Action, Horror, Thriller
Synopsis
Filmmakers Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez pay tribute to 1970s-era exploitation films with ``Death Proof'' and ``Planet Terror,'' plus fictitious ads and movie trailers.
Cast: Kurt Russell, Rose McGowan, Freddy Rodriguez, Marley Shelton, Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Naveen Andrews, Vanessa Ferlito, Jordan Ladd, Josh Brolin, Michael Biehn, Jeff Fahey, Danny Trejo, Mary Winstead, Stacy Ferguson, Rosario Dawson, Zoe Bell, Bruce Willis, Tracie Thoms, Eli Roth
Producer(s): A Band Apart, Weinstein Company, Troublemaker Studios
Crew: Director - Quentin Tarantino, Director - Robert Rodriguez, Writer - Quentin Tarantino, Writer - Robert Rodriguez, Producer - Robert Rodriguez, Producer - Quentin Tarantino, Producer - Elizabeth Avellan, Producer - Erica Steinberg, Executive Producer - Bob Weinstein, Executive Producer - Harvey Weinstein, Original Music - Robert Rodriguez, Cinematographer - Robert Rodriguez, Film Editor - Sally Menke, Set Decoration - Jeanette Scott
Distributor: Dimension Films, Weinstein Co.
Release Date: 04/06/2007
Running Time: 191 minutes
OFFICIAL SITE
Production Notes:
- Notes provided by Weinstein Co. -
Two of the most renowned filmmakers go back to back with GRINDHOUSE, a double dose packed to the gills with guns and guts. The unprecedented project from the longtime collaborators (FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, FOUR ROOMS, SIN CITY) presents two original, complete films as a double feature. Quentin Tarantino's DEATH PROOF is a white knuckle ride behind the wheel of a psycho serial killer's roving, revving, racing death machine. Robert Rodriguez's PLANET TERROR is a heart-pounding trip to a town ravaged by a mysterious plague. Inspired by the unique distribution of independent horror classics of the sixties and seventies, these two shockingly bold features are presented together on a drive-in style double bill, replete with fake trailers, missing reels and plenty of exploitative mayhem.
The impetus for GRINDHOUSE began during a time before the multiplex and state-of-the-art home theaters ruled the movie-going experience. The origins of the term "Grindhouse" are fuzzy: some cite the types of films shown (as in "Bump-and-Grind") in run down former movie palaces; others point to a method of presentation -- movies were "grinded out" in ancient projectors one after another. Frequently, the movies were grouped by exploitation subgenre. Splatter, slasher, sexploitation, blaxploitation, cannibal and mondo movies would be grouped together and shown with graphic trailers.
This was movie exhibition in its alternative heyday, simultaneously run-down and vividly alive.
"They were old houses that that were more dilapidated than existed for the people in the big city neighborhoods, or they were all-night theaters that would play three or four movies," Tarantino explains. "It would be a place for the bums to go and sleep. If you're hiding out from the law you'd go there for the night. Then, at six in the morning they wake you up and send you out, and you'd walk around for ninety minutes and come right back in again."
But exploitation movies weren't just for urbanites: "Drive-ins had the same shows, but were a whole different setting," Tarantino says. "Grindhouse theaters were in more urban areas. Dallas would have grindhouses, and Houston would have grindhouses, but when you get into the outer regions of Texas, it's more about drive-ins."
Theaters were booked independently. Film titles were changed from market to market and were promoted locally (especially in the case of the rural drive-ins). One print would travel from an old movie palace to a drive-in. "It wasn't like the way movies are now, where a movie opens up on three thousand theaters playing everywhere at once," Tarantino explains. "Exploitation companies would make maybe twenty prints for a big release. That was a huge release, actually. You would take those twenty prints to Houston, or Los Angeles. You'd just schlep them around the country, one place at a time. And they usually only played for a week. The grindhouses could get those movies that week they opened. They'd be backed by newspaper support, and be backed by television -- local channel support."
