Robert Rodriguez and the Living Dead

Grindhouse Presents Planet Terror (two and a half stars total) I like El Mariachi (1992) and Sin City (2005), but Planet Terror is no Death Proof (both 2007), and Robert Rodriguez is no Quentin Tarantino. It's okay when Death Proof saves its action scenes for the halfway point and the end while suspense builds and then fills the rest of the movie with dialogue and music, because Tarantino knows dialogue and music. It takes an hour for the action to really start on Planet Terror yet there's zero tension up to that point. Its dialogue is just juvenile, its music is John Carpenter-minimalist and its jump scene sound effects are cheesier than the original Halloween's (1978). It's all sight gags and nifty concepts hanging by a tired thread, which is fine for a zombie movie, or at least a spoof of zombie movies. I guess what I'm trying to say is that Planet Terror would work well by itself, but on the Grindhouse double-feature-revival attempt, it begs comparison to Death Proof. On a separate note, Robert Rodriguez seems intent on asking audiences how well they would function after the loss of a body part: a hand in Desperado (1995), eys in Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003) and now in Planet Terror, a leg. Is he just a gorehound for dismemberment or does he secretly suffer from "body integrity identity disorder" (that's BIID for people who want to be amputees)? Don't get me wrong though, I'm all for Bruce Willis taking out Osama bin Laden. I love seeing Josh Brolin as a bad guy. I like kids with pet scorpions. I'm blown away by Freddy Rodriguez's action moves as El Wray. Finally, everybody knows that Rose McGowan is hot but I have some questions: Is her leg gun fired by mental control? Did she reload the ammo between scenes? And how do teenage babysitters know where the switch for helicopter windshield wipers are?