About Death Proof
Death Proof is a 2007 film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. The film centers on a psychopathic stunt man who stalks young women before murdering them in staged car accidents using his “death-proof” stunt car. The film is a tribute to muscle cars, exploitation, and slasher film genres of the 1970s. The film stars Kurt Russell, Zoë Bell, Rosario Dawson, Vanessa Ferlito, Jordan Ladd, Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Tracie Thoms, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Rose McGowan.
Death Proof was released theatrically in the United States as part of a double feature with Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror under the collective title Grindhouse in order to replicate the experience of viewing exploitation film double features in a "grindhouse" theater. The films were released separately outside the United States and on DVD, with Death Proof going on sale in the United States on September 18, 2007.
Three friends – Arlene (Vanessa Ferlito), Shanna (Jordan Ladd) and radio disc jockey “Jungle” Julia Lucai (Sydney Tamiia Poitier) – are driving down Colorado Street in Austin, Texas to celebrate Jungle Julia's birthday. While drinking at Güero’s Taco Bar, Jungle Julia reveals that she made a radio announcement earlier that morning, offering a free lap dance from Arlene in return for addressing her as “Butterfly,” buying her a drink and reciting a segment of the poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” As the women bar crawl, the scarred “Stuntman” Mike (Kurt Russell), a Hollywood stunt double, quietly stalks them; only Arlene catches a quick glimpse of Mike’s souped-up, matte black, white skull-decorated 1970 Chevy Nova. When Pam (Rose McGowan) canvasses the bar patrons for a ride home, Mike offers to give her a ride, assuring her he is a teetotaler and a safe ride.
Mike spends the night chatting with Pam about Hollywood stuntwork and Julia, for whom Pam nurses a grade-school grudge and a low opinion. Mike flirts alternately with Pam and Julia and finally works his way to Arlene, calling her out for the lap dance promised by Julia. Arlene accuses Mike of following them, but Mike only admits to having seen Arlene once outside of Güero’s. Affecting a candid manner, Stuntman Mike threatens to call Arlene a coward for failing to live up to the offer. Arlene then orders Mike to pick a song on the jukebox and performs the dance. Arlene, Julia, Shanna, and their marijuana dealer, Lanna Frank (Monica Staggs), leave for Shanna’s father’s lake house, and Mike shows Pam to his Nova’s seatbeltless, enclosed, bare-metal-and-Plexiglas front passenger compartment. Mike explains that the interior film camera is usually set up in that area and assures her that his car is “death-proof.”
Stuntman Mike has seemed to be a normal, if overly intense, guy, but as he locks Pam into the passenger compartment, Mike looks directly into the camera and cheerfully smirks. Pulling out of the parking lot, he asks for directions, and when Pam says right he sighs and says they’re going left, and he wished she had said left so she wouldn’t get scared right away. He reveals himself to be a sadist, and begins to ride at extreme speeds and swerve the car around, thrashing Pam around the box. She pleads with Mike to let her out of the car, but Mike ignores her and informs her that the car is “100% death proof, but to get the benefit of it, honey, you really need to be sittin’ in my seat!” He then slams on the brakes, smashing her skull on the dashboard and killing her. Then it’s “time to find me my other girlfriends,” and he tosses his voyeur photographs of the girls out the window so the police will not find evidence of premeditation. Mike then chases after the other four girls. Finding their car on an empty road, he speeds past them and spins his car around. He proceeds to race at the girls’ car head-on at full speed with his headlights off, and turns them back on at the last moment. Mike crashes into them, killing them.
At the hospital, it is revealed that Mike suffered only minor injuries. Because the girls were driving while intoxicated and Mike had not consumed any alcohol or marijuana, he is cleared of all criminal charges (Pam’s death is likely attributed to the collision), angering Texas Ranger Earl McGraw (Michael Parks), who knows the stuntman is guilty, but decides not to investigate due to the lack of evidence and energy he thinks could be better spent elsewhere, such as following the NASCAR circuit. He vows to bring Mike down the next time he strikes in Texas, however due to barriers in cross-state police communication, Mike is soon in Tennessee looking for victims again without fear of being caught.
