Death Proof

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Movie
German title Death Proof
Original title Grindhouse: Death Proof
Deathproof-logo2.svg
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2007
length 109 minutes
Age rating FSK 16 (long version); FSK 18 (Grindhouse short version)
JMK 16
Rod
Director Quentin Tarantino
script Quentin Tarantino
production Elizabeth Avellan
Robert Rodriguez
Erica Steinberg
Quentin Tarantino
camera Quentin Tarantino
cut Sally Menke
occupation

Death Proof - Grindhouse (AKA Grindhouse: Death Proof ) is an action - thriller from 2007 by Quentin Tarantino , who as a tribute to the B-movie - and exploitation film is intended genre of the 70s. The film is part of the double feature Grindhouse , whose counterpart is Robert Rodriguez ' Planet Terror .

action

Stuntman Mike drives around Texas in his “surefire” stunt car and kills his victims with it. In the first part of the film he drives a 1970 Chevrolet Nova and has a group of girls in Austin in his sights, consisting of Jungle Julia, Shanna and Arlene (also called Butterfly).

After an introduction to the life of the three girls, they drive to a Mexico bar run by Warren and wait for their friends there. The whole time they are watched and overheard by the stuntman Mike, who is sitting at the counter. In addition, stuntman Mike gets to know Pam, who is also sitting at the counter. This has been moved and asks for a lift. Stuntman Mike offers to take her home with him.

Both parties encounter each other more closely when stuntman Mike takes up an offer announced by radio presenter Jungle Julia in her show: Julia had announced that the first man to recite a certain quote from a poem to her friend Arlene that evening will ask Arlene to do a lap dance can. However, the women claim that someone else has already preceded and refuse to do the lap dance. When Mike announced that he would enter Arlene in his notebook under the category “cowardly piece”, she agreed.

After this scene, the drunk and stoned women's society, now with friend Lanna Frank at the wheel, leaves the bar and wants to continue to Shanna's father's holiday home. When Pam stuntman views Mike's strange car with skepticism, Mike assures her that the car is dead safe . In fact, Pam can only sit in a temporary passenger seat without a seat belt, which is also shielded from the driver by a pane of acrylic glass . So she is helpless at stuntman Mike's fatal driving maneuvers and ultimately falls victim to them.

Stuntman Mike then follows the women's group. After he has overtaken their car and can no longer be seen, he turns around, switches off the lights of his car and drives towards them in the wrong lane. Shortly before the collision, he switched the lights on again, and his reinforced stunt car shredded their car on impact. All four inmates are killed.

After the alleged accident, stuntman Mike is in the hospital, only with a broken nose and collarbone. The investigating ranger, Earl McGraw, assumes that he will act deliberately, but he is aware that he cannot prove this.

This is followed by the second part of the film: 14 months later, Mike is now in Lebanon (Tennessee) and drives a 1969 Dodge Charger . He meets the women's group around Abernathy, Lee, Kim and Zoë. They work in the film business, Kim and Zoë are stunt women.

Both parties meet at the beginning at a gas station. Later, stuntman Mike overhears the group in a café and learns that Zoë wants to test drive a car that is for sale in town. This is a white 1970 Dodge Challenger , exactly the type of vehicle as it is known from the movie Vanishing Point San Francisco . The women go to Jasper, the supplier of the car, to persuade him to take a test drive. Actually, only the two stunt women wanted to do the test drive alone, but when Abernathy finds out, she absolutely wants to go with them and promises that she can persuade the owner that the three of them could drive away in the car without him. Abernathy actually manages to persuade Jasper to do so, letting him believe that actress Lee, dressed in a cheerleading costume for filming , would make pornographic films. The group leaves Lee, who briefly nodded off on a chair, to Jasper as a "pledge". During the test drive they are spotted by stuntman Mike while Zoë plays "ship mast", i. H. it lies on the bonnet when the vehicle is at full speed and only holds onto two belts attached to the doors. Stuntman Mike starts ramming the girls with his car and pushing them off the street. However, when he gets out to celebrate his supposed triumph with a malicious laugh, he is shot by Kim. Mike escapes, and the women decide to take revenge and go into pursuit. The tide has turned and the hunter is now the hunted: In a breakneck chase, Mike is finally caught by the women. They first knock him unconscious with their fists. After the final scene and the beginning of the credits you can see Abernathy killing Mike, who is lying on the ground, with a kick in the face.