"Because they made so few prints that they would be scratched up and worn out, and have chunks chopped out of them by the time anybody saw them," Rodriguez adds.
"If you were lucky enough to get an exploitation movie at the beginning of its run, the prints could be OK. But after it played at the El Paso Drive-In Theater, God knows what condition it might be in. It depends on what part of the daisy chain you lived in as far as how good the prints were going to be by the time you got them," Tarantino says.
"But grindhouses would also get the big budget films that had been playing back in the day when movies played for six months," Tarantino notes. "They would also get them on their way out of town. A STAR IS BORN came out in '76, but you could easily see Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson in A STAR IS BORN in the middle of '77 playing with a kung fu movie."
This unusual aberration from Hollywood production and distribution spawned some of the most shocking, exciting, and unusual movies of the `60s and `70s. Though the filmmaking was often pedestrian, this era was extraordinarily democratic and enthusiasm and drive spawned unrelenting creativity. Many grindhouse films were bankrolled for only a few thousand dollars. They "worked" because of their ingenuity, or their absurdity, or their unique, effective storytelling. Budgetary constraints and an absence of studio-mandated rewrites allowed fertile imaginations to flourish. "That shit was raw," Tarantino exudes. "The shit was off the hook. Sexuality was wild. You couldn't even believe some of the sexuality and brutality that they got away with in these movies, and gore. You literally had to pinch yourself and say, `Am I even watching what I'm watching?'"
Exploitation cinema offered sanctuary for those whose tastes lied on the periphery. They also gave a voice -- albeit a sensationalistic, often stereotypical one -- to society's under-represented: people of color, gays and lesbians found increased representation in the form of films like VAPORS (a one reel exploration of a gay bathhouse) and DOLEMITE (a blaxploitation classic).
These films were marketed in a way that incited the most base of human impulses and preyed upon audiences most voyeuristic instincts. Grindhouse advertisements enticed audiences with the promise of gore and violence. `Shock value' took on an entirely new meaning with the onslaught of rape revenge, slasher and cannibal films. Ads for Wes Craven's THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT famously warned audiences: "To Avoid Fainting, Keep Repeating, `It's Only A Movie. It's Only A Movie. It's Only A Movie.'"
In accordance with the marketing misinformation that permeated the grindhouses of the 60s and 70s, knockoffs (of both titles and plots) were commonplace. The success of THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT begat HOUSE ON THE EDGE OF THE PARK and LAST HOUSE ON DEAD END STREET. Neither film had anything to do with Craven's original, though audiences were treated to similar homicidal depravities. Major releases also had their own grindhouse counterparts. JAWS, for instance, led a slew of animal-terrorizing-a-small-town films like TENTACLES, PIRHANA, and GRIZZLY.
"There was a big disconnect as far as what they were selling and what they actually had," Tarantino says. "These little exploitation companies like had geniuses doing the fonts for the titles, and for the posters. They had great artists. Just give me that much talent from those guys and put it anywhere else, and they would explode. But oftentimes they weren't selling the movie they had, they were selling the movie they wished they had. We are fans of these types of films and we've been let down before."
But Tarantino and Rodriguez aren't planning on letting anyone down. "This is a grindhouse movie made by people who love grindhouse movies. If you're going to have a girl with a machine gun leg, it's going to get used, and it's going to get used well. That idea will be exhausted by the time the film's finished," Tarantino says.
"The movie's not a trick," Rodriguez adds. "We're not going to trick you in with the idea that it's not going to be. It delivers."
With this rich history as inspiration, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino set out to make two very different, very complete movies and distribute them together as a double feature. The idea for this project began simply enough, when Rodriguez spotted a double bill poster at Tarantino's house and commented that he had the same poster at his home. Rodriguez mentioned that he'd long wanted to make a double feature, and Tarantino suggested that they collaborate on the project together. As the concept was developed further, the directors brought in some of their friends and collaborators to make "fake" trailers to be presented in front of and between their movies.
