Death Proof (2007)
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
Austin's hottest DJ, Jungle Julia, sets out into the night to unwind with her two friends Shanna and Arlene. Covertly tracking their moves is Stuntman Mike, a scarred rebel leering from behind the wheel of his muscle car, revving just feet away.
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9 films that influenced Death Proof
What critics say influenced Death Proof
Although it is probably now best known as the film that inspired Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof (2007)--or at least was the film most frequently named-checked--Vanishing Point should be seen as a particularly charged variant of a now extinct genre: the artsy B-movie.
I know Tarantino would love to take the credit for the popularity and new found interest in “Vanishing Point,” thanks to his repeated references to the movie in his underrated “Death Proof,” but that’s simply presumptuous, considering many people have been singing the praises of “Vanishing Point” for years and years.
In form, Death Proof is a homage to fast car thrillers of the 1970s - particularly Vanishing Point - coupled with the sexually predatory style of a sinister 1970s slasher movie.
For all the talk about Vanishing Point, it may seem perverse to note that the film the first half of Death Proof feels closest to is Renoir's A Day in the Country.
But my favorite was the one in the middle by Edgar "Shaun of the Dead" Wright, a work of wonderful comic timing, which is all I'll say about it.
The infamous striptease sequence has been restored (having been cut out of the theatrical release as part of a clever "scene missing" gag), which compounds the film's phony pro-feminism, but makes up for it with snappy directing reminiscent of the Twist contest from Pulp Fiction.
Scenes set around the table in bars or restaurants may have worked well in the male-dominated Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction, but are simply very dull here.
Directors Robert Rodriguez (Sin City) and Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction) share a deep love for the cheezoid drive-in-and-Times-Square exploitation flicks they devoured as budding movie geeks, and together they have made a three-hour, double-feature monument to their celluloid guilty pleasures.
It's Tarantino in his element before moving on to blaxploitation next, kung fu imports with Kill Bill , the drive-in movie with Death Proof , the ensemble war film with Inglourious Basterds , and the Leone western with the upcoming Django Unchained.
Prised from the box-office debacle that was (in America) Grindhouse, a pastiche of an old-fashioned cheapie double-bill with one feature from the Pulp Fiction master, one from Robert Rodriguez, plus an accompaniment of mock ads and trailers, this blend of girlie action flick with retro car-chase movie scores nought out of 10 for artistic expression but four for amiable delinquency.
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It's not irrelevant that many of the characters have jobs in the movie industry (Bell, Uma Thurman's stunt-double in Kill Bill, plays "herself"), yet, informed by the director's awe of his actresses -- fetishized, soulful, intimidated, flabbergasted -- this is less his 8� than his City of Women.
I enjoyed Planet Terror more than Tarantino's contribution on my initial viewing (more on that later), and while I am an admittedly unabashed fan of many things with the zombie genre (a late night Sci-Fi channel viewing of Night of the Living Dead at age eight can be blamed/thanked for that), it is no unreasonable amount of fanboy bias that swayed my opinion.
Russell, with a long scar that recalls his Snake Plissken character from Escape from New York, introduces himself as Stuntman Mike.
"Death Proof" is a masterpiece, the best film of its kind I've seen since "A History of Violence".
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He meets his match in a trio of spitfires (including Rosario Dawson and Zoe Bell, the stuntwoman profiled in the entertaining documentary Double Dare).