Sickos, Short Skirts, Explosions and Blood
Planet Terror (Grindhouse) Movie Trailer. Rodriguez’s script not only challenged his actors, but it also pushed the creative impulses of his frequent collaborators. The makeup effects employed in Planet Terror are a bold departure from the current crop of darkly nihilistic horror films. Instead, the blood-and-guts effects are fantastically graphic and eye-popping (sometimes literally). This was achieved through the makeup artists at KNB and award-winning makeup artist Greg Nicotero.
Both Nicotero and Savini are particular when using the term “zombie.” Both feel that, in the case of Planet Terror, it’s a misnomer. Says Nicotero: “It’s a big misconception because technically they’re not zombies. They don’t die then come back, and they don’t necessarily all eat flesh. We have a couple guys that eat brains, and people get torn apart and get disemboweled, but generally they don’t really die. They just become infected and become these mindless killers.”
Savini agrees: “I don’t call them zombies. I call them ‘sickos,’ because they’re just sick people.” This painstaking attention to the world of the “zombie” is what makes Nicotero great at his job.
“Robert and I threw some ideas around, and we did a bunch of tests but we stayed away from the traditional zombie look. They don’t all have shriveled skin and a grayish pallor with the sunken cheeks and the rotten teeth. We used medical text books of different skin rashes and skin diseases as our basis because the idea is that these people get infected with this nerve gas, and it starts with minor lacerations and little lumps and discoloration, and then it just grows from there.”
Nicotero continues to describe the zombie growth process—in detail: “It spreads and takes over the body. You develop these liquid filled bags of puss that are growing, these pustules, and all this horrible stuff. That would be ‘stage one,’ then you get into ‘stage two,’ which is much larger pustules, bigger wounds. Then, in ‘stage three,’ their heads are misshapen, their bodies are real built out and it’s all sort of twisted flesh that’s kind of melded and grown together.”
“Greg and his crew work their asses off,” Savini who has known Nicotero since he was fourteen, says. “It reminds me of how hard we used to work.”
Despite all of the work, there’s an element of playfulness to the art of filling mannequins with bottles of red-colored corn syrup. Josh Brolin comments: “Greg’s great. If you go to their shop, they have everything! They’re totally into the work, but they have a bunch of fun. It’s just a bunch of people having fun.”
Fun thought it may have been, did Planet Terror make Savini nostalgic for his horror effects makeup days? Not really: “Greg’s out there every night doing twelve zombies, then fifty zombies, then blood effects. I come in, I get make-up on, I have a trailer, and I get to sit around.”
“Nicotero did my death scene in Scream, my second movie,” McGowan says. “I have kind of adored him ever since. He has a really great presence.”
The cast and crew of Planet Terror had to adjust to eating their lunch in the catering tent next to a zombie or two. “It’s not so hard when we’re on the set, when we’re filming. But when we actually go to lunch, they don’t have time to take off their masks. And I’ll be sitting there thinking, ‘Why do I need to sit next to a zombie?’” Elise Avellán says.
“They’re just sitting there, dripping blood, and it’s hilarious. I love it. It’s amazing. It looks so real,” jokes Electra.
Practical makeup effects are only one small portion of Rodriguez¹s effects process. For the rest of his movie magic, Rodriguez leans upon his team of artist at Troublemaker Digital. The real-world grit of Grindhouse, however, posed new challenges for the team accustomed to the computer-generated worlds of Spy Kids 3-D and Sin City.
Troublemaker Digital’s first hurdle was to digitally remove the lead actress’ leg and replace it with a wooden, and later, a gun leg. The solution involved manufacturing an apparatus to place over McGowan¹s leg . The process also required the patience and imagination of the film¹s lead actress. The actor explains: ³I¹m wearing a high heeled boot on one leg, and a greenscreen leg,¹ on the other. Walking with the greenscreen leg is quite difficult. I¹m at an angle and my body alignment is really weird. I had to do a lot of different exercises to be able to hold my leg up for long periods of time.²
The other part of creating the look of Planet Terror involved an unprecedented digital aging process that was engineered by Rodriguez. Each 20,000+ frame reel took an average of 12 hours to complete the damaged look.
