On the QT - Part 8

“We had rehearsed this stunt where Stuntman Mike was half in and half out of his car at what was as close to 100mph that we could safely get. It looked awesome. When we went for the actual take, it was going even better than the rehearsals, so I called the camera car on the walkie and asked the camera man if we were getting it. Instead of turning his head 90 degrees to check, he just said yes. We lost it, the camera wasn’t even fucking turned on.

What did I do? I screamed and shouted. We tried again 5 or 6 times but it just wasn’t the same. I walked off set, it was the closest I’ve ever come to a diva fit. That was one of the worst moments of my working life. A shot that would have bumped that car chase out of this world even further and it was lost because someone didn’t do their job for a second.”

This was going to be the least of the problems that Quentin Tarantino would have with his then upcoming “Grindhouse” feature Death Proof.

Conceived as an homage to double feature films of the 70′s, Quentin and mate Robert Rodriguez teamed up to make a film each that would make up such a double feature. The plan was simple enough - make the films as they remember them from their youth. In other words, they’d look as if they’d been found in a condemned film archive and shown in a cinema.

Damaged film, grainy picture and shoddy editing were on the cards, but most of all the theme of the movies had to match what they were after. Quentin opted for a muscle car movie. The car would hold the title role of Death Proof as it’s keeper, Stuntman Mike has modified it to enable him to kill people with his car and escape unharmed himself.

“This car is 100% death proof. The thing is, you really need to be sitting in my seat to get the benefit”

The last words that his first victim of the movie hears (played by Rose McGowan) before her face hits the dashboard, proving Stuntman Mike’s point.

The concept should have worked, when I heard about it through movie mags before it’s release I thought it would.

The plan was to release both Quentin’s Death Proof and Robert’s Planet Terror (His zombie filled half to the grindhouse experience - will be covered later) together and run them back to back in cinemas. This sounded great to Tarantino fans, after all they had just shelled out two movie tickets for a long drawn out revenge film split into two volumes, this time it’d be 2 for 1.

Each would be made in the grindhouse style with gratuitous violence, silly plot lines and endings that just seemed to be plucked out of the air for necessity of needing an ending.

It should have been great. They made real trailers for fake movies that would be shown between each of the features. (Rumour has it that one fake movie trailer Machete is actually being made into a movie by Rodriguez - mega) They made scenes that were never going to be seen. The point being that these would make up a missing reel, something that apparently happened quite often during these movies. We’d of course see them, but we’d have to wait for the DVD, or so some would have thought.

The missing reel from Planet Terror is in actual fact the scene in Death Proof where the police discuss Stuntman Mike’s latest killing spree as he lies in a hospital bed. The sheriff and his daughter the doctor, take lead roles in Planet Terror.

Clever?

Genius I think, but it may have been too much for movie goers. Quentin and Robert wanted to give the world the kind of cinema experiences they had with their fave movies. Their fans just wanted movies. The plan to release them separately was quickly dropped for the European and overseas releases as it had spectacularly flopped in the US. People just didn’t get what they were seeing, or experiencing.

They could try to blame the marketing or the studio, but both had done their jobs. Both directors took it on the chin as a decision they had gotten wrong.

Panicked that they’d lose their investments the studio demanded that both films be released as separate features else where. Tarantino having more of a profile outside the states was given the task of testing the water.

Death Proof was released and to say it didn’t set the world on fire would be fair. Word had spread of it’s let down over the pond and we weren’t to make the same mistake.

Even I, as a fan of the QT waited until the DVD as I was afraid that I wouldn’t get it.

When I did get the double set of the grindhouse series I sat down to Death Proof first. I was more than a little let down.

It’s a confusing thing to think or even type but the pace of the film is quite fast and snappy. It just takes ages to get there. Doesn’t make sense?

Put it this way, we know the story is that Stuntman Mike has a car that he uses to kill people. It’s made quite clear early on in the film that he preys on small groups of attractive girls. We know there has to be a car chase at the end. Why does it take so long to get where we want it to go?

These films weren’t about building character development, they were about action. Silly, loud, gratuitous, pop corn munching action. Quentin spends ages building characters of the first group of girls that fall under the wheels of Death Proof. He takes so long that I actually wanted them to get smushed by Stuntman Mike. Maybe that was the plan all along though.

So after he paints his dash board with the brains of Rose McGowan, he begins to stalk the other three girls. He picked Rose up in a bar he was drinking in while stalking the girls, she looks for a lift home and he offers his services. He uses her as a warm up to the main event.

The main event being a 100mph head on crash that sees one girl lose a leg from the hip down before being crushed anyway. Another girl with Death Proof’s grill as braces and my personal favourite, the girl in the backseat who gets her face literally rubbed out by a spinning tyre.

This is how Stuntman Mike ends up in hospital in the missing reel from Planet Terror.

Cut to 17 months later and old Mike is out of hospital with a new Death Proof and is scouting for more victims.

In a great bout of irony he picks on a group of girls that work in films, just Zoe Bell to play herself. This was for a number of reasons, the main one being that he wouldn’t have to shoot stunt scenes with an actor and then again with a stunt double.

I’m going to skip past the story line for these characters, including the part where they go looking for the car that featured in some of the best car chases in Hollywood history, and jump right to the action.

The car chase that we were promised is, as Quentin said it would be, probably one of the best ever.

From the stunt girls playing around with Zoe on the bonnet of their car with nothing but two belts to hang onto at 100mph, to the first rear shunt from Stuntman Mike. All of the stunts were performed by Zoe for real and the fact that you can see that makes it feel as real as it could. Also she’s on record herself as saying that she did it, who am I to doubt?

She gets thrown around the bonnet and the tension grows as she loses the belts and has nothing to hold onto at all. How she stayed on that car doing those stunts without harnesses on a real road on a real car at a real 100mph, I’ll never know. Stuntman Mike chases them down until both cars spin out of control. He laughs like a psycho and tells them that it was great fun before speeding off.

They decide to go after him and “Kill that motherfucker”. The chaser becomes the chased.

What’s great about it was the continuation of the action, tension and the chase. What’s rubbish about it is that Stuntman Mike’s character turns into that of a snivelling little girl. Actually crying in his car as he’s chased.

It still had me on the edge of my seat and it’s still a great car chase. It’s a real pity that everything else failed around it.

There’s the dialogue, the music, the editing and camera angles that you’d recognise but it just lacked something.

I don’t know what I was looking for from this film, but I came away without it.

Quentin has admitted that maybe it wasn’t the right time to do it or maybe audiences had just moved on from grindhouse forever and there was no pulling them back. Perhaps he’s right.

Anyway, I’ve droned on for a shameful number of words, so I’ll leave this one by saying it should be in your DVD collection, but it has to be part of the grindhouse series. Because it works well in the series, but on it’s own you’d wonder why Quentin would make such a film.

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We’re nearly at the end of this series of reviews, I’ve a couple more planned for films the man himself was involved in that I think are worth a mention.

In the meantime, thanks to Movies.ie and this here Culch place, I’m off to the Irish Premier of Inglorious Basterds tonight in the Savoy.

For anyone not bored by me at this point, I’ll have a review up before tomorrow.

I can’t freaking wait……