Taglines: These 8 Women Are About To Meet 1 Diabolical Man!
Death Proof (Grindhouse) movie storyline. Austin, Texas. The opening titles come up as Shanna (Jordan Ladd) and Arlene (Vanessa Ferlito) drive around in their car. Shanna and Arlene pick up their DJ friend, Jungle Julia (Sydney Poitier), and they drive around while talking about boys and drugs. They cheer every time they see a billboard with Jungle Julia on it. They go to a local bar named Gueros.
As they enter, Arlene sees a black car stopped in the middle of the street. The driver watches the girls and then speeds off down the road. Inside, the girls are approached by Jungle Julia’s friend. They all make it apparent that Julia issued a challenge to her listeners about Arlene on the radio earlier. She said that she was going out with her friends that night, and if anyone sees Arlene, then they should approach her and give her a drink.
When they do, they have to look her in the eyes and recite a little poem. If they do all that and call her “butterfly,” then Arlene will give them a lap dance. Arlene gets after Jungle Julia for saying that on the air, but she says that if she doesn’t do it, everyone will know that she’s chicken shit. Julia makes a deal with her, though… if it’s an unattractive guy, then Arlene can say that she was already approached and already gave the lap dance.
The girls drink and then go to another bar, called the Texas Chili Parlor run by Warren (Quentin Tarantino), where they continue to drink up a storm. Dov (Eli Roth) and his friend join the girls and drink with them. Julia spends some time alone, text messaging a guy and telling him that she’s waiting for him. She then rejoins her friends just as Warren buys them all shots of Chartreuse. Arlene has had enough and goes outside to smoke a cigarette. Warren notices that a light in the parking lot is off, and tells a bartender to turn it on. When they do, Arlene sees the black car from before parked in the lot.
The car is owned by Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell), who is in the bar sloppily eating nachos. Dov and his friend want to have sex with the girls, but they’re going to a vacation house for a strictly “girls-only” weekend. Dov plans to get the girls extra drunk so that they will let them come over as well.
Death Proof is a 2007 American exploitation film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. It stars Kurt Russell as a stuntman who murders young women in staged car accidents using his “death-proof” stunt car. It co-stars Rosario Dawson, Vanessa Ferlito, Jordan Ladd, Rose McGowan, Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Tracie Thoms and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, with stuntwoman Zoë Bell as herself. The film pays homage to the slasher, exploitation and muscle car films of the 1970s.
Death Proof was released theatrically in the United States as part of a double feature with Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror under the collective title Grindhouse, to recreate the experience of viewing exploitation film double features in a “grindhouse” theater. The films were released separately outside the United States and on DVD, with Death Proof going on sale in the U.S. on September 18, 2007. The film was in the main competition for the Palme d’Or at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.
About the Production
The unprecedented project from the longtime collaborators (From Dusk Till Dawn, Four Rooms, Sin City) presents two original, complete films as a double feature. Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof is a white knuckle ride behind the wheel of a psycho serial killer’s roving, revving, racing death machine.
Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror is a heart-pounding trip to a town ravaged by a mysterious plague. Inspired by the unique distribution of independent horror classics of the sixties and seventies, these two shockingly bold features are presented together on a drive-in style double bill, replete with fake trailers, missing reels and plenty of exploitative mayhem.
The impetus for Grindhouse began during a time before the multiplex and state-of-the-art home theaters ruled the movie-going experience. The origins of the term “Grindhouse” are fuzzy: some cite the types of films shown (as in “Bump-and-Grind”) in run down former movie palaces; others point to a method of presentation — movies were “grinded out” in ancient projectors one after another.
Frequently, the movies were grouped by exploitation subgenre. Splatter, slasher, sexploitation, blaxploitation, cannibal and mondo movies would be grouped together and shown with graphic trailers. This was movie exhibition in its alternative heyday, simultaneously run-down and vividly alive.
“They were old houses that that were more dilapidated than existed for the people in the big city neighborhoods, or they were all-night theaters that would play three or four movies,” Tarantino explains. “It would be a place for the bums to go and sleep. If you’re hiding out from the law you’d go there for the night. Then, at six in the morning they wake you up and send you out, and you’d walk around for ninety minutes and come right back in again.”
But exploitation movies weren’t just for urbanites: “Drive-ins had the same shows, but were a whole different setting,” Tarantino says. “Grindhouse theaters were in more urban areas. Dallas would have grindhouses, and Houston would have grindhouses, but when you get into the outer regions of Texas, it’s more about drive-ins.”
Theaters were booked independently. Film titles were changed from market to market and were promoted locally (especially in the case of the rural drive-ins). One print would travel from an old movie palace to a drive-in. “It wasn’t like the way movies are now, where a movie opens up on three thousand theaters playing everywhere at once,”
Tarantino explains. “Exploitation companies would make maybe twenty prints for a big release. That was a huge release, actually. You would take those twenty prints to Houston, or Los Angeles. You’d just schlep them around the country, one place at a time. And they usually only played for a week. The grindhouses could get those movies that week they opened. They’d be backed by newspaper support, and be backed by television — local channel support.”
“If you were lucky enough to get an exploitation movie at the beginning of its run, the prints could be OK. But after it played at the El Paso Drive-In Theater, God knows what condition it might be in. It depends on what part of the daisy chain you lived in as far as how good the prints were going to be by the time you got them,” Tarantino says.
Continue Reading and View the Theatrical Trailer
Death Proof (Grindhouse) (2007)
Directed by: Quentin Tarantino
Starring: Kurt Russell, Zoë Bell, Rosario Dawson, Vanessa Ferlito, Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Tracie Thoms, Rose McGowan, Jordan Ladd, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Marcy Harriell, Monica Staggs
Screenplay by: Quentin Tarantino
Production Design by: Steve Joyner
Cinematography by: Quentin Tarantino
Film Editing by: Sally Menke
Costume Design by: Nina Proctor
Set Decoration by: Jeanette Scott
Art Direction by: Caylah Eddleblute
Distributed by: Dimension Films
Release Date: April 6, 2007
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