SOCIALIST UNITY

Another guest post from Louise

Cherry Darling (Rose McGowan last seen in Death Proof) is jaded go-go dancer who wants more to life than this Texan town can give her. She quits her job and bumps into her ex-boyfriend, El “I never miss” Wray. Wray is a misfit, a non-conformist who lives on the margins of society (think Steve McQueen in The Blob) and so it Cherry. Unfortunately, Cherry and El collide with a bunch of flesh eating zombies, throw in a B movie “psycho” doctor, testicle collecting scientist, screwed over army Lt., inept police, syringe-throwing eyeliner clad woman doctor, assortment of real humans and you have…. Robert Roderiguez’s film, Planet Terror. There’s a trailer on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

It is the second-segment of the Grindhouse feature to Tarantino’s Death Proof, this is a zombie special. Think George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead (though Romero did explore and highlight political issues such as racism and consumerism), with Roderiguez it is a spoof zombie flick and in the tradition of the exploitation movie: low budget, spliced together, bad editing, crackly noise, lousy cinematography, camera angles emphasise bum and breasts on women (think Russ Meyer) lame but very funny humour. The music is a mixture of John Carpenter (think Halloween, The Thing, The Fog) style disembodied synthesizer sound with Roderiguez’s own brand of western style music.

The plot revolves around bio-chemicals being released into the atmosphere and the rag tag of humans led by El Wray and Cherry fighting off flesh eating zombies who have inhaled the toxic fumes. Abby, who is a “scientist first but business coming a close f*cking second” is trying to create an antidote while Lt Muldoon (hammed up spectacularly by Bruce Willis) just wants what’s his. The hospital scenes are squelchy, squishy and messy for obvious reasons but the gallows humour is lame, predictable but funny (”where have the dead bodies gone, they can’t just have upped and walked out”?).

Cherry is attacked by flesh eating zombies and loses her leg. El Wray comes up with a novel way for her to take on the zombies. There is a balletic quality watching Cherry spin around using a M4 assault rifle as a prosthetic leg blasting those pesky zombies. The film pretends to be cheap and cheerful, well cheap and gross, but the stunts are stunning. The cartoonish violence is evident and pervasive yet when the soft focus faux 70s porno sex scene happens the film disintegrates in a prudish fashion and takes us briskly to the next scene…fighting zombies. I enjoyed the film (more than Death Proof) but was rather left unsatisified by its sugary ending.

When Death Proof was released there were protests by women who believed it glorified and degraded women (similar to the protests when Sin City was released). There haven’t been similar protests to Planet Terror. The writer B. Ruby Rich described Quentin Tarantino as a lad’s lad masculine and testosterone fuelled films . His comic book approach goes against developing deep psychological portraits of his characters, similar to Roderiguez yet he has deviated from this genre with his homage to spaghetti westerns (El Mariachi, Desperado and Once Upon a Time in Mexico). But similar to Death Proof, Planet Terror turns gender roles on their heads.

A scene where El Wray asks one of the men to take on the zombies in that macho male self-sacrificing hero kinda way, yet the reply is, “are you kidding”… Instead Cherry flexes her muscle and leads the fight against the zombies along with many of the other women, resplendent in tight skirts and tops (think Russ Meyer). These movies indeed throw up contradictory sexist messages yet they are also transgressive (rather like the exploitation movies of the 70s).

Richard Corliss in his review of Grindhouse (Why Can’t a Woman….Be a Man) argues that due to economic factors such as targeting a male (straight) audience then roles for women on an equal footing to men is non-existent. Hepburn/Tracy double-acts or wisecracking Rosalind Russell holding her own with Cary Grant are a thing of the past instead women are now playing second fiddle to wiseacres like Adam Sandler and Vince Vaughn. A recent example of blatant sexism was Warner Bros. sending out an edict refusing to bankroll any more films with a woman lead (Jodie Foster’s film The Brave One tanked at the box office, obviously her fault, logic goes, nothing to do with the director (male), producers (male), screenwriter (male)).

Corliss views Grindhouse and its intepretation of women as meaning, “female empowerment means armament” and “they liberate their movie women by turning them into men”… Partly true but so what? Film reflects the oppression women face in society yet nowhere does Corliss give an example of what kind of films does he want to see women at the forefront. What would be acceptable to him? Film is also a way of exploring fantasy, creativity, and imagination.

Equally, his criticisms should encompass the inspid “chick flick” where Bridget Jonesque characters mooching around waiting for their Mr Darcy to various other stereotypes of women (The Jane Austen Book Club looks like another example yet it is directed by a woman. I usually get a similar annoyance when I see anything written by Nora Ephron!).

If I had to choose between vacuous women who count calories and have no real relationship to the daily grind of capitalism or women who, “take charge and kick ass”… Then kicking ass wins for me.