Stunt Coordinator Jeff Dashnaw and his team from Brand X Stunts worked in conjunction with Nicotero to create the goriest deaths possible. “We’re killing many, many creatures. I’ve had a little group of guys here, probably eight guys, and I think I’ve killed them all fifteen or twenty times each,” Dashnaw says. “We’re putting zombie clothes on everybody. It’s been pretty fun, and the actors are game.”
In addition to working with his own stunt people, Dashnaw enlisted the film’s actors to do many of their own stunts. “He’s been around for thirty years and has worked with everybody,” Freddy Rodriguez says of Dashnaw. “He’s worked with some great action heroes in the movie industry, and he’ll make you look good.”
Freddy Rodriguez, who trained as a dancer, was eager to take on a role that required him to do some of his own stunts. “It’s very, very physical,” Rodriguez says. “This is the most physical film I’ve ever done. I’ve never played an action hero and I worked my butt off to get it right. I had a lot of fun doing the action sequences because they’re so new to me.”
Despite the newness of action choreography, Freddy found that he had the capacity to quickly learn Wray’s trademark moves. Freddy Rodriguez comments: “To me, doing all the action sequences reminds me of dancing. It’s like putting choreography in your head and just going with it. That choreography is a lot of fun. It’s almost like going back to school.”
McGowan did many of her own stunts, including a jaw-dropping sequence in which Cherry is propelled through the air, in front of a gigantic explosion. Dashnaw is quick to praise McGowan for her bravery in taking on the stunt. “I think we flew her ninety or a hundred feet over a couple of walls and landed her on her stomach on an eight inch pad. I rehearsed it with her stunt double Dana Reed for several days. Rose stepped into it, we rehearsed the stunt with her a couple of times and it went off without a hitch. She was great.”
“I loved flying through the air,” McGowan says. “I loved it. I was covered in gel from my head to my toes so that I wouldn’t catch on fire, because the explosions were really high. Obviously I couldn’t see the explosion because I was in front of it, but when I watched the playback I saw this huge mushroom cloud and thought, ‘Oh, dear.’”
Robert Rodriguez made sure he captured McGowan’s memorable, breathtaking moment: “When you’re using cables and doing these really fantastical stunts, it’s amazing to have the actor do it. You see that it’s her. She’s very graceful. She’s a dancer so she’s adding her own physical character to it as well. It lends the believability to it.”
Much of the bold, keyed-up look of Planet Terror comes courtesy of Nina Proctor, who worked with Rodriguez on Spy Kids, Spy Kids 2, Spy Kids 3-D, The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lavagirl in 3-D and Sin City. SIN CITY was a graphic novel; Planet Terror is all comic book: “Cherry ends up being a superhero,” Proctor says. “We’ve played with that idea with her costume — the black leather skirt and black boots.”
On the other hand, Wray’s costume is characterized by an everyman simplicity. “We wanted Wray to be a normal guy – jeans and a thermal shirt and a leather jacket. We didn’t want to give away who he was. He could be any guy on the street. But he’s got these secrets in his past that we don’t know about, and we didn’t want to give any of that away. So we kept him very, very simple.” Many of these secrets are revealed through Wray’s tattoos, which are revealed when he removes this “normal” costume. Proctor cleverly chose not to upstage Wray’s outfit.
Shelton got to know and appreciate Proctor’s extreme attention to creating a character through costume when they worked together on Sin City. “She understands texture so well, and subtlety, and the way fabric moves, and cut, and design. She builds things from the ground up, and she’s just endlessly creative and tireless,” Shelton says of Proctor. “She will not stop until she nails it.”
