Skip Terror Planet and Watch Death Proof

Rating: 3/10 (26 April 2007)

Being able to see two movies for the price of one sounds like a good ideal on paper especially when the movies are directed by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino each directing a movie that pays homage to low budget, ultra-violent horror movies from the 70's. The reality however is not so pleasant especially when one of the movies is so bad that you find yourself staring at your watch every five minuets. Add on to this the fact that the really awful movie is the one that this double feature commences with.
The first and worst movie in this double feature is Robert Rodriguez's movie Planet terror. In this movie a small Texas town is infested with zombie like creatures that go about infecting/eating everything in sight. Throw in Michael Biehn, Tom Savini, Jeff Fahey, an ex-boyfriend name El Ray with unusually deadly knife skills for a truck driver, an evil military unit, and buckets of blood and gore and you've got good cheesy fun right? Wrong. This movie is just plain bad from start to finish. Everything in this movie is cartoony, there's just so much cheap looking gore that it goes from enjoyable to repetitive and boring real fast. The dialog is painful to listen to and the lack of any intelligence in this film also hurts it a great deal. As the movie goes along it becomes even more absurd. For instance a Go-go dancer receives a machine gun to replace her missing leg. How she manages to reload it and is able to run on it is never explained. The only good thing I can say about this movie is that it does have the cheap look and feel of those movies it pays homage to.
In between Terror Planet and Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof there are a couple of fake trailers. Only two of which are remember-able. Don't is remember-able for the funny way it's advertised. The other remember-able trailer is for a movie called "Thanksgiving". This trailer was directed by Eli Roth (Hostel) and is truly disturbing. This trailer features plenty of gruesome images that are hard to forget even long after the movie is over with.
Death Proof, the superior of the two films in this double feature is about a serial killer named Stuntman Mike. The part of Stuntman Mike is played by the incredibly talented Kurt Russell who uses his muscle car to kill young women. Things in this movie really become interesting when the tables are turned on Stuntman Mike. It is this turning point in the film that this movie goes from being a movie about helpless women to a decent female revenge flick.
Overall, I wouldn't recommend seeing this double feature, but if you feel the need to watch the Grind house anyway rent it instead of seeing it in the theater. If you rent it you'll be able to skip through the awful Terror Planet and get to Death Proof. Trust me, you'll be glad you did.
Terror Planet= 1 Star