Fourteen months later, Lee Montgomery (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), Abernathy Ross (Rosario Dawson), and Kim Mathis (Tracie Thoms) are traveling through Lebanon, Tennessee and stop at a convenience store where Mike has stationed himself. When Kim goes inside, Lee moves into the driver’s seat and starts listening to her iPod with Abernathy still trying to sleep in the backseat. Mike then gets out of his car and begins playing with Abernathy’s bare feet which are hanging out of the car window. When she wakes up, Mike pretends he bumped into her while looking for his car keys. He gets into his car and takes off. Abernathy catches one last glimpse of Mike’s car speeding off, which the other two don’t notice, before the three depart. The trio pick up their friend, stuntwoman Zoë Bell (playing herself), at the airport, who informs them she wants to test-drive a classic white 1970 Dodge Challenger. Later, she reveals her true motives: she wants to play a game called “Ship’s Mast,” in which she will hang onto the car's hood with two belts while someone else drives at high speeds. When the girls reach the barn where the Dodge is being sold, Kim reluctantly agrees to help with the stunt and Abernathy tags along, while Lee finds herself left behind to placate the car’s owner, Jasper (Jonathan Loughran).
During this game, Mike arrives suddenly, and targets them with his 1969 Dodge Charger, repeatedly crashing into them, and eventually Zoë is thrown from the hood. Kim, who carries a gun for protection, shoots Mike in the left arm, causing him to flee. Zoë, due to her training and agility, is unharmed except for a “bruise on her bum.” The three girls decide to take revenge against their attacker. At this point the character roles abruptly switch, as Stuntman Mike, having been wounded, becomes hysterical. His intended victims, on the other hand, become enraged in their pursuit, jeering and laughing at their foe's efforts. Stuntman Mike’s injury forces him to stop, unbuckle his safety harness and tend to his wound. Kim crashes into the back of his Charger and Zoë attacks him with a steel pipe, but Mike, still unbuckled, flees. An extended chase scene follows; just when he thinks he has escaped, Kim blindsides him and he crashes to a stop, breaking his right arm. Screaming in pain, he is hauled out of the car and the three women administer a vicious beating. Stuntman Mike is knocked to the ground, and the women leap in celebration, caught in a midair freeze-frame as the film ends. After a moment of credits, the film returns to show Abernathy delivering an axe-kick to Mike, crushing his head with her boot.
The story for Death Proof developed from Quentin Tarantino's fascination for the way stuntmen would “death-proof” stunt cars so a driver could survive horrific, high-speed crashes and collisions. This inspired Tarantino to create a slasher film featuring a deranged stuntman who stalks and murders sexy young women with his “death-proof” car. Tarantino remembers, “I realized I couldn't do a straight slasher film, because with the exception of women-in-prison films, there is no other genre quite as rigid. And if you break that up, you aren't really doing it anymore. It's inorganic, so I realized—let me take the structure of a slasher film and just do what I do. My version is going to be fucked up and disjointed, but it seemingly uses the structure of a slasher film, hopefully against you.” According to Robert Rodriguez, “Tarantino had an idea and a complete vision for it right away when he first talked about it. He started to tell me the story and said, ‘It’s got this death-proof car in it.’ I said, ‘You have to call it Death Proof.’ I helped title the movie, but that’s it.” Of the car chases, Tarantino stated, “CGI for car stunts doesn’t make any sense to me—how is that supposed to be impressive? I don't think there have been any good car chases since I started making films in ’92—to me, the last terrific car chase was in Terminator 2. And Final Destination 2 had a magnificent car action piece. In between that, not a lot. Every time a stunt happens, there’s twelve cameras and they use every angle for Avid editing, but I don’t feel it in my stomach. It’s just action.”
Comment
This is an absolutely brilliant film and a film that I could watch over and over. Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino this film seems to have divided audiences like no other, it has been adored and despised in many quarters and there seems to be no middle ground for opinion. It is cited, by Tarantino himself, as being a remembrance to the B movies of the 60s and 70s through the guise of Grindhouse cinema. In order to fully appreciate what Tarantino has done then I would agree that you must be at least familiar (on some level) with the films of that genre and era and familiar with Grindhouse cinema and its workings. It is not an absolute necessity to be fully aware of this type of film-making but it helps if you want to completely appreciate this film.
