Character page for the Planet Terror part of the Grindhouse Double Feature.
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Cherry Darling
Cherry Darling
Played By: Rose McGowan
- Action Girl: Once she's taken a level in badass, she tears shit up.
- Ambiguously Bi: In addition to her romance with El Wray, Cherry gets some Ship Tease with Dakota, and the ending implies that they may have gotten together after Wray's death.
- An Arm and a Leg: Loses a leg during the movie. She uses three different prostheses to make up for it, first a table leg (which she breaks off against a rapist's head and jabs into his eye), then an assault rifle, and finally, a minigun.
- Cluster F-Bomb: Special mention goes to:Cherry: Look, you were being an unbelievable dick. I was walking out on you. I was cold, I took your fucking jacket. So, if you're go on one of your psycho, obsessive, controlling rants about a fucking jacket, then fucking take it 'cause I'd rather fucking freeze than fucking hear about it one more time!
- Combat Stilettos: Well, she only has the one stiletto for her action scenes, but the point remains.
- Deadpan Snarker: Recognised as one in-universe. Before the plot kicked off, she intended to become a stand-up comedienne. Wray thinks she could still pull it off.Wray Some of their best jokes are about cripples!
- Handicapped Badass: It's only after losing her leg that she actually becomes a badass.
- Leg Cannon: Literally; she has an assault rifle with underslung grenade launcher instead of a leg for the last twenty minutes of the film. In the epilogue, she has it upgraded to a minigun.
- Ms. Fanservice: Cherry starts the movie off doing an exotic dance, gets a sex scene with Wray, and she spends the movie wearing an outfit that shows off her legs (well, leg).
- No Name Given: "Cherry Darling" is unlikely to be her real name, and "Palomita" is just Wray's Affectionate Nickname for her.
- Rocket Jump: In the climax, she uses the grenade launcher attached to the assault rifle serving as her leg to launch herself into the air.
- Someone to Remember Him By: She gives birth to Wray's daughter after he dies saving her.
- Took a Level in Badass: Words fail to describe.
El Wray
El Wray
Played By: Freddy Rodriguez
- Ambiguously Trained: He is an expert with guns and blades and is the best fighter of the whole group, but the Sheriff refuses to give him a gun because of his criminal shenanigans in the time he'd met him. Once the plot re-starts after apologizing for the missing reel, El Wray has given the sheriff his secret past (but the audience doesn't gets to hear it) and the sheriff is incredibly awed by him ("I knew your name was 'El Wray', but I didn't knew you were that 'El Wray'",) hands him a firearm and lets him carry on. His interaction with the colonel afterwards implies that Wray was part of some kind of black-ops division or at least saw military service.
- Brutal Honesty: Bluntly tells Cherry that she isn't funny when she expresses her desire to become a comedienne. She sees it as unnecessarily mean, however.Cherry: There's a difference between being frank, and being dick.
- Deadpan Snarker: He has a very dry sense of humour.
- Famed In-Story: Judging from Hague and Muldoon's almost reverent way of saying his name, Wray must have quite a reputation. Not that the audience is ever made aware of it.
- Fragile Speedster: He's small and quick, but he can't endure any actual hits. Justified in that he's actually being shot at; gunshots tend to put down whoever gets hit by them.
- Heroic Sacrifice: He dies saving a pregnant Cherry from a zombie soldier.
- Jerkass Has a Point: While it's more than a bit insensitive to refer to Cherry's missing leg as "spilt milk", Wray is right that the hospital is currently under attack by zombies and they really need to get out of there.
- Mysterious Past: The fact that he's called El Wray is apparently significant. That's about all we know.
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse: He's even shorter than Cherry, yet Wray is a veritable One-Man Army.
- Punny Name: In Spanish "el rey" means "the king".
Dr. William Block
Dr. William Block
Played By: Josh Brolin
- Beard of Evil: A rather thick goatee.