"When I would come over to Quentin's house, he would show trailers, a feature, some more trailers, all vintage stuff," Rodriguez says. "He would show different types of movies, different types of film prints -- some of them really worn out, some of them really nice. That's what we wanted to do. We thought, `Let's make this experience that we have when we come over to Quentin's house, for audiences all over the world. Fake trailers, two features, and make it a night at the movies.'"
Tarantino describes the invitation of Edgar Wright, director of SHAWN OF THE DEAD and Eli Roth, director of CABIN FEVER and HOSTEL to join him and Rodriguez on GRINDHOUSE: "They just seemed natural guys to just step into the breech, especially where their interests were concerned. Eli would make a slasher film trailer using the one holiday that hadn't been used: Thanksgiving."
"And Edgar was going to do a 70s-style British horror film trailer because he remembered that nobody opens their mouth in the trailers. You never wanted the audience to know that it's a British movie," Tarantino jokes.
Rounding out the trio of trailer guest directors is Rob Zombie.
Tarantino and Rodriguez were not the only classic exploitation and b-movie aficionados on set. Many of the actors appearing in GRINDHOUSE had fond memories of the days of the double and triple feature. Freddy Rodriguez remembers: "When I was a kid in Chicago, my dad would take us to this big theater called The Tiffany, which used to play three karate movies for three bucks. We always joked that we would go in when the sun was up and come out when the sun was down and it was nighttime. We had a lot of fond memories going to grindhouse movies."
"I grew up in the central coast of California, where we had great drive-ins," Josh Brolin says. "You'd see a Bruce Lee movie, and then a Charles Bronson movie. The best part to me was that you got two bangs for your buck."
Kurt Russell comments: "They're trying to recreate a feeling, an evening. I refer to Quentin as the professor of `directology.' I think that if Quentin could take the world into his cinema class he would say now this is the way movies were made, looked, and experienced in the late 60s and early 70s, if you went into the drive-in theater and saw two movies that night, this would be sort of the experience that you had, except with a modern-day storyline. They take it on it with an ode to those types of movies."
Greg Nicotero, who created the special effects makeup in both PLANET TERROR and DEATH PROOF, had distinct memories of visiting the projection booth of his local drive-in: "The projectionist would cut out the cool frames of all the neat monster gags. I went to see John Carpenter's THE THING at the drive-in, and I was talking to the projectionist, and he said, `Oh, check this out.' And he had cut out a frame of the spider head just because he thought it was a cool monster. And I thought, `If a movie gets sent all across the country, and every projectionist takes a couple of frames out, or the film breaks and they don't really care how they put it back together, you watch a print that's been destroyed."
The irony of the wide distribution of this film in theaters is not lost on the filmmakers, but they have audiences' safety in mind: "You're going to go into a safe multiplex and watch this as opposed to a dangerous grindhouse, where you'd take your life in your hands," Tarantino jokes.
With GRINDHOUSE, Rodriguez and Tarantino are at once nostalgic and progressive. With one foot in the past, the writer-directors create cinematic worlds that are wholly their own -- save for some crossovers. Rodriguez explains: "One of the things that excited us too is sometimes you'd see a double feature where Pam Grier was in both movies. She was a prisoner in one, and then she's the warden in the other one. I thought; Wow, we could make that work.'"
PLANET TERROR finds noir-inspired romance amidst a future-shock vision of a chemical apocalypse. Informed by ZOMBIE and DAWN OF THE DEAD, as well as by the work of acclaimed director John Carpenter, Rodriguez creates a fresh and dynamic original take on the zombie genre. A simple night in a small town in Texas gives way to paranoia and espionage and hidden identities in a complex, layered narrative. PLANET TERROR builds upon the quick-paced, frenetic energy of Rodriguez's explosive hit, SIN CITY.
