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Kurt Russell is perfect as the deceptively disarming Stuntman Mike.
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Thankfully, Tarantino’s cast is so charming that you don’t mind these long stretches. Mostly available now in its longer form on home video, DEATH PROOF can be a bloated film prone to long stretches of dialogue that subverts the very nature of the type of film its trying to be. In the second half, Stuntman Mike has relocated to rural Tennessee and stalks a group of young girls on leave from a film shoot, only to find that they’re just crazy enough to play his own game against him.ĭEATH PROOF exists in two versions: a two hour director’s cut that screened at Cannes as well as on its own during a European theatrical release, and a heavily-streamlined cut that was included in the American GRINDHOUSE theatrical release. They stop off at a local Austin dive for some drinks, where they meet and ultimately fall victim to Stuntman Mike. In the first, a group of girls, led by a sassy, Amazon queen and radio host named Jungle Julia (Sydney Tamiia Poitier), are en route to a lakeside cabin vacation for the weekend. Initially designed to allow stuntmen to walk away without a scratch after performing their daredevil feats, Stuntman Mike now uses this car to stalk and kill hapless young women. It concerns a salty character named Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell), who drives around in a jet-black hot rod that’s been outfitted to sustain the driver’s life in the event of a horrible collision. DEATH PROOF, Tarantino’s entry, is the better film on almost every level, and while it could be counted as the director’s first high-profile failure, it is also something of a triumph on many levels.ĭEATH PROOF is the hokey slasher film that John Carpenter never made. I found each entry to be tremendously entertaining, especially the fake trailers that played between the features (Eli Roth’s THANKSGIVING trailer is easily superior to anything else he’s ever done). In many ways, GRINDHOUSE was doomed to failure before the directors even began writing it. Their attention span literally can’t handle the idea of a four film, regardless of who made it or how good it might be. Audiences today are different than they were during grindhouse’s heyday. Naturally, my buddy and I found this and their subsequent march out of the auditorium hysterical, but in retrospect I can’t help but wonder if this was going on in every theatre across America. “Fuck that bro, let’s go watch TMNT instead!” I’m not joking-they literally said those exact words. The bros in front of us, who had obviously not done their homework, immediately balked. An usher stood up in front of the audience and announced that the film we were about to watch ran for almost four hours. A small crew of bros sat in the row ahead of us, no doubt buzzing with anticipation for the jeager bombs they’d slam later that night. I went to the opening day screening with a college buddy of mine, and a great deal of excitement-we both knew what to expect and were looking forward to 4 hours of trashy fun. There’s a story from my own experience with GRINDHOUSE that I think perfectly sums up why the film failed. The reward for their all that hard work and passion? Widespread disappointment and failure. Working out of Rodriguez’s Texas-based Troublemaker Studios, the two men feverishly constructed this passion project of theirs, eventually releasing the final 4-hour film to cinemas in the spring of 2007. They even went so far as to include fake trailers for other, nonexistent films shot by like-minded directors (such as Eli Roth and Rob Zombie, to name a few). Rodriguez shot a sci-fi zombie film entitled PLANET TERROR, and Tarantino paid tribute to the shrinking stunt industry with his auto slasher picture DEATH PROOF. So plans were hatched for each director to make a feature typical of the low-budget cheese that held such a special place in their hearts, with the aim to present both films together as one big experience. Because this kind of cinema had so profoundly influenced the styles and careers of both Tarantino and Rodriguez, they felt compelled to keep the grindhouse tradition alive. As the megaplex and the blockbuster rose to prominence, both the double feature and the grindhouse tradition fell to the wayside. The project was an ode to a bygone era from their youth, where cheesy genre and exploitation films where shown on a double bill in cheap art-house theatres.
Stuntman bob death proof series#
The series of collaborations between directors Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez reached their apex in 2007 with the release of GRINDHOUSE. Quentin Tarantino: GRINDHOUSE/DEATH PROOF (2007)