background

  • The car is described as death-proof because it was developed and secured in such a way that the driver in it (according to stuntman Mike) cannot die. In the German version, the title was supplemented with death-safe , which in German does not mean “safe from death”, but rather stands for “without the slightest doubt” or for a fact that occurs “completely reliably” and safely.
  • The name Grindhouse of the double feature can be traced back to the so-called, often run-down US cinemas, which in many cases were open around the clock and mainly played cheaply produced entertainment films. There were no cinemas of this type in Germany, but train station cinemas would come closest to this classification. The preferred entertainment genre shown in Grindhouse cinemas was called exploitation film . These included about Kung Fu - horror - Giallo - and Redneckfilme and spaghetti westerns and films of Blaxploitation -, sexploitation and chase genre - ". All these laughable genres, as they appeared in the 1970s" According to Rodriguez were in these productions the posters usually better than the film.
  • For the typical appearance of poorly treated film copies from the 1970s, the film was given an artificially aged look, for example with scratches, streaks and black threads; To create these effects, the film negative was scratched, cut and glued (you can often see glue traces in the film image). The incorrect compilation with jumps in the film and repetitive segments was also imitated. In the Grindhouse short version, a black image with the text reel is missing ( reel is missing ) was faded in and the lap dance in the European version was not shown in order to simulate a supposedly lost segment of the film. At the beginning of the second part of the film, the image also changes to black and white for a ten-minute sequence. The black stripes and scratches in the film image of the second part can still be seen in the film image until the black and white sequence. In the short version of the Grindhouse, the scratches and black stripes reappear towards the end of the restaurant scene in the second part of the film. Before the ship mast scene begins, the film image is interrupted by a pink interruption.
  • The production costs for the double feature ( Planet Terror and Death Proof ) were estimated at an amount between 53 and 67 million US dollars. The Grindhouse Double feature grossed around 25 million US dollars in cinemas in the United States. In Germany there were 574,291 moviegoers for Death Proof .
  • Filming began in September 2006 and ended in December 2006. The film was shot in Austin and Buellton .

Emergence

The idea for Grindhouse came to Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez when Tarantino showed his long-time friend several double features in his house . In 2003, Rodriguez noted that he was also in possession of the same movie poster as Tarantino's. The poster advertised the 1957 films Dragstrip Girl and Rock All Night . Rodriguez then asked, “I've always wanted to do a double feature. Hey, why don't you direct one and I'll do the other? ”Tarantino replied,“ And we have to call it Grindhouse. ”

development

Quentin Tarantino at the Grindhouse premiere in Austin, Texas
Author-filmmaker Quentin Tarantino wrote the script , directed , was a cameraman , produced the film and played a small role.

Tarantino started developing his film because of his fascination with how stuntmen make their cars death proof. You could drive into a wall at almost 100 km / h and still not suffer any damage. This fact inspired Tarantino to make a slasher film in which a stuntman ambushes young women in order to later pursue and kill them in his "surefire" car. “I realized that I couldn't make a slasher- only film because, with the exception of women's prison films, no other genre is so inflexible, and if you don't do it, you're not really doing it right. That's atypical, so I understood: Let me use the structure of a slasher film and just make it into what I usually do. My portrayal is fucked up and smashed, but it looks like it uses the structure of a slasher film. "

Tarantino saw it as a good experience to "cut the film to the bone and still not neglect a plot", but he still sees it as his own work and advocates single release in Europe because Death Proof is what he is for wrote a script and what he sees as his movie. This is also reflected in the distribution of work: the only thing Rodriguez has contributed to Death Proof is the title.

The film was made without computer-generated effects. The reason given by Tarantino is that he does not think it makes sense to create car chases on the computer and that he does not understand how something like this should convince. He goes on to say that, with the exception of Terminator 2 and Final Destination 2, from his point of view, there hasn't been a good car chase since he started making films in 1992.