Tarantino's fifth film references some classic chase movies, from H.B. Halicki's self-financed GONE IN 60 SECONDS, which contained a non-stop, forty minute car chase, to VANISHING POINT, the nihilistic chase flick, to DIRTY MARY CRAZY LARRY, a Peter Fonda vehicle. But Tarantino, no stranger to mixing genres, fuses the chase and slasher genres and comes up with something original. One can look to classic slasher fare like Bob Clark's BLACK CHRISTMAS, Herschell Gordon Lewis's BLOOD FEAST, and HOUSE AT THE EDGE OF THE PARK for the advent of the predatory psycho.
DEATH PROOF is also Tarantino's most linear film: events are presented chronologically and breaks in time are punctuated with title cards. Though the action is sequential, the contents of this unfamiliar structure are no less intriguing than that of any of his previous films. Jungle Julia and Zoë Bell (and the rest of his eight girl posse) turn the concept of the "final girl," a staple of the slasher genre, on its ear. He gives characters a lifeline that would make Hitchcock's Marion Crane seem like a cinematic stranger, and then builds a distinct narrative of revenge-by-proxy.
As much as DEATH PROOF has a `70s sensibility, in fashion, transportation and in filmic tradition, the conditions of the characters are ultra-modern and personal. Tarantino delights in the details of these women's everyday lives: expressions of romance abbreviated and delivered via text message, descriptions of hookups and dating rules, and exasperation with self-reflexive careers. All the while, an insurmountable tension builds with each sideways glance from the loner with the pompadour sitting at the bar...
PLANET TERROR
Written and Directed by
Robert Rodriguez
Synopsis
Robert Rodriguez, co-director of SIN CITY, brings you PLANET TERROR, a retro-futuristic vision of horror that's been weathered, stripped, and aged to perfection.
In PLANET TERROR, married doctors William and Dakota Block (Josh Brolin and Marley Shelton) find their graveyard shift inundated with townspeople ravaged by gangrenous sores and a suspiciously vacant look in their eyes. Among the wounded is Cherry (Rose McGowan), a go-go dancer whose leg was ripped from her body during a roadside attack. Wray (Freddy Rodriguez), her former significant other, is at her side and watching her back. Cherry may be down, but she hasn't danced her last number. As the invalids quickly become enraged aggressors, Cherry and Wray lead a team of accidental warriors into the night, hurtling towards a destiny that will leave millions infected, countless dead, and a lucky few struggling to find the last safe corner of PLANET TERROR.
PLANET TERROR also stars Michael Biehn, Jeff Fahey, Naveen Andrews, Stacy Ferguson and Michael Parks. PLANET TERROR will be shown on a GRINDHOUSE double bill with Quentin Tarantino's DEATH PROOF.
About the Production
Several years ago, when Robert Rodriguez first jotted down the ideas notes that would eventually become the screenplay for PLANET TERROR, he thought he would be resuscitating a dormant genre. "No one had made a zombie movie in such a long time," Rodriguez says of his initial impulse to make PLANET TERROR. The visionary multi-hyphenate was a fan of zombie and horror films, but he wanted to write a movie that would be something truly different, surprising and unexpected. He sought to make a zombie film that was character-driven, frenetically paced and over-the-top. He continued fleshing out his ideas, but writer's block and work on other projects stalled his efforts.
Greg Nicotero, Rodriguez's longtime collaborator and friend, describes the protracted gestation of the script for PLANET TERROR from his point of view: "I remember during SPY KIDS, maybe even as early as THE FACULTY, that Robert said, `I've got this cool idea for this zombie movie. I don't know exactly what's going to happen yet, but there's going to be a doctor and his wife, and they're going to be working in a hospital, and there's going to be this really great scene where we see a girl on the road, and every time a car passes we reveal silhouettes of zombies getting closer and closer to her.'"
Rodriguez gave Nicotero the first thirty pages of this screenplay, which included these pulse-pounding moments. "I remember reading it and I said, `Where are you going to go from there?'
"He said, `I have no idea.'"
