You know what, I may be in the minority here, but I think Death Proof is a good movie. It's mindless fun. Does it run a little bit longer than I'd like? Sure. But who the hell cares. The last 20 minutes of the movie is one hell of a ride!!!! Literally. I really don't get or understand all the negativity surrounding this. It's a Quentin Tarantino film. You should know what your getting into before you even see one frame of film. And if your a fan of his movies, you will get a lot of the inside-jokes as well as specific nods to certain "camera moves" that he is known for. Yeah, yeah, yeah...he stole all those moves from other directors. Blah, blah, blah. Don't care.

Other than the ending of the movie, I thought the table-dolly-shot was pretty damn good in executing and hitting their marks. I wonder how many takes that took for them before they finally nailed it.

This is definitely a Buy for me and much much better than Planet Terror. And I certainly found this to be far more entertaining than Inglourious Basterds. And I like that movie too! So that's saying something right there.

I really have enjoyed the Grindhouse flicks. Saw it/them  when it first came out to the theaters. The audience was stoked and it was just a fun event. Very different from each other and I like them for their differences. Highly recommend a rental. But I bought em and watch them about a once a year. 

A rather lengthy buy thorough examination (Cliff Notes) of Quentin Tarantino's DEATH PROOF.

I'm not a big fan of reading these but this one kind of stands out and shines some light on why I didn't know I like Death proof.

I cannot find the author on this.

“I thought DePalma’s Raising Cain (pic below) was a blast. I had a total blast out of watching it. But part of the fun about the movie – which I don’t know, if the studio liked it that much – was the fact that it almost, the whole thing works to annoy the viewer because, it, like- you’ve got a man [DePalma] who’s like- ‘Look, I created, more or less, in these last 20 years, this type of film. Alright, and, and I do it better than anybody, but you know what? I’m bored with doing it now. Alright, so the only way I can make it interesting for ME, is to completely dissect it and not pay you off…”- QT gives his views on the concept behind Brian DePalma’s psychological thriller.


“I never do proper genre movies. It’s like using the fact that Reservoir Dogs isn’t a proper heist film even though it fits in the genre, as a slag against it. And what is so good about slasher films is they are all the same. This is why they are so much fun to write subtextual film criticism about, because all your arguments really work for a vast majority of films. And if you try to monkey about just a little too much with it then now you’re not even really making a slasher film.” – QT in Sight and Sound (2007)
“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 ****ed up and disjointed, but it seemingly uses the structure of a slasher film, hopefully against you.” – QT in Rolling Stone (2007)

Foreword

These excerpts from past QTs interviews (including one from his famous 1994 Charlie Rose Show appearance) clue us in to how he wanted to approach his own psycho-thriller meets hot rod movie: Death Proof. Not only that, it gives us QT’s thoughts on how twisting genre conventions intrigues him as a filmmaker. Although Death Proof divided many critics and viewers (like all Tarantino films) if you are a fan who is really interested in his style of cinema, you feel the need to rewatch his work often and reevaluate them on different levels. Since Tarantino is an expert on cinema and master of audience manipulation, even his sour notes have meaning beneath them. Death Proof was certainly a departure for him. To the chagrin of certain fans he decided to leave the crime films he was best known for behind and try something thematically and aesthetically different.

With Death Proof, Tarantino set out to make what could be described on the surface as a “slasher film”, but this wasn’t just your traditional subgenre story. First, instead of a supernatural monster (i.e. Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers), Tarantino’s killer was a man, more specifically, a Hollywood stuntman. Second, his weapon of choice was not a butcher knife or a machete, it was a reinforced stunt car. Mike’s reason for killing seems to stem from something that was done to him by a woman, yet at the same time it is implied that he is sexually gratified by experiencing car crashes. As stated by Quentin Tarantino, Mike is actually performing an act of **** on his female victims through vehicular collision. Note: This sexual connection to automobile accidents is a trait he shares with characters from J.G. Ballard’s novel Crash (which was later adapted into a film by David Cronenberg).

In this multi-part article we will be examining what Quentin Tarantino’s slasher film really set out to do. We will ask the questions: Was it just a “grindhouse homage”? A personal way to mess with audiences? An experimental film that deconstructed one of QTs favorite subgenres? or…was it all of these things combined?

Introduction: European Gourmet Meets North American Fast Food

As noted by Quentin Tarantino, the classic 1980s slasher film structure is very specific or rigid. 1) There is a mysterious psychotic maniac and they stalk/kill people, usually teens. 2) Many times they are seeking revenge for something that was done to them or someone they loved years earlier. 3) The stories often take place around summer camps and fraternities. 4) The slasher-killer is often a non-sexual male and/or someone who doesn’t kill for sexual thrills. 4) The lone female survivor commonly referred to as The Final Girl is the only one who is potentially as strong as the killer because she has not become sexually active and free like her preoccupied wild friends. Thus helping her to keep her wits so she can go on to destroy the predator when everyone else is killed off. This is the main character trait that the Final Girl shares with the killer.

