Robert Rodriguez
Grind House - Planet Terror

THE REVIEW

What happens when you combine unbridled action, exaggerated splatter, black humor, movie quotes, and implausible characters? You create a film like "Planet Terror"!

What is Grind House.

The Grind House was a very popular theater in 70s America, presenting so-called exploitation films where scenes of sex and violence take precedence over artistic aspects, and where with the cost of a single ticket, it was possible to see two films: thus, low-budget flicks and B-movies loaded with violence, sex, and humor.

The Grind House project was born from the minds of Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino with the aim of reviving a now-defunct cinematic style through the creation of a single film divided into two distinct parts, with different scripts and actors, all enriched by the so-called "fake trailers", actual trailers of non-existent films, directed by filmmakers like Rob Zombie ("House of 1000 Corpses" and "The Devil's Rejects"), Eli Roth ("Hostel"), and Rodriguez himself. All this for the United States: in non-English speaking countries, a different choice was made, and the two directors saw their work divided, not without controversy, into two distinct films, united by the heading "Grind House".

Planet Terror.

The latest effort by Robert Rodriguez does not disappoint fans of the most violent horror/splatter cinema, that is, all those people who have a (perverse) passion for rivers of blood, various amputations, and filth of all kinds. If in "From Dusk Till Dawn" we admired the exhausting night spent fighting between humans and vampires, in Planet Terror, the protagonists are zombies, born from inhaling a toxic gas ("Return of the Living Dead") and attacking the "living" to feed on their flesh and brains. So far, nothing strange, and we can say we are in the normality of horror, except Rodriguez amazes us with implausible, surreal characters that enrich the movie until it becomes a real blast: Cherry, the protagonist, a Lap Dance dancer aspiring cabaret star, who has a leg amputated following the zombie attack, replaced first with a piece of wood and later with a machine gun; her ex-boyfriend Wray, a tow truck driver whose true identity is never revealed; the mad doctor, neurotic and insensitive, suffering from marital problems; his wife, also a doctor, who during the story presents us with a repertoire of original weapons; the restaurant manager just outside the city, obsessed with finding the perfect barbecue sauce; the scientist collector of male "attributes"; finally, the lieutenant (Bruce Willis) in command of the military platoon who will ignite the fuse of subsequent devastations, whose life was disrupted by the encounter with Bin Laden.

The intertwining of these characters gives birth to and develops the film, through the alternation of gore/splatter scenes, vicissitudes, and irrational and comedic dialogues, in a crescendo of action and pulp fun. Even Quentin Tarantino makes a cameo in the film, playing a soldier with "erection problems".

In conclusion, I can assert that "Planet Terror" is a fun and surreal movie, in a sense a "sick" movie, where all the clichés of horror are taken to the extreme and where the brutality of the undead opposes and confronts the pulp brutality of all the characters we encounter during the visual and sensory journey. Surely this movie is not suitable for horror novices and, in general, for viewers with weak stomachs.

Dr. Zero