Drunken Loose Cannon

My friends, Planet Terror is some extremely fun shit to watch. It’s over the top, excessively gory, action packed and Fergie gets her stupid ass eaten by ravenous ghouls.

The cast director Robert Rodriguez assembled for Planet Terror is a glorious ensemble of bygone action heroes, horror icons, and Rodriguez stock actors. They all bring their parts to life in a cartoonish sort of way but it fits the tone of the movie beautifully. With all the smash& grab action and truly absurd twists with the occasional shock factor, you are never bored stiff watching this film.

Here’s the dang deal: In a rural town in Texas, a “go-go dancer” Cherry Darling (Rose McGowan) has had enough of the guff and decides to quit her dancing ways (and crying on stage) to become a stand-up comedian. She walks down the road and ends up running into her ex-boyfriend Wray (Freddy Rodriguez) at the Bone Shack, a shabby BBQ restaurant owned by J.T. Hague (Jeff Fahey). Wray complains that the jacket Cherry has on is his, and when she left him, he looked for that jacket for two weeks.

While that’s happening, a group of military officers at a nearby US military base, commanded by Lt. Muldoon (Bruce Willis), are making a shady business transaction with a testicle collecting, chemical engineer named Abby (Naveen Andrews). The deal is to obtain mass quantities of a deadly biochemical agent known as DC2 (codename: Project Terror). When Muldoon sees that Abby has an extra supply on hand, he attempts to take Abby hostage, so Abby intentionally releases the gas into the air. As the gas slowly reaches the town it turns most of its citizens into grotesque, bloodthirsty maniacs. However, the gas does not affect everyone.

While the DC2 is making its way into town, Dr. William Block (Josh Brolin) and his unhappy, unfaithful, bisexual anesthesiologist wife Dakota (Marley Shelton) arrive at the hospital to a shit-storm of dead bodies and people with early signs of weird infections.

Elsewhere, Fergie’s piece of shit Volvo dies on her, so she pulls off to the side of the road.  She was on her way into town to reunite with her former lover Dakota. Fergie and Dakota have planned to runaway with each other, talking Dakota’s son with them. As Fergie walks down the middle of the road like an idiot for help, she is almost run over by a car and falls to the ground. As she gets up and tries to flash down another vehicle she is viciously attacked by ghouls and ripped to shreds. Oh well.

Meanwhile, Wray is giving Cherry a ride home. He sees the ghouls dragging Fergies body off the highway but thinks its people dragging away road kill. As Wray is telling Cherry that you should never swerve if a deer darts out in front of you a few zombies stumble out into the road. Wray swerves to miss them and ends up inadvertently flipping his truck. As Wray and Cherry sit upside down, zombies attack, pulling Cherry out of the vehicle. Wray gets out of the truck to gives chase with an automatic machine gun that was in his glove box. Wray tracks the zombies down but they have ripped off Cherry’s right leg.

 

Wray rushes Cherry to the hospital and the Sheriff (Michael Biehn) shows up and hauls Wray’s ass off to jail based on past encounters between the two men. At the police station zombies show up, Tom Savini gets his finger bitten off and a ridiculous firefight ensues.  The Sherriff, Wray and a few deputies’ head back to the hospital. Wray arrives at the hospital, attaching a wooden table leg to Cherry’s stump, so she can walk. As Wray and Cherry fight their way out of the zombie-infested hospital, Dakota escapes after being locked in a closet by her crazy husband who now knows of the affair between Dakota and Fergie.

 

Dakota retrieves her bowel cut having son Tony and takes him to her father, Earl McGraw, a Texas Ranger. Tony, who was foolishly given a revolver by his mother, shoots his dumb ass in the face after being told not to point it at himself.

The Sheriff, Earl, Dakota, Cherry, Wray and many others have now taken refuge at JT’s Bone Shack. Cherry and Wray sex it up on JT’s waterbed. Due to a “missing reel” during the climax of the sex scene, the film then “jumps” to the Bone Shack being of fire, Zombies everywhere and Sheriff Hague has been shot in the neck by one of his own officers. With Sheriff Hague badly injured, the group decides to flee to the Mexican border, but as they are leaving town they are stopped by a large mob of zombies blocking the road. Lt. Muldoon’s men arrive, and blast the zombies but then tell Wray and his group that they must come with them.

 

While being held in a cell the group learns 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 mutation. They also learn that a small percentage of 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 (Quentin Tarantino) and (Greg Kelly) the others defeat the security guards. However, J.T. sustains a gunshot wound in the process, and Abby and Wray go after Muldoon. When Wray and Abby find Muldoon, Muldoon explains that he was the one who killed Osama bin Laden but right afterwards he and his men were infected with DC2 and were ordered to protect the area. Wray offers a respectful recognition of Muldoon’s military service before he and Abby shoot the mutating Muldoon in the face.

Meanwhile, Cherry is forced to dance by Tarantino, which is hilarious because she has a wooden leg. Cherry then attacks by breaking off her wooden leg across Tarantino’s face and stabs’ the remaining jagged-point in his eye. Dakota, after realizing she has regained feeling in her hands, quick-draws her syringe launcher and takes out the other guard.  Wray and Abby arrive to rescue Cherry and Dakota, and Wray replaces Cherry’s broken wooden leg with an implausible customized M4 Carbine with a M203 grenade launcher attachment.

J.T., who’s mortally wounded and lying beside his dying brother, the Sheriff, has stayed behind to detonate some explosives to eliminate the ghouls still in the complex while the others have a chance to flee. The survivors make plans to escape by stealing helicopters but must blast past the remaining zombies. Abby dies (and hope for a cure with him) when a ballistic projectile hilariously and ridiculously blows his head off. An infected 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, Wray is fatally wounded.

In the epilogue, Cherry (now sporting a minigun prosthetic leg) leads the group and many more survivors to the Caribbean beach at Tulum, Mexico, where they start a peaceful new society amid a world-wide zombie infection. In the final moments of the film, it is revealed that Cherry Darling has given birth to Wray’s daughter (alluded to earlier during Wray’s final scene when he puts his hand on her stomach and restates his motto “I never miss”).