Grindhouse cinema was never revered in its day and many have questioned its reprisal. For an audience to require adequate knowledge of such a minnow in cinema history is regarded by many critics as asking too much and is adduced as being a major factor in its downfall. This is due to the belief that Tarantino has made a film for too niche a market, and as a consequence it should be of no surprise that it flopped at the box office. This is something that I whole heartedly disagree with because, to the contrary, I believe that Tarantino has made his most selfish film to date, he has made something that he wanted to... that no studio dictated... no executive planned and no audience asked for, this film is 100 percent his and it just so happens that not that many people like it, all great directors make films that fit into this category.
A major critique of Death Proof has been that it contains a lot of dialogue, but I feel that this should be expected as it is a remembrance to Grindhouse cinema and these types of movies are notorious for the amount of talk they can contain and the amount of "build up" they might have and Tarantino himself is recognised as being a writer that emphasises the dialogue in his films. Modern cinema goers are likely to not have the patience for such an offering and thus dismiss its significance and become agitated at a lack of "action" and this is evident from some of the reviews on this website.
The film is about two separate sets of voluptuous women who are stalked by a stuntman called Mike that uses his death proof cars to execute the women. The essence of the story at the heart of Death Proof is that it's impeccably nostalgic as it insinuates to the very essence of cult, it is a forged story because of its countless renditions and numerous re-tellings by the way of novels, films and tales. Being familiar with such a story allows for an ease in understanding and following of narrative – a common attribute in cult films. The voluptuous women, or female characters, in the film are all so similar in appearance yet all so different in disposition, because the film is essentially split into two parts we witness the floundering of one set of female characters and the resurgence in dominance of another. The female empowerment in Death Proof is symbolic to a desire for masculinity which is so wonderfully conveyed by their attempt in "taming" the car (I shouldn't need to mention what the car is symbolic of). It's often perceived that in these films masculinity must be achieved in order to succeed, which in itself is a direct reference to the inspired B movies of Russ Meyer.
On a personal level I was happy to watch a film that accomplishes its stunt work without any CGI and re-live many of the films I dismissed too eagerly in my youth. Being a homage the film is littered with references, the most notable of which being the casting of Kurt Russell – a deliberate nod to the master of cult (and horror) John Carpenter (the shirt worn by Jack Burton, from Big Trouble In Little China, is visible on the wall in the bar), The Dodge Challenger driven by Stuntman Mike has the plate numbers OA5599, which correspond to the white Dodge Challenger from the heavily referenced film Vanishing Point. The film also contains lots of Tarantino-esquire moments, from the copious amount of foot shots to re-appearance of Sheriff Earl McGraw, and there are some moments of pure Tarantino ingenuity i.e. the four-shot death scene, the reversed hospital set, the lap dance, the shot of the car in the rain, Stuntman Mikes nod to the third person and the wonderfully constructed soundtrack. Upon seeing Death Proof I immediately watched it again as I felt it deserved it. Enjoy. | 
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Director: Quentin Tarantino
Writer: Quentin Tarantino
Release Date: 31 May 2007
Plot: Two separate sets of voluptuous women are stalked at different times by a scarred stuntman who uses his "death proof" cars to execute his murderous plans.
Cast:
Kurt Russell ----------------------------- Stuntman Mike Zoe Bell --------------------------------- Zoë Bell Rosario Dawson ------------------------ Abernathy Vanessa Ferlito ------------------------- Arlene Sydney Tamiia Poitier ---------------- Jungle Julia Tracie Thoms -------------------------- Kim Rose McGowan ------------------------- Pam Jordan Ladd ----------------------------- Shanna Mary Elizabeth Winstead -------------- Lee Quentin Tarantino --------------------- Warren Marcy Harriell -------------------------- Marcy Eli Roth --------------------------------- Dov Omar Doom ---------------------------- Nate Michael Bacall ------------------------- Omar Monica Staggs -------------------------- Lanna Frank |
