Director Quentin Tarantino delivers an adrenaline shot to the heart with Death Proof, a peddle to the metal white knuckle ride behind the wheel of a psycho serial killer’s roving, revving, racing death machine. Set for double disc DVD release on 14 January 2008, with a double sided sleeve offering a choice between sexy Arlene red lightening or Stuntman Mike blue, Death Proof features exhilarating high-speed action, jaw-dropping stunts, and some of the most quotable lines since Pulp Fiction. Kurt Russell (Escape from New York, The Thing, Silkwood) stars as a sociopathic stuntman whose taste for stalking sexy young ladies gets him into big trouble when he tangles with the wrong gang of badass babes. Their confrontation escalates to a hair-raising, 18-minute automotive duel with one of the girls strapped to the hood of a thundering Dodge Challenger that will have you on the edge of your seat mile after mile.Demonstrating to perfection Tarantino’s passion for exploitation B-movies, Death Proof was inspired by the unique distribution of horror classics of the sixties and seventies, complete with shockingly bold features replete with missing reels and plenty of exploitative mayhem. As Tarantino says, “That shit was raw. The shit was off the hook. Sexuality was wild. You couldn’t even believe some of the sexuality and brutality that they got away with in these movies, and gore.”Referencing some classic chase movies - from H.B. Halicki’s self-financed Gone in 60 Seconds, which contained a non-stop, forty minute car chase, to Vanishing Point, the nihilistic chase flick, to Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, a Peter Fonda vehicle – Tarantino once again mixes genres to perfection, fusing the chase and slasher flicks and coming up with something truly original. Death Proof is also Tarantino’s most linear film: Events are presented chronologically and breaks in time are punctuated with title cards. Though the action is sequential, the contents of this unfamiliar structure are no less intriguing than that of any of his previous films. Kurt Russell turns in a superb virtuoso performance in Death Proof as the truly evil, devious, deranged lunatic Stuntman Mike – a psychotic serial killer and Hollywood stunt double who uses his ‘death proof’ Chevy to fulfil his murderous lust. Joining Russell as Tarantino’s girls are Rosario Dawson (Sin City, Rent, 25th Hour), Rose McGowan (Planet Terror, The Black Dahlia, TV’s Charmed) and Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Die Hard 4.0, Factory Girl). In addition, real-life stuntwoman Zoë Bell (Uma Thurman’s body double in Kill Bill), playing herself to wonderful effect, proves to be more than a match for Stuntman Mike, ensuring the film’s climax is an exhilarating 100% stunt action triumph - and all done without any use of CGI effects!So if you want to experience the thrill of the ride that is Death Proof and are prepared to have your senses mashed to pulp in the process, then you’re in for a sadistic treat when the DVD hits the streets.
“No seatbelt, no airbag, no nuthin’, this is pure Tarantino.” Empire “Snappy, naturalistic, honest and sexy.” Total Film Death Proof