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Planet Terror
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Planet Terror is a 2007 film written and directed by Robert Rodriguez, about a group of people attempting to survive an onslaught of zombie-like creatures as they feud with a military unit. The film, a tribute to the zombie film genre, stars Rose McGowan, Freddy Rodriguez, Josh Brolin, Marley Shelton, Michael Biehn, Jeff Fahey, and Bruce Willis. Planet Terror was released theatrically in the United States as part of a double feature with Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof under the title Grindhouse in order to replicate the experience of viewing exploitation films in a "grindhouse" theater.
Grindhouse was released on April 6, 2007, and ticket sales were significantly below box office analysts' expectations, despite mostly positive reviews. In much of the rest of the world, each feature was released separately, with Death Proof screened in an extended version. Two soundtracks were also released for the features and include music and audio snippets from the film. Death Proof was released separately in international theatrical markets, and on DVD in the United States on September 18, 2007.
PlotIn a rural town in Texas, go-go dancer 'Cherry Darling' decides to quit her low-paying job and find another use for her numerous 'useless' talents. She runs into her mysterious ex-boyfriend El Wray at the Bone Shack, a BBQ restaurant owned by JT Hague. Meanwhile, a group of military officials at a nearby US military base, led by the demented Lt. Muldoon, are making a business transaction with a scientist named Abby for mass quantities of a deadly biochemical agent known as DC2 (codename "Project Terror"); when Muldoon learns that Abby has an extra supply on hand, he attempts to take Abby hostage, and Abby intentionally releases the gas into the air after cutting a man's testicles off. The gas reaches the town and turns most of its residents into deformed bloodthirsty psychopaths, mockingly referred to as "sickos" by the surviving humans. The infected townspeople are treated by the sinister Dr. William Block and his abused, neglected anesthesiologist wife Dakota at a local hospital.
As Cherry and El Wray are attacked by the zombies, Doc Block learns of his wife's plans to abandon him and reunite with her lover, Tammy|Stacy "Fergie" Ferguson]]), who was brutally killed by the zombies earlier. Block attacks Dakota with her own anesthetic hypodermic needles, stabbing her in the hands renduring them useless. He then locks her in a closet before returning to the infected patients, including Cherry who has lost her right leg as a result of being attacked. El Wray is disarmed and detained by Sheriff Hague based on past encounters between the two men. As the patients transform into zombies, El Wray escapes the police station and arrives at the hospital, attaching a wooden table leg to Cherry's stump. As El Wray and Cherry fight their way out of the hospital, Dakota escapes to her car, but in struggling to open its door with her numbed hands, accidentally breaks her wrist. Meanwhile, Block becomes infected, and the others take refuge at the Bone Shack.
Dakota rescues her son Tony and takes him to her father, Earl McGraw, a Texas Ranger. Tony, who was given a revolver by his mother, accidentally shoots himself in the face after being told not to point it at himself. Meanwhile, the survivors, including Cherry, El Wray, and some of the police, take refuge in the Bone Shack. Cherry and El Wray make love in JT's bedroom, however the scene is cut short with a fake "Missing Reel" apology notice. During the "missing reel", Sheriff Hague gets shot in the neck by one of his own officers, and zombies amass outside the Bone Shack, which was somehow set on fire. Dakota, Earl, and Tony's crazed babysitter twins arrive at the Bone Shack. With Sheriff Hague badly injured, the group decides to flee to the Mexican border, before being stopped by a large mob of zombies. Muldoon's men arrive, and kill the zombies before arresting the group. They learn from Abby that the soldiers are stealing Abby's supply of the gas because they are infected with it and the only treatment is by constant inhalation of the gas, which delays the effects. They also learn that a small percentage of the population is immune to the gas, suggesting a possible treatment, which is why Muldoon quarantined the survivors.
As Cherry and Dakota are taken away by two soldiers who intend to rape them, the others defeat the security guards, with JT receiving a gunshot wound in the process, and search for Muldoon. Discovered by El Wray and Abby, Muldoon explains that he killed Osama bin Laden before he and his men were infected with DC2 and were ordered to protect the area. Meanwhile, Cherry is forced to dance by the rapist (Quentin Tarantino) while being held at gunpoint. Cherry attacks by breaking off her leg across his face and stabs the remaining knub in his eye. Dakota, after realizing she's regained feeling in her hands, quick-draws her syringe launcher and stuns the other soldier. After killing a mutating Muldoon, El Wray and Abby arrive and save Cherry and Dakota, ultimately replacing Cherry's wooden leg with a modified stockless-M4 carbine with an underslung M203 grenade launcher. In the final battle, Sheriff Hague dies of his neck wound as JT detonates explosives (and himself) to eliminate the zombies. Abby is shot in the head and killed. Block then arrives and is killed by Earl, shortly before the survivors use the blade tips of their transport helicopter to decapitate all the remaining zombies. However, while saving Cherry from a zombie, El Wray is shot, and the remaining survivors flee. In the epilogue, Cherry (now sporting a minigun prosthetic leg) leads the group to the Carribean beach at Tulum, Mexico, where they start a peaceful new society. In the final moments of the film it is revealed that Cherry Darling has given birth to El Wray's daughter.
After the credits have rolled Dakota's son Tony is seen playing in the sand with his pet turtle and pet scorpion.