Vanessa Ferlito plays "Arlene"
Zoë Bell plays "Zoë"

Trivia

  • Tarantino shot his part on film , Rodriguez uses a Sony HDCAM .
  • At the beginning of the film, Quentin Tarantino's Thunder Bolt can be seen for a split second before the actual title . This probably alludes to the common practice in Grindhouse films of subsequently changing the title of a film due to bad reviews.
  • In one scene, Arlene holds a mug with the logo of the Acuna Boys , a fictional Tex-Mex restaurant that is advertised in the grindhouse version between the two films.
  • During the head-on collision in the first half of the film, the Wilhelmsschrei used in many classics can be heard.
  • As for the second part of the film will ring the phone, sounds Twisted Nerve by Bernard Herrmann , the Tarantino film Kill Bill was whistled by Elle Driver.
  • As the jukebox goes through the various music tracks, one can read the title Misirlou , the main theme of Pulp Fiction .
  • The poem used in the film is Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (German title: Halt am Walde im Abendschnee) from 1922 by Robert Frost . The lines of poetry were already used in the agent film Telefon from 1977 and served to activate Russian sleepers.
  • In the first part of the film, Big Kahuna Burger is mentioned in a dialogue in the bar , the name of a fictional fast-food restaurant that appears in almost all Tarantino films.
  • During the final chase, stuntman Mike speeds through a roadside sign. The sign advertises the films Scary Movie 4 and Wolf Creek , two films also produced by Dimension .
  • It starts with an ad on the roadside for Alamo Drafthouse , a movie theater in Austin, Texas that Entertainment Weekly named the best movie theater in the US in 2005 and which was known for showing exploitation films. Tarantino also staged his own film festivals in this cinema.
  • Stuntman Mike has a brother named Stuntman Bob. This is a tribute to Twin Peaks , a television series from the 1990s. Bob and Mike are the demons that terrorize Twin Peaks. However, there is Bob the bad guy.
  • When Abernathy buys Allure magazine at a gas station because it contains photos of Lee, you can see a small display next to her on the till with a TV magazine that advertises Tarantino's CSI episodes (season 5, episodes 24 and 25).
  • On the rear of the yellow Mustang at the gas station you can see the words "Lil 'Pussy Wagon", which refers to the name of the car from Kill Bill Vol. 1 (Pussy Wagon).
  • During the lap dance scene, the Crazy Babysitter Twins from Planet Terror dance in the background .
  • In the hospital where Mike was admitted after the accident for which he was responsible, Dr. Dakota Block from Planet Terror .
  • The scene in the "old-fashioned diner" is reminiscent of the breakfast scene from Reservoir Dogs with Tarantino's famous Madonna speech .
  • As in From Dusk Till Dawn , Kill Bill - Volume 1 and Kill Bill - Volume 2 , the characters of the ranger Earl McGraw and his son Edgar McGraw, known as "son no. 1", appear.
  • Mike's Chevy Nova bears the registration number "JJZ 109". Frank Bullitt's Mustang bears the same mark in the movie Bullitt .
  • Lee's set romance Bruce "The Rock" Del Castillo is a real person and has worked as a griper on several Tarantino films.
  • The yellow Ford Mustang has the license plate "Brand X", the name of a British jazz-rock group that played with Phil Collins, Brian Eno and Bill Brufford, among others.

publication

It was released in theaters in the USA on April 6, 2007, in Germany on July 19, 2007. The film was released on DVD in the USA on September 18, 2007, and in Germany on January 7, 2008 Published June 2008 on the now discontinued HD DVD format. This made the film the last to be released by Senator Film on HD-DVD in Germany , after the distributor only committed itself to publication on Blu-ray Disc. The reason for this was that the US distributor ( The Weinstein Company ) only used HD-DVD at that time. On December 15, 2008, the film was also released on Blu-ray in Germany.