"I never got past those thirty pages," Rodriguez says, "and of course zombie movies started coming out one after another."
21 DAYS LATER, DAWN OF THE DEAD, LAND OF THE DEAD and SHAWN OF THE DEAD invaded movie theaters and revived audiences' appetites for screen representations of flesh-hungry monsters by offering new, unusual takes on the plight of the undead. Instead of discouraging Rodriguez, these movies whetted his appetite and challenged him to be even more inventive when writing. In the years that had passed, Rodriguez developed his child-like imagination with the SPY KIDS trilogy and with the smash hit SIN CITY. These films showcased his capacity to create a fantasy world that is unlike anything audiences had ever experienced.
Rodriguez returned to PLANET TERROR fully committed to fill his screenplay with "things that I hadn't seen in other movies. A lot of it has to do with the characters." Included in the population of Rodriguez's tiny, anonymous Texas town are a barbecue-obsessed business-owner; a stoic and suspicious sheriff; a gun-legged go-go girl-turned-vigilante; a syringe-wielding, wobbly-wristed doctor on the run from her abusive husband; a pocket-bike riding mysterious hero, and a pair of psychotic identical babysitter twins. In PLANET TERROR, disbelief isn't just suspended -- it's annihilated. As with SIN CITY, stories weave in and out of each other and circumstances escalate to absurd, impossible levels.
Although Rodriguez has a commitment for storytelling that is fresh and radical, PLANET TERROR has its roots in classic films beyond those of grindhouse era. The dialogue between Wray and Cherry is noir-inspired, and their love story is similarly elevated. The political paranoia and vague allusions to espionage are great throwbacks to films like INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, KISS ME DEADLY and other cultural remnants of the McCarthy Era.
Nicotero received the script for PLANET TERROR, unaware that Rodriguez had resurrected the project: "Lo and behold, I get this script and I start reading it and I think, `Hey there's a doctor, and his wife,' and then I get to the scene with Tammy on the road and I think: `I've read this before.'"
"You would think a zombie movie is just people running away from zombies," Michael Biehn, who plays Hague, jokes. "But we all have our relationships with the other people in the movie that are very strong. The characters are really well written. I think that that's what's going to make it all pull together, because it's a pretty crazy movie."
Rose McGowan, who plays Cherry, was so in awe of the script's unusual circumstances and such sharp, funny dialogue. She also couldn't imagine how anyone could think of outfitting a character with a gun for a leg. (The image of McGowan and the leg has already become iconic among the fanboy set following the exciting debut of a teaser poster at Comic-Con in June of 2006.) "I asked him, `How did you come up with the fact that Cherry has a machine gun leg? He said, `Well, I was sitting in traffic...,' and that's where the explanation stopped. OK, I sit in traffic, too, and I don't often have machine gun legs that pop into my head. But that's just me."
Rodriguez looked to his favorite films and television programs, his family, friends and his previous collaborators to assemble the impressive and diverse cast of PLANET TERROR. Marley Shelton, Bruce Willis and Quentin Tarantino worked with the director previously. Joining them are actors who are familiar to genre enthusiasts: Naveen Andrews of "Lost," Rose McGowan of "Charmed," Michael Biehn, who starred in ALIENS, THE ABYSS, and THE TERMINATOR, and Jeff Fahey, a favorite for THE LAWNMOWER MAN and BODY PARTS. Tom Savini, one of the founding fathers of horror movie makeup, portrays Deputy Tolo. Rebel Rodriguez, Rodriguez's son, plays Tony, and Elise and Electra Avellán, Rodriguez's nieces, make an impressive debut as the Babysitter Twins. This group of actors, along with Freddy Rodriguez and Stacy Ferguson, makes the high drama of PLANET TERROR seem real, believable and very, very scary.
