Planet Terror is a 2007 American action comedy horror film written and directed by Robert Rodriguez.

Set in Texas, the film follows the survivors of a biochemical outbreak as they battle zombie-like creatures and a rogue military unit.

It stars Rose McGowan, Freddy Rodriguez, Michael Biehn, Jeff Fahey, Josh Brolin, and Marley Shelton.

The film was originally released theatrically as part of Grindhouse, a double feature that combined Planet Terror with Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof.

After Grindhouse underperformed at the domestic box office, Planet Terror was released as a standalone feature in other countries and on home media.

In rural Texas, go-go dancer Cherry Darling runs into her mysterious ex-boyfriend El Wray at the Bone Shack, a restaurant owned by brothers J.T.

Meanwhile, the demented Lt. Muldoon and his men make a transaction with chemical engineer Abby for mass quantities of DC2, a deadly biochemical agent.

The infected townspeople are treated at a local hospital by Dr. William Block and his bisexual anesthesiologist wife, Dakota, who is abused by him.

As the patients mutate, El Wray leaves the station and arrives at the hospital, attaching a wooden table leg to Cherry's stump.

(Following a "missing reel" segment) Dakota, Earl, Cherry's former boss Skip, and Tony's crazed babysitter twins arrive at the Bone Shack.

With Hague badly injured, the group decides to flee to the Mexican border, before being stopped by a large mass of zombies.

The survivors make plans to escape by stealing helicopters after fighting through a large group of zombies, but Abby gets his head blown apart by a ballistic missile in the process.

Cherry, now sporting a minigun leg, leads survivors to the Caribbean beach at Tulum, where they start a peaceful new society during a worldwide zombie outbreak.

In a post-credits scene, Tony is sitting on the beach at the survivor's "base" playing with his turtle, scorpion, and tarantula.

"I remember telling Elijah Wood and Josh Hartnett, all these young actors, that zombie movies were dead and hadn't been around in a while, but that I thought they were going to come back in a big way because they’d been gone for so long," recalled Rodriguez, "I said, 'We've got to be there first.'

[3] Planet Terror is preceded by a fake trailer for a film titled Machete, starring Danny Trejo and Cheech Marin, as it had during the original "double feature" presentation of Grindhouse.

"I had cast him in Desperado and I remember thinking, 'Wow, this guy should have his own series of Mexican exploitation movies like Charles Bronson or like Jean-Claude Van Damme.'

Harvey Weinstein did not want Rose McGowan to be cast in the film, after he allegedly sexually assaulted her years earlier and then blacklisted her from being in any Miramax-related movies.

During shooting for these scenes, McGowan wore a special cast which restricted her leg movement to give her the correct motion.

Planet Terror was released in the United States and Canada alongside Death Proof as part of a double feature under the title Grindhouse.

[16] The Dutch poster artwork for Planet Terror claimed that the film would feature "coming attractions" from Quentin Tarantino.

Planet Terror was released on DVD on October 16, 2007, in a two-disc special edition featuring the extended version of the film presented in a "flat" 1.78:1 screen ratio (the theatrical version in Grindhouse was matted to 2.35:1), audio commentary with Rodriguez, an audience reaction track, several behind the scenes featurettes about casting and special effects, and a "10 Minute Film School" segment,[20][21] in which Rodriguez confirmed that a box set of the two films would be available soon, and that his 10 Minute Cooking School on Texas BBQ would appear on it.

The site's critics consensus reads, "A cool and hip grindhouse throwback, Planet Terror is an unpredictable zombie thrillride.