Robert Rodriguez’s “”Planet Terror,”” takes a horrifically funny spin on the standard B-list zombie movie, with all the charm of cheap cinema: scratches and dirt, bad sound and a missing reel. Tarantino does start out with some of these campy elements – like more bad reel changes, which accomplish the Godard-on-speed effect – but soon forgets them. At that point, we’re no longer in a grindhouse, but Tarantino’s slow-moving little world of fast cars and even faster women.
The biggest letdown is the dialogue, once a shining beacon of Tarantino’s quick wit and observational tics. Oh, it’s still quick, but now lies there with all the intensity of the sleeping old men who used to frequent the venues Tarantino and Rodriguez wish to emulate. The characters babble on without saying anything of worth, merely keeping a constant ramble of repetitive jabs at men and sex. Such a shame for the same man who once created memorable personalities around genius dialogue about Madonna’s “”Like a Virgin”” and why France has the “”Royale with Cheese.””
But this is where the career of a director who once loved to relive his favorite films – and now loves to be loved for his love of film – will go. Since “”Reservoir Dogs,”” and especially “”Pulp Fiction,”” Tarantino has done a perfect job at making himself bigger than his films; for this fame, his product has gone dry. His name is plastered so shamelessly everywhere above and around the film that we can’t escape it, so Tarantino-ing our society that future filmmakers have little chance of recovery.
Promoting your movies is one thing, as is sharing your filmic prowess, but trying to act in every possible role should be left to the days of “”Dogs”” and “”Pulp.”” This time, Tarantino has not one, but two guest appearances as characters who serve no purpose than to scream “”Hey! That’s Quentin Tarantino!”” Aside from a recently acquired Thanksgiving-turkey neck, his performance is a cringeworthy overexposure of self – roles present only so he can play them – and making the meaninglessness of his story and dialogue all the more obvious.
That said, “”Death Proof”” does survive with some dead-on acting from Russell and the girls – with their perky nuances and bad-ass attitudes – and, above all, with a killer chase sequence that takes us back to the days of “”Bullitt”” and the original “”Gone in 60 Seconds,”” where the road plays an actual role. The sheer exuberance of the chase and characters prove that Tarantino is not beyond redemption, just that he needs to get back to his roots. He has the talent, the skill, the clout and the insanity, but wears a dark side of overboard ego. It is time for Quentin Tarantino to cool it down with the showboating and remind us why we decided to give John Travolta his career back 10 years ago.