Shelton worked with Proctor on every decision in the process. Her one outfit changes and adapts as this chaotic night ensues. “With Dakota we wanted to pay homage to this whole ‘70s vibe that the movie touches on, and yet still make her passably modern. I have an evolution. I start out really buttoned up, sort of a Hitchcock ice queen, with my hair up in a French twist, and my white lab coat, and very starchy. As the night unfolds, and things get more chaotic, and more traumatic, and uh, more dangerous, basically more awful things happen to me, I sort of ‘come undone.’ Nina has a real attention to detail that I connected with immediately. I was so excited to develop this character with her.”
Proctor had to create a costume that would endure all of Shelton’s many physical dilemmas, but would keep Shelton looking like a true grindhouse babe: “She falls out a hospital window, and then she has to rush home in the pouring rain, and she’s a wreck. But instead of really looking like a wreck she really starts to look, you know, more and more sexy.”
The grimy yet colorful palate continues with the brilliant production design of Steve Joyner. “I’ve been doing my own production design since SPY KIDS 2 and enjoying it because you kind of can start building sets, and conceptualizing the look of the movie while you’re writing the script,” Rodriguez says. “I don’t have anybody on that early except Stevie J. I took him to a prison and found these doors, and bars—paint peeling, and bubbled. I was taking pictures of all the different textures, and just going about why I like this, and why I like that. He got the whole look down perfectly.”
The cast is quick to point out the finer points of their trailblazing director’s use of technological advancements in order to create a streamlined, collaborative, comfortable environment. Shooting digitally afforded the cast the freedom from the constraints of running out of film or losing momentum from reloading. “He is a true visionary, and it’s such a pleasure to work with him,” Shelton says of Rodriguez.
“I feel spoiled. We never have to deal with film. We don’t have to deal with film rolling out, we don’t have to deal with cutting. We don’t have to deal with a hair in the gate. It’s instant gratification because we can do take after take and sort of get our juices flowing, and get the performance right, and not have to stop for the technical clunkiness of film.”
“Basically, he just turns the camera on during rehearsals,” Biehn says of Rodriguez’s comfortable, quiet process. “It’s just so relaxed, there’s never a sense that we have to ‘get it’ this time, or that film’s going to run out of the camera. It’s just magical for me. It’s just been great. It’s just the most relaxed situation I think I’ve ever been in, especially on a movie that’s kind of this big,
Despite the calm environment, Rodriguez’s Planet Terror wheels never stopped spinning (unless he happened to take a break to play his guitar). When he wasn’t directing, he worked with his editors on set, cutting a scene together on a laptop computer. “He’ll edit a scene as we’re shooting it, and then he’ll lay some music in underneath it,” Biehn says. “And you can watch it on the monitor and it’s just exactly what you’re going to see in the movie theaters.”
“You just keep rolling, and rolling, and rolling. Sometimes we roll for an hour without cutting because you can just keep rolling,” he continues. “So you can find moments there that you might lose.”
“Robert just breathes film,” Biehn says. “He just breathes it. I don’t know how else to say it. It’s great to work with somebody who has so much passion, and is so talented. Robert and Quentin are great to hang out with. They’re funny, they’re fun, articulate, they’re passionate, they’re both incredibly knowledgeable about movies past and present, and making movies. And they’re sweethearts, both of them.”
Planet Terror (Grindhouse) (2007)
Directed by: Robert Rodriguez
Starring: Rose McGowan, Freddy Rodríguez, Josh Brolin, Marley Shelton, Jeff Fahey, Rebel Rodriguez, Naveen Andrews, Julio Oscar Mechoso, Cecilia Conti, Fergie
Screenplay by: Robert Rodriguez
Production Design by: Steve Joyner
Cinematography by: Robert Rodriguez
Film Editing by: Ethan Maniquis, Robert Rodriguez
Costume Design by: Nina Proctor
Set Decoration by: Jeanette Scott
Art Direction by: Caylah Eddleblute
Music by: Robert Rodriguez
Distributed by: Dimension Films
Release Date: April 6, 2007
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