While both films were released as a double feature in the US, they were released separately internationally. Tarantino referred to the failure in America as a reason, where most “did not understand this double feature idea”, but also said that it would have made little sense to broadcast it in Germany as a double feature, since it was only in the USA, England and Japan would have a connection to the grindhouse cinemas. In contrast, in Germany these never existed. As a stand-alone film, Death Proof has a running time of 114 minutes in the European version. As a double feature (together with Planet Terror ) in the USA, the Death Proof segment had a running time of 90 minutes, with trailers for fictional films such as Werewolf Women of the SS being shown between the main films .

synchronization

The German dubbing work took place at Hermes Synchron . Klaus Bickert wrote the dialogue book, Bianca Krahl directed the dialogue.

role actor Voice actor
Stuntman Mike Kurt Russell Manfred Lehmann
Abernathy Rosario Dawson Claudia Urbschat-Mingues
Arlene (Butterfly) Vanessa Ferlito Natascha Geisler
Shanna Jordan Ladd Dorette Hugo
Jungle Julia Sydney Tamiia Poitier Claudia Lössl
Warren Quentin Tarantino Mario Irrek
Pam Rose McGowan Melanie Hinze
Kim Tracie Thoms Anke Reitzenstein
lee Mary Elizabeth Winstead Dascha Lehmann
Zoë Zoë Bell Sandra Schwittau
Nate Omar Doom Julien Haggège
Dov Eli Roth Tobias Kluckert
Dr. Dakota McGraw Block Marley Shelton Ranja Bonalana
Ranger Earl McGraw Michael Parks Hans-Werner Bussinger

Cars in the movie

Quentin Tarantino is considered a car fanatic. Many of the muscle cars shown come from well-known films: Stuntman Mike drives a tuned and modified 1970 Chevrolet Nova and a 1969 Dodge Charger , known from the films Bullitt from 1968 and Kesse Mary - Mad Larry from 1974. Kurt Russell's license plate is that too of Steve McQueen's car from Bullitt. Both vehicles appear in the film to be painted black matt. However, the Nova is actually gray. The night shots and the rain make it look much darker in the film. The women drive a yellow 1973 Ford Mustang Mach 1 from the film Die Blechpiraten from 1974, as well as a white 1970 Dodge Challenger , known from Vanishing Point San Francisco from 1971 , on a test drive . At the end of the film there is a competition between the two flagships of Dodge from 1970. Stuntman Mike's Chevy Nova is painted on the hood with a white skull and two crossed lightning bolts, similar to the Jolly Roger . In addition, the chrome-plated rubber duck Rubber Duck is mounted on the bonnet of both cars , a homage to the 1978 film Convoy .

Reviews

“In 'Death Proof', his latest work, Tarantino now tries to penetrate the secret world of girl cliques. Of course, it is primarily about the fast-paced, sexually connoted chase between two powerful muscle cars, and of course the whole film - as always with Tarantino - is a flea market for film critics, who can locate the entire canon of American exploitation cinema in the numerous quotes scattered around - from the trucker ballad ' Convoy ' to Russ Meyer's 'Megavixens'. [...] But in truth, it's not about the action, not about the mercilessly displayed violence. In truth, Tarantino wants to know what young women are talking about when they are among themselves, wants to participate in this clandestine talk that men have to stay outside of. "

- Andreas Borcholte - The mirror

“A closer look at the film, which is now almost too long, reveals a real misunderstanding: The exploitation cinema, which he is emulating, by no means wanted to be hip and cool in the sense that Tarantino claims it is. On the contrary, the directors of the B-Movies were characterized by the fact that they completely lacked the vanity for which Tarantino is the epitome. […] Death Proof has the characteristics of a typical Tarantino film, and yet something is different in an almost eerily different way. There are the explicit scenes of violence, the lovingly detailed staging of old-fashioned action and all sorts of allusions to films and characters, whose particular charm lies in their complacency. [...] The Tarantino brand includes dialogues bursting with quick-wittedness, which always create a nice contrast to the primitiveness of the plot. In Death Proof these dialogues take up even more space than usual. [...] And while the brisk and of course totally tough girls are chatting and chatting, the unusual, the different, what you least expect in a Tarantino film happens: It's getting boring. "

