Quentin Tarantino's stunt-car film, its real-car chases, the Grindhouse release and the reaction it drew from critics.
Death Proof is a 2007 Quentin Tarantino slasher starring Kurt Russell as a stuntman who uses a modified car as a weapon. It first played as half of the Grindhouse double feature, and its real-stunt car chases earned strong praise from critics.
Death Proof is a 2007 slasher film written, shot and directed by Quentin Tarantino, starring Kurt Russell as a stuntman who hunts young women in modified cars. It first reached cinemas as the second half of the Grindhouse double feature alongside Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror. Its stunt work and homage to exploitation cinema drew praise, although reviewers criticised its pacing.
What is Death Proof about?
Three friends drive through Austin, Texas, on the way to a birthday celebration. A stuntman named Mike, who drives a rigged stunt car with a roll cage, follows them to a bar and later uses that car as a weapon. He calls the vehicle death-proof, a boast that protects only the driver.
The film then jumps ahead fourteen months to a second group of young women who work in film. Their stuntwoman friend Zoe Bell arrives, and the group wants to try out a 1970 Dodge Challenger on sale nearby. Mike, who has been watching them, comes back for a second pursuit on the roads of Tennessee.
In the second half, the women turn the chase around. Zoe rides the hood of the car, holding belts while the driver speeds, and after several collisions the women catch up with Mike, flip his car and finish the chase on the road. The structure gives the film a sharp shift in tone, from menace to a revenge story told through driving.
A stunt-driving slasher that treats the car as the real weapon and the stunt as the real heart.
Which cars and stunts drive the story?
Mike's stunt car is the centre of the story, and the film makes its name from the claim that such a car keeps its driver safe while everyone else is at risk. The idea grows out of Tarantino's fascination with how stunt drivers protect themselves in violent crashes. The vehicles therefore carry the menace, and the stunt work carries the film's emotional charge.
The 1970 Dodge Challenger the women want to try is a model that also appears in Vanishing Point, a 1971 film. The second half of the film keeps the Challenger central: the women test it, the stunt is staged on the open road, and the chase turns into their revenge. The reference is deliberate. It places a classic American muscle car at the centre of a story about stunt work and survival, and it links Death Proof to a long line of car films that treat a road as a stage.
| Release step | Date |
|---|---|
| US release within Grindhouse, by Dimension Films | April 6, 2007 |
| Edinburgh International Film Festival screening | August 20, 2007 |
| US DVD, two-disc special edition | September 18, 2007 |
| UK release | September 21, 2007 |
| Australian release | November 1, 2007 |
| Blu-ray with the same content as the DVD | December 16, 2008 |
| Grindhouse double feature on Blu-ray | October 2010 |
How did Tarantino make Death Proof?
Tarantino wrote the film after being fascinated by how stuntmen make their cars death-proof. He felt a straight slasher would be too rigid, so he bent the genre into a fractured, deliberately uneven film. He co-produced it, wrote it and shot it himself, and it marked his first credit as a cinematographer.
Casting was difficult. Tarantino approached several well-known actors, but none were available. He chose Kurt Russell because he wanted an audience that might not know Russell's work to see what the actor could still do. Zoe Bell, a stuntwoman who doubled Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, was given a leading role, and it was her first on-screen acting part.
Eli Roth appeared in a one-day role, filmed while he was working in Europe on Hostel: Part II. Rodriguez helped settle the title. The two films were then sold together as Grindhouse.
Tarantino rejected computer-generated car stunts, arguing that they lacked impact. He said the last terrific car chase he had seen was in Terminator 2, and he preferred real action captured with many cameras and angles. That preference explains why the chases feel physical, even when the story around them is unusual.
The film deliberately imitates damaged grindhouse prints from the 1970s. It opens with a brief title card for Thunder Bolt before the Death Proof title appears, and it includes jump cuts meant to look like worn film. Those choices are part of the homage to exploitation cinema that gives the film its identity.
Tarantino later said his cut was about half an hour longer than the version in the Grindhouse double feature. A 127-minute extended version was shown at Cannes, and international releases added 27 minutes of material. The longer cut gave audiences the film Tarantino wanted to show on its own.
The soundtrack is built from existing recordings, including pieces lifted from other films' scores. Both the Death Proof and Planet Terror soundtracks were released on April 3, 2007, and each album includes dialogue excerpts from its film. The music is part of the grindhouse mood, pulling in older records to suit the story.
How did critics respond to Death Proof?
Reviews were generally moderate. Rotten Tomatoes recorded 67% approval from 45 reviews, with an average of 5.3/10. Les Cahiers du cinema ranked the film second best of 2007, while several reviewers praised the stunt work and the stylised chases, although some found the pacing slow.
Damon Wise of Empire gave the film four stars out of five, and BBC critic Anna Smith gave it three out of five. Roger Ebert gave the Grindhouse double feature 2.5 stars out of 4, and he found Death Proof the livelier half of the pairing. Peter Bradshaw praised the car crash scene as a thrilling sequence with real force.
Tarantino was blunt about the result. In 2012 he said Death Proof was the worst movie he had made. The remark came well after the film's release, and it did not undo the praise for its car chases.
Where and how was Death Proof released?
Death Proof opened in the United States and Canada on April 6, 2007 as part of the double feature Grindhouse, with Planet Terror. International releases came separately. The film was shown at the Edinburgh festival on August 20, 2007, where Zoe Bell attended, before reaching UK cinemas on September 21, 2007 and Australian cinemas on November 1, 2007.
The extended cut mattered to Tarantino because it let audiences see the film without the other half of the bill. The longer version included the lap dance scene, which the American release replaced with a missing reel card. The 127-minute version that screened in competition at the 60th Cannes Film Festival showed the film at its fullest length.
Home media followed the same pattern of separate editions. The US DVD arrived on September 18, 2007 as a two-disc special edition with the extended version and documentaries on the casting and the muscle cars. A Blu-ray with identical content followed on December 16, 2008. A German HD DVD was also issued, believed to be the final title issued in that now-defunct format, and a Japanese six-DVD box set paired the films with extras and fake trailers.
