Tough Chicks: Cherry Darling – Planet Terror
Rose McGowan has been in the news recently for things unrelated to her acting career but I truly think there needs to be more attention paid to maybe her single greatest contribution to cinema except for maybe her role in Ready to Rumble. I’m talking, of course, about her one-legged badass that was Cherry Darling…
A lot of people forget that she actually had two legs at the beginning of Planet Terror. She opens the movie with a sexy little gypsy dance in a strip club and then we start getting some more story and then BOOM! Now she’s minus a leg, her ex boyfriend is mysteriously back in town, and there is a crazy zombie apocalypse going on. You know anything done by Robert Rodriguez is going to feature many of his old buddies, crazy shootouts, and extremely sexy women. Rose McGowan’s Cherry Darling fits all of the criteria. She was dating Rodriguez during filming, kills loads of dudes with her machine gun leg, and looks absolutely incredible. These movies are total exploitation and I love it!
Cherry, her ex beau Wray, and a random assortment of characters too long and interesting to name make their way through a city overrun by gross-looking, infected, zombie creatures. Wray slaps a M-16, complete with a M203 grenade launcher onto Cherry’s amputated leg and she finds new and useful ways to kill dozens of bad guys. The fact that Cherry is the unquestionable hero of the movie tells you all you need to know about the flick. Hell, the cast includes John McClane and Kyle Reece but neither of them can wrench away ownership of the movie from Rose McGowan. Planet Terror is exploitation cinema at its very best. Full of excellent characters who could die at any time. Bitchin’…