McGowan has a global following for her scene-stealing roles in SCREAM and THE DOOM GENERATION and for her turn as Paige on the television series "Charmed." She embraced the truly un-chartered dramatic territory that her role in PLANET TERROR would offer her. Cherry is on an emotional rollercoaster from the moment she appears on the scratched (digital) celluloid, crying on the stage of her go-go club. "She's kind of a wanderer, and things never just really seem to pan out for her. She's just really down on herself and her life."
Cherry's turmoil dovetails into a fateful run-in with her ex, Wray, played by Freddy Rodriguez. But Cherry's bad night doesn't end there: Her leg, one of the tools of her former trade, is ripped from her body in a roadside attack. That's when the fun really begins. "PLANET TERROR is absolutely a wild ride," McGowan says. "I don't even really know how best to describe it. Cherry starts out as a normal girl whose life is a bit on the skids, and all of a sudden she has to save the universe."
McGowan spent much of production shuttling between Austin and Los Angeles, where she was completing production of the final season of "Charmed." Once the show wrapped, she was free to devote her attention to Cherry's adventure.
Joining McGowan is Freddy Rodriguez, who has become a sought-after character actor since his Emmy-nominated five season stint on HBO's "Six Feet Under." PLANET TERROR marks Freddy Rodriguez's debut in a science-fiction or action film. He plays Wray, a tough loner whose identity is shrouded in secrecy.
"Wray is kind of a mysterious character," Rodriguez says. "The film takes place in Texas. Because of his appearance, the way he talks, and the way he behaves, Wray is clearly not from Texas. We really don't know who he is or where he's from. He's kind of a loner. As the movie unfolds, you see different layers of Wray, and as the different layers are peeled away, and you see more and more of who he is."
McGowan, for one, was extremely happy with the pairing. "Freddy's got this great edge in this character and he just really nails it. He's very, very focused," McGowan says. "He definitely has the `cool' thing going on. He's got swagger going into it, and swagger coming out of it."
Marley Shelton, who made a memorable appearance alongside Josh Hartnett in SIN CITY's brilliant opening sequence, returned to Troublemaker Studios to play Dr. Dakota Block: "I'm an anesthesiologist, and I have a terrible relationship with my husband," Shelton says of her character. "We have a stale marriage -- a Cold War marriage. On the night that the movie takes place I'm about to leave my husband, played by Josh Brolin."
Dakota, like Cherry, is prepared to take strides in reclaiming control of her personal life. Dakota also has her own set of unusual physical challenges to work through: "The funniest thing about my character is that for the first half of the movie I lose the ability to control my hands. Funnily enough, I can actually move my wrists in a really bizarre way. Stupid human tricks. Playing with Dakota's frustration was really fun for me. She's a doctor who's rendered awkward. She's someone who's hyper efficient, a real type-A personality, who's always in control and who is now out of control. She can't protect herself, and she can't protect her son, and she can't escape."
(Not only can she not escape, Dakota can't even turn a key: She busts her tooth within moments of her introduction. Shelton had to get used to having the eyes of crew members fixate on her blacked-out tooth during on-set conversations.)
Dakota's problems are not just plot points or gimmicks for Shelton. She approached Dakota's unusual circumstances with respect and believability and tempered her performance with humanity: "It's a wild ride and her evolution is great. The more horrific, traumatic things that happen to her, the more sort of unbridled and unleashed she becomes in terms of connecting to herself, and reconnection with her father, and connecting to her son."
Shelton loves that her character has a devilishly heroic upswing: "I have a secret stash of hypodermic needles on my garter belt. Once my hands come back to life I'm able to use to defend myself against the evil rapist played by none other than Quentin Tarantino," Shelton says. "One bad thing after another is happening to me, and I'm on the run, but I have this great comeback moment where I get to shoot my needle gun, and then twirl it in like old-school western movie fashion just like my dad, Quick Draw Earl McGraw would." Tarantino and Rodriguez fans will remember Earl McGraw played by Michael Parks, appeared in FROM DUSK TILL DAWN and KILL BILL and who has a cameo with Shelton in DEATH PROOF.