- Character Tics: Throughout his time at the hospital, he is constantly checking his temperature with a thermometer, and is frequently shown with it dangling out of his mouth like a tooth-pick; he mentions that it helps him monitor his stress levels, although
Word of God indicates that it's more likely due to the fact that he's a hypochondriac who is (justly, under the circumstances) paranoid about getting sick, an ironic . - Creepy Monotone: He raises his voice maybe once. The rest of the time, it's cold and steady.
- Deadly Doctor: He never actually kills anyone on-screen, but he gives off this vibe, especially after his infection.
- Domestic Abuse: Bad enough that his wife was planning to take their son and leave him.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He treats his wife like garbage, but seems to have some fondness for his son. Possibly subverted, since after Tony's death, Bill doesn't show any reaction beyond a continuing desire to kill Dakota.
- Facial Horror: He gets infected pus smeared on his face, which deforms and becomes his only visible sign of infection.
- Four Eyes, Zero Soul: Thick glasses for a complete asshole and abusive husband.
- Hate Sink: Easily the most detestable character in the entire film, especially when compared to Muldoon, who dies an honorable death while he dies an Undignified Death in the climax.
- Death by Irony: He is a sociopathic doctor who is paranoid about getting sick... who is turned into a plauge-ridden zombie.
- Karmic Death: Gunned down by his abused wife's father.
- Lack of Empathy: When telling his friend Joe that his infected arm will need to be amputated, Block bluntly tells him so to his face, gives him no time to process the information, and totally ignores the procedure itself. Later, when infected people start coming into the hospital for treatment, his first thought is self-preservation.
- Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: This doctor is also a scumbag wife-beater.
- Soft-Spoken Sadist: His already present Creepy Monotone becomes even quieter and more menacing while threatening Dakota.
- The Stoic: He only shows muted hints of emotion during the movie.
Dr. Dakota Block
Dr Dakota Block
Played By: Marley Shelton
- Adrenaline Makeover: By the end of the film, she's ditched the white coat and done-up hairstyle. Her makeup also fades over the course of the film.
- Ambiguously Gay: Possibly. She has a girlfriend, with whom she is cheating on her husband with, and clearly has no love for her husband. She also appears to think Cherry is very attractive.
- Broken Bird: Domestic abuse and losing a son will do that to you.
- Daddy Issues: When she and Earl see each other, his first words are "I told you I didn't want to see you again". In Death Proof, an otherwise civil, but tense discussion ends with Dakota storming off, calling her father an asshole.
- Eating the Eye Candy: She shows a fair bit of appreciation for Cherry's looks, giving her an impressed once-over when Cherry demonstrates her "useless" talent of flexibility.Cherry: I'm Cherry.
Dakota: You sure are. - Hospital Hottie: Lampshaded by Bill's friend Joe, who makes several remarks about Dakota... to her husband's face.
- Mama Bear: Although this doesn't last long.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Dakota leaves Tony a handgun to protect himself from the zombies, but Tony accidentally shoots himself with it.
- Parental Neglect : On a very strange level . She seems to be doing everything she can to protect her son, but she left a loaded gun in her son's hands just so he wouldn't see his grandfather , with whom she fought . After he , of course , kills himself by accident, aside from a brief but intense period of shock , she seems to have completely gotten over her son's death .
- Took a Level in Badass: From a cringing Broken Bird to genuine badass.
JT Hague
JT Hague
Played By: Jeff Fahey
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: He comes off as a witless hillbilly, but JT gets quite a few zombie kills under his belt.
- Cool Old Guy: Looks to be in his fifties, yet he's quite a badass.
- Deadpan Snarker: After Wray orders a cup of coffee at his restaurant.Wray: I still eat here, JT.
JT: Oh, yeah. Try not to choke on all that food you're eatin'. - Face Death with Dignity: JT laughs as he sets off the explosives that kill him and destroy Muldoon's facility.
- I Taste Delicious: After being wounded, JT tastes some of his barbecue sauce and finds that it's finally perfected, only to be disturbed when his brother points out that JT bled into the sauce. JT later figures out that the missing ingredient was actually salt.
- Team Chef: His barbecue is apparently so "goddamn good" that Jesse James built him a motorcycle "free of fucking charge" in return.
- Trademark Favorite Food: He really loves his barbecue sauce.