The American and Canadian slasher films really took what the Italian giallo thrillers did best and streamlined them even more. They usually removed the more intricate story/plot details and created the trademark “slash em’ up in a row” style that is prevalent from Halloween to the Friday The 13th films.
Other classic titles in this subgenre include: The Burning, My Bloody Valentine, The House on Sorority Row, The Prowler and Happy Birthday To Me.

As well as being inspired by American and Canadian slasher films, Tarantino uses aspects from Italian giallo cinema. These stylish European based murder-mysteries were actually a direct influence on the American slashers and often dealt with black masked/gloved psycho-sexual killers. You’ll notice music cues from Dario Argento’s, The Cat O Nine Tails and The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, two classic giallo films in Death Proof. Tarantino’s character Stuntman Mike also has giallo killer traits, his methods of secretly collecting the women’s personal items (which we don’t actually see onscreen) and photographing his prey before the kill for his own sexual gratification come directly from the giallo storylines.
This blending of two similar thriller genres creates the characteristics on which Quentin Tarantino’s film is based.

1. STUNTMAN MIKE: THE PSYCHO YOU LIKE

“Stuntman Mike is kinda cool. He’s got a better rap than anyone else in the bar and hes the only man who can deal with these girls” – Quentin Tarantino on one aspect of the character.

From his looks alone, he seems out of touch with the times. His dress style is certainly out of date. He wears the standard 70s/80s stuntman gear: black t-shirt, blue jeans, cowboy boots, tacky turquoise jewelry, topped off by a shiny silver satin racing jacket and a rockabilly pompadour style hairdo. He looks like a redneck refugee from the 1960s or 70s. Mike comes across as someone who has fallen out of a time machine and finds himself surrounded by beeping cell phones and hybrid cars. Although Mike is out of place, we are conditioned to like him, maybe feel bad for him or at least identify with him on certain levels. He really doesnt come off as scary, well, maybe more like ominous. When we watch Stuntman Mike talking at the bar, its not with an evil sneer or ghostly moan, he’s a jovial guy who giggles and has a good sense of humor, albeit its a bit strange. He also seems sort of cool in his own way. At first glance, he recalls an older cowboy who wandered in from a rodeo. Mike tries to impress some girls by telling them about some TV shows he worked on a long time ago. He shoots out titles like The Virginian, Vega$ and Gavilan, but the girls sit dumbstruck, they’ve never heard of them. Mike is an odd old duck to these young hipsters. Someone to giggle at. Still, Mike has an interesting air of mystery about him, and a large facial scar that makes us ponder about what his real backstory is. This is level one of the deconstruction of the slasher film antagonist.

2. THE VIEWER AS ACCOMPLICE

“You want them [the cars] to collide…Now you’re a co-conspirator. You’re incriminated in the bloodlust. Until that last second, you’re coming from the same place Stuntman Mike is coming from”. – Quentin Tarantino on the viewer’s thought process of anticipating the big car crash.

What happens when a staid genre film’s structure is messed with? Quentin Tarantino has been experimenting with this aspect of moviemaking since the beginning of his career. In Reservoir Dogs, he made a heist film where we never actually see the heist. In Pulp Fiction, he took classic pulp/noir stories and re-imagined them. In Kill Bill, he made a Grindhouse style revenge film, not about an innocent citizen who is done wrong, but an assassin who “deserves to die” just as much as her attackers do.

In slasher films, stalking and killing is what the main villains do by default. Thats their role on the screen and nothing besides. BUT what if you put the audience in their place? In Death Proof, identifying or even sympathizing with Stuntman Mike as a human being instead of a “monster” is what we are being manipulated to do from the start. The way he is presented to us, as a misunderstood outsider, is every bit as strong as the connection we feel towards Vanessa Ferlito’s Arlene, who is really in the same situation herself in the story. This also goes back to the theory about the killer’s connection to The Final Girl in slasher films…but more on that later.

When the first big car crash scene happens, Stuntman Mike is on the verge of a sexual orgasm and the audience is set up to be right there with him. The reason is because this sequence is all about adrenaline and thrills. The very thing audiences goto the movies for. When Stuntman Mike aims his reinforced stuntcar at the unsuspecting girls (who are heading for their imminent deaths) we as viewers become his accomplices in the virtual passenger seat simply because it is our nature as viewers to want to see the crash happen. It goes back to the old addage about the person who drives by a car crash and can’t not look at the carnage. Stuntman Mike and the audience become one during that time. This specific sequence is subconsciously deepening our bond with the killer we are supposed to despise and/or fear. This is level two of the deconstruction of the slasher film antagonist.