Do you guys remember the time when zombies used to be the ‘in’ thing in the world of horror movies? Well, this movie’s everything about it. It’s one of the two flicks featured under ‘Grindhouse’ theme, which was co-produced by Quentin Tarantino (”Kill Bill”, “Pulp Fiction”) and Robert Rodriguez (”From Dusk Till Dawn”, “Sin City”). This one’s being produced by Rodriguez while the other one, called “Grindhouse - Death Proof”, was by Tarantino.

I’ve actually read about the Grindhouse project from the internet sometime ago, that Tarantino and Rodriguez are collaborating on something that would relive back the old days - you know, zombies, slashers, car chases and all the non-CGI stuff. (If your childhood was in the 80’s, then you’ll know what I’m talking about). And I have been looking forward for this since then… because I know, if there’s anything at all that I would want to watch on TV at the lowest point of my life, it would be flicks produced by either of these 2 magnificent madcap directors.

Anyway, I finally got to watch “Planet Terror” last weekend… and although the flick fell short of my immense expectation, it was quite an entertaining watch. It has tits scene (in the initial purposely made fake B grade trailer called “Machete”), gores (though not that much if you go by the “Kill Bill” or “Dead Alive” standard), fake blood, exploding zombies, real deal pyrotechnics… all with exaggerated kind of violence (the copy that I had was an UNRATED version so… some of these might be snipped off on the RATED copies).

The main plot revolves around a go-go dancer called Cherry Darling, who quit her night job and ran into her ex boyfriend El Wray at a barbeque joint. After they did some catching up, Cherry asked for a ride home from the location. Little did they know, that something ominous was happening at a nearby location - a biological weapon deal went wrong between a scientist and a group of rogue mercenaries headed by Bruce Willis, which turned the whole neighborhood into zombies. On the way home, El Wray crashed his truck from averting one of the stray zombies. They both survived the crash, but Cherry was dragged out of the wreck by some zombies and had her left leg gnawed off. El Wray rescued her from definite death by dispatching the zombies with a rifle and sent her to the hospital, only to realize that it was already full of people infected with the zombie virus… and adventure ensues. (I’ll let you guys find out the rest for yourselves).

There were a few subplots that also ran concurrently with the Cherry Darling main plot, but all of them would eventually converge into a big group and make their escape together, dispatching gruesome zombies in the process and forming a survivor exodus to another safer place. Just like the old time zombie flicks with poor ending. Hell, those guys even created it to have that 80’s grainy and scratch marks on celluloid effect, and also deliberately added a ‘missing reel’ part to filter out the x-rated scenes (the scene where Cherry darling lifted her broomstick peg when having a steamy round of sex actually had me in stitches). Other notable bizarre moments:
- Quentin Tarantino’s cameo as a rapist and had his dick turned into a slimy mush - priceless.
- Cherry snapped her peg when she used it to impale Tarantino the rapist’ eye socket. El Wray would then had it replaced with a machine gun with an underslung grenade launcher (or something). The poster was Cherry with that said machine gun peg.
- Bruce Willis character claiming that he shot Osama Bin Laden by shooting him 2 times in his heart and once on his head.
- Dog jumps out of convertible car and ended up as a roadkill along with the zombies, with blood spraying all over - damn fucking funny scene

Overall, it was a rather mind blowing entertainment. I mean, how can one dislike watching zombies wreak havocs and body parts getting mutilated all around? You don’t get much of these stuff around anymore. Go watch it, be it to reminisce the old days, or because you haven’t seen anything like this before… it’s better than the likes of Die Hard 4 (damn fucking stupid movie)

This flick is worthy 7 out of 10 in my scale of awesomeness - an entertaining and comedic deus-ex-machina zombie flick, though not as good as his (Rodriguez’s) older zombie undead masterpiece “From Dusk Till Dawn”…

(the “Machete” fake trailer at the beginning of the movie looks very promising~~ “they messed with the wrong Mexican”… ahaks! The latest news was that it’s going to be developed into a real movie, to be released as another “Grindhouse” flick)