Dakota Block exists in the Rodriguez-Tarantino shared movie universe that also includes Red Apple cigarettes and Chango Cervesa. She took her addition to this legacy very seriously. "That syringe moment shows that Earl trained his daughter well. She's got chops. She can twirl a gun, which she probably learned when she was six years old. I was terrified of the gun twirling. I spent months trying to learn how to do it, and of course Robert made me look much cooler than I really am. He's just brilliant at that."
Josh Brolin portrays Dr. William Block, Dakota's suspicious and controlling husband. He shared many of his scenes with Shelton, who found the actor distractingly charming: "Our characters hate each other -- we're killing each other, we're fighting, we're violent. But Josh is just the most magnanimous guy. He's so charismatic and funny. Between takes we were cracking up."
Despite their kidding around, Shelton appreciated his similar commitment to the role and his dedication to making his character as "real" as possible. "He gained twenty-five pounds for the role. He plays this brooding Texan with a beer gut -- just this crazy guy who is a bitter, male chauvinist pig. He did an amazing job, and he's so funny in the movie, and so menacing, and so scary."
Brolin has known Rodriguez for years, and the part of Block was written specifically for him. He wasn't aware of the specifics of the project or of the imaginativeness of its plot, so he was pleased when he finally read the script for PLANET TERROR. "Why would you not be a part of something that's that fun; that's that involved," the actor says.
The character was a small role that was developed and fleshed out during a meeting between Rodriguez and Brolin. "He came in with a beard, and that whole character we kind of came up with based on him just coming in and reading," Rodriguez says. "You don't know he's a villain until there's a scene where he turns. You're sympathetic to him until you realize he's out of his mind. And this is before he's turned into a zombie. He's crazy and deadly before he even gets infected. So I wanted-I battled that a long time. I thought the character was someone who was never going to get infected. He was just going to be more dangerous than anyone just because he was out of his mind, jealous, and crazy, after his wife for cheating on him."
Michael Biehn plays Hague, a small town sheriff who must unite with Wray to overcome a zombie enemy. Biehn has been a screen presence for nearly thirty years. He has come against some crippling other-worldly forces throughout his career, having appeared in THE TERMINATOR, ALIENS and THE ABYSS. Though playing the stoic, brave Hague had its own creative rewards, showcasing the set to his son was a special perk: "When my fourteen-year-old was out here visiting he always wanted to see the zombies and explosions. He'd say `Dad, are they going to shoot zombies tonight? Are they going to kill zombies? Who's going to get bloodied?"'
As with Brolin, the creation of the character of Hague was developed and tailor-made following the casting of Biehn in the film. Rodriguez comments: "I had only had the part half written when I met him and cast him, and then wrote the rest of it based on what I could do with him. It's just like with Quentin and Zoë. Once you know someone, you can write for those specific people."
Jeff Fahey plays Hague's brother JT, who is "fortunate enough to be the owner and proprietor of the best damn barbeque joint in Texas -- period. He's working on the perfect recipe in the midst of all of this," Fahey says. "He's just concerned with getting the perfect recipe, and he's just about there, and then all hell breaks loose."
"The wonderful thing for me and for this character is that in the midst of all this insanity and this wild ride he's got one thing on his mind and that's that barbeque sauce."
Stacy Ferguson, also known as "Fergie" from the immensely successful band "Black Eyed Peas" plays Tammy, whose fateful journey is cut short when her Volvo overheats on the wrong road. Ferguson filmed her role in PLANET TERROR while she was touring the globe and recording an album. In fact, the actor and singer made some extreme adjustments in order to accommodate the production schedule. She whisked up to Luling, TX set to shoot a scene with Jeff Fahey after performing a concert with the Black Eyed Peas to a sold out crowd in Dallas.
Tammy is Ferguson's third big-screen movie role, and PLANET TERROR completes an unusual hat-trick for the actor: "I was in a horror film when I was little called MONSTER
