6. Cherry Darling and Dakota Block (Planet Terror)
Horror doesn’t always have to be a mannered ghost story, a la Henry James or Edith Wharton. Sometimes, all you want is a real grindhouse-style flick, complete with cheesy effects and boldly-drawn characters. Alas, many of the grindhouse and exploitation films from their heyday of the 1960s and 1970s were not especially kind to women. Sure, you got a few gems of a sort, like Pam Grier’s Coffey or Foxy Brown, but there was little else in the way of strong female representation.
Things are a far sight better for female characters in Planet Terror, a grindhouse homage out in 2007 and directed by Robert Rodriguez. In fact, it was originally released as a double feature with Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof under the title Grindhouse.
Don’t totally give up with the opening scene, which features go-go dancer Cherry Darling (Rose McGowan) wiggling across the screen and then tearfully deciding to quit her job. Nor should you think she’s a total victim, even when zombies tear off her leg.
Those zombies — created when government forces inadvertently release a biochemical agent into a nearby town — aren’t enough to keep Cherry down. She survives amputation, hungry zombies, the death of her lover, evil rogue soldiers, and even a (presumably) unmedicated birth after the apocalypse. Plus, she gets a cool minigun as a prosthetic leg (yeah, a certain suspension of disbelief is required here).
Dr. Dakota Block (Marley Shelton) also deserves some acclaim, even though she doesn’t replace one of her limbs with a deadly weapon. She escapes her abusive husband and works along with a ragtag group to defeat the zombies. Dakota even gets to make it to a paradisiacal beach at Tulum, Mexico for her efforts.