大象传媒

Director Robert Rodriguez puts the grind into Grindhouse in Planet Terror, the second half of the exploitation double bill that began with Tarantino's Death Proof. Rose McGowan stars as go-go dancer Cherry, who's trapped in a Texas town after an army bio-weapon unleashes zombies that munch her leg off. "No use crying over spilt milk," advises boyfriend Wray (Freddy Rodriguez), before fitting her with an M16 machine gun as an artificial limb. Gloopy and outrageous, this schlock horror tribute is pure trash... in the best possible sense.

Split in half from its celluloid brother after Miramax decided to release both movies separately, Planet Terror has what it takes to rock on its own. It's a cinematic rewind to the spirit of '79 with missing reels, a scratched print and outrageous gore effects recreating the Times Square grindhouse experience. It's also a balls-to-the-wall zombie movie that riffs on Romero and John Carpenter, while out-grossing the splatter of Italian gut-munching epics like Nightmare City. Whatever you do, don't buy hotdogs: they won't sit well with the movie's pus-dripping abscesses, jars of human testicles and "no brainer" corpses.

"WINKS AT THE AUDIENCE TOO OFTEN"

As the outbreak's survivors - including Michael Biehn's gruff cop and Marley Shelton's runaway lesbian doc - band together to fight the toxic zombie hordes, Rodriguez barely stops for breath. Gone is the talky slow-burn of Tarantino's Death Proof; this is utterly, insanely relentless. It probably winks at the audience too often to be mistaken for a real grindhouse effort (Bruce Willis as a slimy mutant monster? C'mon). Still, it (dis)gracefully pays homage to a time when horror movies were shabby, disreputable and much more fun than today's vanilla outings. It's just ironic that Rodriguez has spent millions recreating what exploitation filmmakers like Lucio Fulci and John Hayes used to knock out for peanuts. There's a lesson in there somewhere...

Planet Terror is out in the UK on 9th November 2007.