- Barbara Schweizerhof - Friday

“People are not allowed to get in here because sex is reserved for cars. The final car race is fast and wild and, as desired, looks like it was filmed in the deepest seventies - but it's still not a car race in the classic sense. Two bodies here tend to, well, do anal intercourse. What the confident woman behind the wheel literally roars out into the world. The pent-up lust that has long since spread to the audience, recognizable to both sexes - here it is finally allowed to discharge with deadly consequence. You leave the cinema amazed, exhausted, strangely euphoric. And when the critics ask why they feel so empty and pubescent and dirty afterwards, and whether that was really necessary again, then the answer is simply this: This is how you feel after sex. "

“Based on the 1970s Russ Meyer & Co films, the incredibly beautiful girls talk about unbelievable bullshit. They're cute, and it's about girls' things like: who has weed, who has alcohol, which boy did what to which girl? The boys are all idiots. Stupid monkeys, and one of them - Kurt Russell - is evil. The first batch of girls dies at his hand in five splatter minutes after the endless chatter. Second half of the film - again girls, again incredibly beautiful, this time not stoned, but with a hangover. The bad guy starts killing again, but the girls are tough, they fight back and - well, then comes the end. [...] If the women at Russ Meyer only had boobs, now they at least have pistols and martial arts. Every man can look at it calmly, of course, there is lap dancing, and women's legs fly through the air without a woman on them, but in the end the girls always win. It's completely pc and can be just fun. Like this movie. If only it were 60 minutes. Or you can really smoke yourself beforehand. "

Nerds can enjoy the multitude of allusions, quotations and reminiscences that Tarantino puts in front of them with every setting. […] In addition, Tarantino constantly refers to his own oeuvre . […] Seen in this way, 'Death Proof' is pure self-reference, a pleasure for collectors and narcissists who want to see their knowledge queried and confirmed. If that were all, 'Death Proof' would be boring, postmodern cinema. [..] But despite all self-reference and all nostalgia, there is an outside. Tarantino not only cites exploitation cinema, he continues it. And this is where it starts to get really exciting. Because exploitation was the fun for young men who wanted to see fast cars, hot women, bare skin, exposed flesh, shootings and fights. [...] What Tarantino now achieves in 'Death Proof' is that he devotes himself to this side of the exploitation - that of the strong, self-sufficient women who neither fear fast cars nor a fist fight and look damn good in doing so sets the scene. More than that, he lets her triumph over the other, the sadistic and misogyne side of exploitation as embodied in 'Death Proof' by stuntman Mike. "

- Cristina Nord - The daily newspaper

“Rude declaration of love for the exploitation films of the 1970s, which try to imitate the dirty look of the 1970s and at the same time to ennoble it, but in the process loses its force and effect. In spite of the nostalgic-sentimental core, it is really not a squeamish film. "

Rodriguez and Tarantino after receiving their Scream Awards in three categories
The set of the film in Austin, Texas on August 25, 2006
Death Proof - Death Proof logo in the typical aged look

Awards (selection)

  • 2007 - Golden Palm : Nomination for Best Film
  • 2007 - Scream Award for:
    • Best director
    • Best script
    • Most memorable mutilation (memorable mutilation)
  • 2008 - Empire Award : Nominated for Best Horror Film

Soundtrack

Quentin Tarantino's soundtrack sticks to well-known musicians, not like Robert Rodriguez's album, which had many new tracks recorded or re-recorded. In the first half of the film, which takes place in the bar, all the music comes from Tarantino's private jukebox , which he calls "AMi". The music in the box also comes from his private 7 " collection.

title

  1. "The Last Race" - Jack Nitzsche
  2. "Baby, It's You" - Smith
  3. "Paranoia Prima" - Ennio Morricone
  4. "Planning & Scheming" - Eli Roth & Michael Bacall (dialogue)
  5. "Jeepster" - T. Rex
  6. "Stuntman Mike" - Rose McGowan & Kurt Russell (dialogue)
  7. "Staggolee" - Pacific Gas & Electric
  8. "The Love You Save (May Be Your Own)" - Joe Tex
  9. "Good Love, Bad Love" - Eddie Floyd
  10. "Down In Mexico" - The Coasters
  11. "Hold Tight" - Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich
  12. "Sally and Jack (From the Motion Picture Blow Out )" - Pino Donaggio
  13. "It's So Easy" - Willy DeVille
  14. "Whatever-However" - Tracie Thoms & Zoë Bell (dialogue)
  15. "Riot In Thunder Alley" - Eddie Beram
  16. “Chick Habit” - April March

To the music titles

Baby It's You - Smith : The band Smith released the song, which originally came from the Shirelles , on their debut album A Group Called Smith in 1969 . The title has already been covered by the Beatles on their album Please Please Me . The Smith version ranked number five on the Billboard Hot 100 . An a cappella version of Baby It's You was sung by Mary Elizabeth Winstead and can be heard on the second disc of the North American Special Edition by Grindhouse.