Cast
History and developmentRobert Rodriguez first came up with the idea for Planet Terror during the production of The Faculty."I remember telling Elijah Wood and Josh Hartnett, all these young actors, that zombie movies were dead and hadn't been around in a while, but that I thought they were going to come back in a big way because they’d been gone for so long," recalled Rodriguez, "I said, 'We've got to be there first.' I had [a script] I’d started writing. It was about 30 pages, and I said to them, 'There are characters for all of you to play.' We got all excited about it, and then I didn't know where to go with it. The introduction was about as far as I'd gotten, and then I got onto other movies. Sure enough, the zombie [movie] invasion happened and they all came back again, and I was like, 'Ah, I knew that I should've made my zombie film.'" The story was reapproached when the idea for Grindhouse was developed by Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino.
Planet Terror is preceded by a fake trailer for a film titled Machete, starring Danny Trejo and Cheech Marin, as it had during the original "double feature" presentation of Grindhouse. Rodriguez wrote Machete in 1993 as a full feature for Danny Trejo. "I had cast him in Desperado and I remember thinking, 'Wow, this guy should have his own series of Mexican exploitation movies like Charles Bronson or like Jean-Claude Van Damme.' So I wrote him this idea of a federale from Mexico who gets hired to do hatchet jobs in the U.S. I had heard sometimes FBI or DEA have a really tough job that they don't want to get their own agents killed on, they'll hire an agent from Mexico to come do the job for $25,000. I thought, 'That's Machete. He would come and do a really dangerous job for a lot of money to him but for everyone else over here it's peanuts.' But I never got around to making it." It was later announced that the trailer will be made as a feature film.
ProductionCastingMany of the cast members had previously worked with Rodriguez. Before appearing in Grindhouse, Marley Shelton had auditioned for The Faculty, but Rodriguez chose not to cast her. She was eventually cast in the role of the Customer in the opening sequence of Sin City. Bruce Willis had appeared in Sin City. Tom Savini had previously acted in From Dusk Till Dawn, Michael Parks reprises the role of Earl McGraw, a role the actor first portrayed in From Dusk Till Dawn, and Quentin Tarantino himself appears in a small role, as he also does in Death Proof.
Filming locationsThe bulk of the film was shot on location in Austin, Texas. The final scenes of the film were shot at the ruins of Tulum, Mexico, an ancient Maya city surrounded by stone walls and located on 39-ft (12-m) cliffs along the east coast of the Yucatán Peninsula.
Special effectsThe film uses various unconventional techniques to make Planet Terror appear more like the films that were shown in grindhouse theaters in the 1970s. Throughout the feature and the Machete trailer, the film is made to look damaged; five of the six 25,000 frame reels were edited with real film damage, plug-ins, and stock footage.
Planet Terror makes heavy use of digital effects throughout the film, including Cherry's fake leg. During post-production the effects teams digitally removed McGowan's right leg from the shots and replaced it with computer-generated props — first a table leg and then an assault rifle. During shooting for these scenes, McGowan wore a special cast which restricted her leg movement to give her the correct motion.
EditingDuring editing, Tarantino and Rodriguez came up with the idea of inserting a "missing reel" into the film. "(Quentin) was about to show an Italian crime movie with Oliver Reed," Rodriguez recalls, "and he was saying, 'Oh, it's got a missing reel in it. But it's really interesting because after the missing reel, you don't know if he slept with a girl or he didn't because she says he did and he says that he didn't. It leaves you guessing, and the movie still works with 20 minutes gone out of it.' I thought, 'Oh, my God, that's what we’ve got to do. We've got to have a missing reel!' I'm going to use it in a way where it actually says 'missing reel' for 10 seconds, and then when we come back, you're arriving in the third act. [...] The late second acts in movies are usually the most predictable and the most boring, that's where the good guy really turns out to be the bad guy, and the bad guy is really good, and the couple becomes friends. Suddenly, though, in the third act, all bets are off and it's a whole new story anyway."
MusicThe music for Planet Terror was composed by Robert Rodriguez. Inspiration for his score came from John Carpenter, whose music was often played on set. A cover version of The Dead Kennedys' "Too Drunk to Fuck" performed by Nouvelle Vague was also featured in the film. A soundtrack album was released on April 3, 2007, alongside the soundtrack for Death Proof. Both albums featured dialogue excerpts from the film.
Theatrical releasePlanet Terror was released in the United States alongside Death Proof as part of a double feature under the title Grindhouse. Both films were released separately in extended versions internationally, approximately two months apart. The Dutch poster artwork for Planet Terror claimed that the film would feature "coming attractions" from Quentin Tarantino. In the United Kingdom, Planet Terror was released in cinemas on November 9, 2007. In reaction to the possibility of a split in a foreign release, Tarantino stated "Especially if they were dealing with non-English language countries, they don't really have this tradition ... not only do they not really know what a grind house is, they don't even have the double feature tradition. So you are kind of trying to teach us something else."
Alternate versionsWith the exception of Grindhouse and Single Theatrical versions of the movie, Robert shot an alternate version where Tony Block didn't shoot himself accidentally and survives throughout the film. The official theatrical version features a snippet of Tony on the beach after the end credits and snippets of scenes from this version appears on Robert's 10 Minute Film School feature on Planet Terror DVD. Robert mentioned that this version is especially made for his son Rebel, and shows him that way rather than the version where he's dead. He also mentioned that Tony's death makes his "horror film...more horrifying in his way".
DVD releasePlanet Terror was released on DVD on October 16, 2007 in a two-disc special edition featuring the extended version of the film, audio commentary with Rodriguez, an audience reaction track, several behind the scenes featurettes about casting and special effects, and a "10 Minute Film School" segment, in which Rodriguez confirmed that a box set of the two films will be available soon, and that his 10 Minute Cooking School on Texas BBQ will appear on it.
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