DEATH PROOF

Death Proof is a film directed by noted director Quentin Tarantino (of Pulp Fiction fame) and is the first  film of a "double feature" called Grindhouse along with another film called Planet Terror (which I may review at a later date) directed by another noted director Robert Rodriquez (of Spy Kids fame). The film stars Kurt Russell (of Goldie Hawn fame) who plays a homicidal stuntman who calls himself Stuntman Mike who uses his "death proof" car to savagely kill women. The first part of the film is rather boring save for a couple of rather gory scenes where he kills a handful of girls he chatted up at a bar. And when I say he chatted them up, I mean he REALLY chatted them up! In fact, a good chunk of this film features the characters talking. In my oh-so-humble opinion, the film doesn't get REALLY good until about the last 30 minutes when Stuntman Mike gets into a high-speed car chase with these three women who are joyriding in a souped-up sports car with one of them riding atop the hood of the car. He ends up running them off the road and taunts them a little. Big mistake! One of them shoots him in the shoulder and he quickly speeds off as the woman keeps shooting at him. The three women regroup and wind up chasing his ass until they wind up running him off the road and, after dragging his screaming ass out of the car, they wind up literally pummeling him to the ground and then, as the credits start to roll, one of the women (played by resident hottie Rosario Dawson) offers up the killing blow by driving her heel right into the middle of his face. Ouch! A sidenote: Grindhouse is Quentin and Robert's homage to so-called "grindhouse" films of the seventies that would usually show late night at these rather sleazy moviehouses and two or three movies would play in a row. These movies were usually B-movie horror flicks and flicks of a "erotic" nature. Apparently not ALL moviegoers got that. For instance, while Quentin was on one talk show while out promoting the film, he said that he was actually watching the film in a "regular" movie theater to kind of gauge the audience's reaction and he said how this one guy stood up after his film was over and, instead of waiting around for Robert's film, he walked up to Quentin, congratulated him for his film while shaking his hand and then walked out of the movie theater altogether. But, then again, what MORE can you expect from moviegoers raised on remakes of Alvin & The Chipmunks and The Smurfs?