Robert Rodriguez
Planet Terror

I want to start by saying that I am not one of those people who, during the movie, left the theater shouting, "My goodness, this film is trash!" I want to clarify that I am against these PEOPLE! I love voluntary trash; I love provocation, I love tributes and quotes, I love the brilliant copiers like Tarantino and Rodriguez, I love those who exalt that 70s/80s trash cinema, I love those who have the courage to spend a boatload of money to bring a tribute to Trash Movies to the screen! I wholeheartedly love those directors who create works in which they express what they feel and what art is to them, completely ignoring people's opinions! 50 million dollars to craft a flop that pays homage to 70s B-movies! A true director should have the total freedom to do whatever the hell they want! Without censorship, without limits, without necessarily following the tastes of the PEOPLE! Who has the courage to do such a thing if not those two madmen, Tarantino and Rodriguez? Thanks to vintage movie posters that were pasted on the walls of GRINDHOUSE, those gritty, fierce cinemas where two trashy films were shown for the price of one, these two geniuses took advantage of their successful names to practically create a madness among friends! Just like two schoolmates who go wild filming amateur movies with their own camera (in this case with an extra 50 million dollars!). A true homage to 70s/80s genre cinema. To do this, you must spend as much as possible to make the product 100% faithful to an original Trash film of the era! The result is phenomenal!

Grainy film, images that jam during projections, colors that go out of focus, dubbing not synchronized with the actors' lip movements, hand-made camera zooms, spectacularly lousy photography! Sound effects that recall the homemade synthesizers of the 70s/80s, a triumph of deliberately trashy scenes! Splatter effects galore, sex, engines, hyper-violence, dialogues that praise nothingness, tasteless scenes, provocation, and special effects that recall those crude effects created under the garage of our house! Grindhouse is simply a remake of bad movies done artfully! So artfully done that the audience who did not understand the intent of the two directors... didn’t get a damn thing! People genuinely thinking they are facing a Trash movie, people who, I swear, went to the cinema projector to complain about the grainy film!!!, people who left after 25 minutes in a rush, and those who even asked for a ticket refund! During the screening, I wanted to get up and say, "damn it... they did it on purpose!!!!! Don’t you get it? FOOLS!!" In short, so much ignorance for this beautiful/hideous work of art!

In America, in the uncut version of the film, "Planet Terror" was the first episode of the package, followed by the fake trailers, and concluded with Tarantino's episode "Death Proof." Obviously, Tarantino's name attracts more, so they released his chapter first. A beautiful homage to police cinema, but... in my opinion, done too well to recall the fabulous Trash of the 70s! Whereas Rodriguez's episode is a true MASTERPIECE of uglification!!

A spectacular tribute to our myth Lucio Fulci, but also to George Romero, Peter Jackson, and Sam Raimi, in short, a triumph of tributes and quotes for an hour and a half of pure adrenaline (the trailer nailed it this time!).

Finally, a great splatter movie like we haven't seen in years! Roth's Hostel can go to hell! Here we face 80 minutes of minced meat, severed limbs, gelatinous effects, and a triumph of SNIPPED BALLS! The photography, curated by Rodriguez himself, is excellent! At times, it truly feels like you're watching a vintage film, with lighting effects, grains, everything strictly the same! The director perfectly recreated that desire to scandalize (and entertain) the audience with tasteless scenes that were very popular in the 70s. There's something for everyone here: testicles in people's mouths, genitals melting like butter, a child accidentally putting a bullet in his head after his mother told him, "kill anyone who approaches, especially your father!" hemorrhagic blisters full of pus exploding in people's faces! A total delight for those who, like me, adore the cinema of provocation! It was a pleasure to see people leave the theater after a splatter scene! It hadn't happened for ages! It must be said that not everything is intentionally bad! This film gives us sequences so spectacular they make any A-list cinema envious! Breathtaking editing, amazing visual effects, heart-pounding action, and some anthology sequences! Like the already legendary severed leg of the strip girl replaced with a machine gun (a clear tribute to Bruce Campbell’s character in "Evil Dead 2 and 3" who had a chainsaw instead of a hand), the comic/adrenaline-pumping action scene of the girl escaping from enemies with the weapon instead of a leg and shooting at the ground to launch herself into the air is the absolute best!

Planet Terror is pure entertainment! A bold film that doesn't take itself seriously and couldn't care less if it will be a flop or not! This is cinema!

The message is clear: in the low-budget films of the past, or in amateur ones considered Trash, there are strokes of genius that are later taken up and improved by great directors! Sometimes in Trash, there are forms of art that should not be underestimated! Remember, Lucio Fulci, the great master, is still considered Trash by many people today! Just imagine that!

Kudos to Tarantino and Rodriguez for gifting this nostalgic gem to enthusiasts like me! Unfortunately, not many, given the resounding flop!

Long live B-movie cinema! Long live Trash! and..

long live those who pay homage to it!