Sheriff Hague
Sheriff Hague
Played By: Michael Biehn
- Determinator: Hague goes through the whole latter half of the movie with a gutshot, even managing to drive Wray's truck despite the injury.
- Died in Your Arms Tonight: He finally succumbs to his gunshot wound in his brother JT's arms.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He raised his brother's rent in an attempt to steal his recipe for barbecue sauce, but they genuinely love each other.
- Noodle Incident: He and Wray are already acquainted at the start of the movie, and Hague refers to an incident where he stuck his neck out for Wray (and apparently regretted it).
- The Sheriff: Of the unnamed town in the film.
Tony Block
Tony Block
Played By: Rebel Rodriguez
- Death of a Child: By Reckless Gun Usage.
- Dull Surprise: He doesn't react at all when the car he's in is attacked.
- The Load: He's nothing but a hindrance to his mother's attempts to save them from the entire town going to hell.
- Too Dumb to Live: His mother told him not to point the gun at himself. Guess what he did.
Lt. Muldoon
Lt. Muldoon
Played By: Bruce Willis
- Big Bad: The main antagonist of Planet Terror. Apart from the zombies, that is.
- Body Horror: In his final scene, the virus gets the better of Muldoon and he swells into a hideous monstrousity, gruesome even by the standards of the rest of the movie.
- The Comically Serious: His response to being handed a bag of his men's severed balls was just to glare.
- Fallen Hero: He went from killed Osama bin Laden to making deals with a Mad Scientist and detaining plague survivors.
- A Father to His Men: His entire motivation is to try and keep his men alive.
- The Stoic: Except for one scene where he loses his temper for a moment, Muldoon remains chillingly calm for the entire movie.
Abby
Abby
Played By: Naveen Andrews
- Boom, Headshot!: One that blows his head completely apart.
- Deadpan Snarker: "Science comes first, but business comes a close fucking second."
- Evil Brit: British accent meets Mad Scientist.
- Faux Affably Evil: He's snarky and friendly enough, but basically the entire movie is his fault, and he has a disturbing interest in collecting men's severed testicles.
- Mad Scientist: He created the DC-2 that sets off the events of the film. To his credit, though, he wants to develop an antidote after all hell breaks loose (not that he gets the chance).
- Surprisingly Sudden Death: He looks around a corner and... ka-blam.
- Token Evil Teammate: Distinctly amoral and slightly villainous at best. However, he intends to cure the virus if the group can escape with their lives (which kind of goes south when Abby himself bites it, but he gets points for trying).
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: He only released the DC-2 to save himself from Muldoon's men. He certainly didn't intend to set off a Zombie Apocalypse. If he was intended to set this apocalypse, he was the Greater-Scope Villain.
- Your Head Asplode: His Boom, Headshot! is anything but pretty.
Earl McGraw
Earl McGraw
Played By: Michael Parks
- Big Damn Heroes: Kills Bill Block just before he would have killed Dakota.
- Kill the Ones You Love: He had to kill his wife Ramona when she became infected.
- One-Man Army: He held off the massive swarm of zombies that attacked JT's, and not only lived, he made his way to the military base in time for a Big Damn Heroes moment.
- Police Are Useless: In his cameo in Death Proof, despite give a accurate appraisal of Stuntman Mike's MO, he decides building a case against him would take too much time away from watching NASCAR.
Deputy Tolo
Deputy Tolo
Played By: Tom Savini
- Butt-Monkey: Gets his finger bitten off, accidentally shoots a hospital patient, accidentally shoots his boss (both of which earn him the title of "dumbass" from Hague), and then is torn apart by zombies. Poor bastard.
- Meaningful Name: "Tolo" is Portuguese for "fool".
Tammy Visan
Tammy Visan
Played By: Stacy Ferguson
- Male Gaze: Subject to this from JT.
- Ms. Fanservice: Short shorts and a low-cut, midriff exposing top? JT probably puts it best.JT: Now there's a rump roast.
- Lipstick Lesbian: We meet Tammy when she's en-route to save her girlfriend from an abusive marriage.