Jeepster - T. Rex : The song released in 1971 by the British glam rockers T. Rex comes from their second album Electric Warrior . The title has already been covered nine times by notable artists, including The Polecats , Altered Images , Doogie White and Showaddywaddy .

Staggolee - Pacific Gas & Electric : The blues and folk song is about a crime that happened in St. Louis , Missouri in 1895 . That Christmas Eve, taxi driver Lee Shelton, who died of tuberculosis in a prison in 1912 , killed William Lyons. The deed was immortalized by this blues, folk song. Dozens of versions of the title exist, one of which is by the band Pacific Gas & Electric .

Down In Mexico - The Coasters : The R&B vocal group The Coasters released the song Down In Mexico in 1956 on their debut single, which reached a top 10 position in the R&B charts. The version that can be heard in the film during the lap dance scene, however, is a new recording of the 1973 song with a different cast. The film version can only be found on various best-of compilations.

Chick Habit - April March : Originally the song is called Laisse Tomber Les Filles and comes from the composer Serge Gainsbourg and the singer France Gall . 31 years after its 1964 release, the song was translated from French to English under the title Chick Habit . Both versions, the English and the French, can be heard in the credits of Grindhouse. The English version is played in the DVD menu.

Web links

Commons : Grindhouse  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Age rating for Death Proof . Youth Media Commission .
  2. http://www.duden.de/suchen/dudenonline/todicher
  3. http://www.taz.de/!1999/
  4. http://www.freitag.de/autoren/der-freitag/jackie-down
  5. Online Exclusive: Horror Film Directors Dish About 'Grindhouse' Trailers
  6. ^ House Party ( Memento of December 11, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), April 4, 2007
  7. http://www.taz.de/!1999/
  8. Grindhouse Budget according to imdb
  9. Grindhouse Budget according to boxofficemojo
  10. ^ Grindhouse box office results
  11. Death Proof movie attendance figures
  12. Filming locations for Death Proof
  13. Quentin Tarantino: I'm proud of my flop from April 27, 2007 (English)
  14. Bloodbath and Beyond, March 27, 2007 (English)
  15. Bits & Pieces: Interview (Quentin Tarantino) ( Memento of the original from February 6, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.deathproof.senator.de
  16. Online Exclusive: Horror Film Directors Dish About 'Grindhouse' Trailers
  17. http://www.freitag.de/autoren/der-freitag/jackie-down
  18. http://www.taz.de/!2000/
  19. Andreas Borcholte: Quentin Tarantino's "Death Proof": Prelude with a V-8 engine. In: Spiegel Online . July 18, 2007, accessed June 9, 2018 .
  20. Senator also suggests himself on the Blu-ray page message from January 16, 2008
  21. Interview with Quentin Tarantino: The Aspirin Conversation - Part 1 Zeit Online 31/2007
  22. http://www.taz.de/!1999/
  23. German synchronous index: German synchronous index | Movies | Death Proof. Retrieved March 27, 2018 .
  24. ^ Tarantino's "Death Proof": Hollywood's greatest car fanatic
  25. http://www.freitag.de/autoren/der-freitag/jackie-down
  26. Interview with Quentin Tarantino: The Aspirin Conversation - Part 2 Zeit Online 31/2007
  27. ^ Film review foreplay with V-8 engine from July 18, 2007
  28. Jackie Down film review from July 20, 2007
  29. ^ Film review The Last Lapdance from July 18, 2007
  30. Film review Who has weed? dated July 27, 2007
  31. ^ Film review The double fun of July 18, 2007
  32. Death Proof. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  33. Interview with Quentin Tarantino: The Aspirin Conversation - Part 4 Zeit Online 31/2007