Hear Me Out: Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Death Proof’ isn’t as bad as people say
On a recent Friday night, with my plans cancelled at the last minute, I decided that this was probably my cue to stay in as I put the image of pints and the thump of some indistinguishable beat behind me and settled in for a movie night.
I was in one of those moods: nothing I scrolled past felt right, like Goldilocks, if she spent her days writing about movies. I declared a rom-com not scary enough for October, a 1960s Italian drama just too long and dense to start at 9:30pm and a British kitchen sink too depressing, so it would have to be a horror film, but which one? I finally settled on the closest thing Quentin Tarantino has ever made resembling the genre, a slasher homage to 1960s and ‘70s B-movies, complete with an adequate layer of film stock grain shimmying over the top.
I’ve never been a mega Tarantino fan, but I can respect him for his endless dedication to cinema; he devotes every fibre of his being to it, even if some of his movies have been co-opted by those with a surface-level interest in cinema that is just past the mainstream. As far as popular directors go, he’s one of the most subversive, the kind that leads to a poster of Pulp Fiction Blu-tacked on your university room wall to send the message that you’re cool.
So many of us now write Tarantino off as the archetypal ‘film bro’ favourite, and for a while I did, too. When Once Upon A Time in Hollywood came out, in all honesty, I didn’t even try to like it, merely out of protest (I was 18 and had just started studying film: forgive me). But now, several years on and with an extensive knowledge of the auteur, thanks to this job, I’d argue that few filmmakers have as authentic a voice as Tarantino. Even John Waters can vouch for him, once explaining, “Quentin’s the real thing. Are you kidding? And everything he says he believes. Believe me”.
Now, I’m not saying that Tarantino is perfect; he’s far from it, but you can’t fault his love for the medium, something that is plain to see in the genre-bending Death Proof, which I came to thoroughly enjoy. Part-horror, part-carsploitation, part-action, part-revenge (the list goes on), Tarantino’s film, made as part of the double-feature Grindhouse, is one of his most thrilling, putting women in the driver’s seat (well, at least for some of the film) and revelling in pure cinematic thrills.
I was initially hesitant as the image of some feet opened up the movie, only for more feet and a woman filmed from behind, emphasis on her behind, to appear on screen. Then the words ‘Director of Photography Quentin Tarantino’ led me to an “Ohh. That makes sense”, and I knew what I was in for. Despite this obvious centring of a male gaze, with the film soon descending into Kurt Russell’s Stuntman Mike menacingly stalking and killing several young women, the movie switches gears in that final half an hour and justice is served, fast, sticky, and brutal.
You can see why it has polarised many fans, with its switch from the initial girl gang to a different one mid-way through and its long drawn-out scenes of the girls chatting and driving, but no one complains when his male characters are doing that. It’s a great hangout film, undercut by the harsh reminder that male violence is everywhere, ready to infiltrate a fun drive or a trip to a bar. Russell is pure evil, blending flirtation and dominance to an uneasy degree. You can see why certain characters become intrigued by him, yet simultaneously, you know he’s bad news.
When I finished the film, contemplating if maybe I do like movies with car chases after all, I remembered that people always rank Death Proof at the bottom of Tarantino’s oeuvre. But this one, in a way, feels most authentic to the filmmaker’s love for paying homage; it’s as silly as it is scary, and it’s only when a character picks up a mobile phone that you’re reminded that this isn’t some old B-movie from the ‘70s. He successfully achieved his goal when making Death Proof, and it’s time that more people simply appreciated it for what it is.
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