Douglas Rasmussen
Originally released as part of a double feature with Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror, Death Proof (2007) is a callback to a particular type of cinema that was popular in the post-studio era, namely that of grindhouse films. Grindhouse originated in the 1940s and 1950s but gained popularity in the 1960s and 1970s when theaters in urban areas would show cheaply produced genre films for a single admission price. The theaters were usually dilapidated buildings located in economically depressed areas of the city. As David Church writes in his article discussing the history of grindhouse cinema, “Not only were grindhouses coded as masculine spaces, but theaters themselves were located in the inner city and often in close proximity to porn-exclusive cinemas” (15). Grindhouse films, then, appealed to a specific demographic who were comfortable in places considered to be deviant. While these physical spaces were replaced by suburban multiplexes in the 1980s, the underground popularity of grindhouse films never went away completely.
For his half of the recreation of the grindhouse double bill, Quentin Tarantino chose to do an update on the slasher genre. Typically, a slasher film is premised on a supernatural, blade-wielding villain who stalks scantily clad women engaging in behavior considered deviant, like smoking pot. But in Tarantino’s reimagining, two separate groups are targeted by the killer. The first group of women—Tarantino spends forty minutes (a little over fifty minutes in the extended Blu-ray edition) developing these women before having Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) hunt them down and kill them with his car—are replaced halfway through the film with a “fourteen months later” segue and an entirely new group of women (Death Proof 56:46). Caroline Bem elaborates on this, observing, “Structurally, the move of restarting the film’s narrative with a new ‘replacement group’ of women is a central way in which Death Proof adopts a mirrored or diptych-like form. At the same time, nonnegligible differences exist between the women of both groups. Thus, the first group largely comprises of white women in their early twenties, while the second group is more diverse in terms of age and race” (13). In Bem’s estimation, the first group of women suggests an identifiable archetype of the slasher victim, while the second group of women reflects the genre’s subversion.
Given this tension, Stuntman Mike reads as a hypermasculine, satirical reimagining of the slasher villain. Stuntman Mike’s entrance into the film is as an obviously antiquated figure, with his mullet hairstyle and grey satin jacket with Icy Hot sponsorship logos that he has likely been wearing for at least two decades. Rather than being presented as a stoic, eerie, silent, and horrific supernatural force, as is the case with most slasher villains, the viewer is introduced to a talkative man in outdated clothing, noisily munching down a nacho platter (Death Proof 22:25). Unlike the prototypical slasher villain who is an imposing and fearsome force, Stuntman Mike is ridiculed by the bar’s patrons and, most notably, by his first victims. In this way, Stuntman Mike embodies toxic masculinity in its most deceptive form, through the veil of an affable and friendly old man at a bar.
Stuntman Mike is a man clearly out of his time, trying to reclaim his glory through terrorizing women. This is evident when he gives barfly Pam (Rose McGowan) a ride home (25:23). When Pam questions Stuntman Mike about his rather bizarre choice of a vehicle, which is a muscle car with roll cages and a skull with lightning bolts painted on the hood, he responds with a diatribe about the history of stunts in old school action films and their superiority to modern computer-generated effects: “back in the all or nothing days, the Vanishing Point days, the Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry days, the white line fever days, real cars smashed into real cars with real dumb people driving them (Death Proof 42:43). His references to films of the past indicate an unhealthy commitment to doing things the old way, as does his obsession with chasing the excitement of his youth, an adrenaline rush that eludes a man his age. To get the rush he craves, Stuntman Mike recreates earlier era stunt crashes as a means of killing the women he stalks from the safety of his “death proof” car.
An industry stalwart, traditional stunts no longer thrill him. Stuntman Mike uses vulnerable women as a proxy, feeding off their fear to get excited. For him, it is the fear and violent domination of women that he desires. Unlike traditional slasher villains who are silent and imposing forces of supernatural evil who use bladed weapons to enact their violence, Stuntman Mike initially appears rather harmless and congenial, using his car—that most garish symbol of masculinity—as his method of killing. As is evident with the jacket and painting of a skull with lightning bolts on the hood of his car, Stuntman Mike is still clinging to the vestiges of a 1970s hypermasculinity. Stuntman Mike is not only visually out of touch with the fashions of the contemporary world; he is out of touch with the morals and ethics of contemporary society. This antiquated mentality becomes an important impediment as it results in Stuntman Mike’s death when he finally confronts a group of women who belong to a new, modern era.
After Stuntman Mike gruesomely murders the first group of women by crashing into their car, the movie switches to a replacement group of women (Death Proof 49:52-51:43). This transition, which unifies the two different narratives, begins with Stuntman Mike taking pictures of the women as if he is ‘auditioning’ them for the role of his next victim (Death Proof 1:05:33-1:06:31). In this scenario, the Hollywood of old, most notably the ‘casting couch,’ as it were, is shifted to an audition for potential deaths rather than sexual favors. The outdated masculinity still persists, but because Stuntman Mike has replaced his sexual urges with murderous urges, the end result is different. When Stuntman Mike does begin his terrorization of these women he has auditioned, they are on the highway with Zoë Bell (credited as playing herself, albeit in a highly stylized manner) engaging in a dangerous game that has her on the hood of a 1970 white Dodge Charger and holding on with only two belts (Death Proof 1:31:11-1:33:19). This group of women- two stuntwomen and a make-up artist- are engaging in dangerous acts as a means of seeking an adrenaline rush not entirely dissimilar to Stuntman Mike’s thrill-seeking, although the women here put themselves at risk while Stuntman Mike does not.
Having Stuntman Mike ‘audition’ women in preparation for his attack connects his terrorization through a highly mediated lens. Just prior to Stuntman Mike’s photographing the final group of women that are to be his targets and the film switches back to the moviegoers’ perspective, the film remains in black and white (Death Proof 56:12-1:02:36). The effect echoes auditioning footage of the 1960s, which remained in black and white years after the development and proliferation of technicolor in film. Stuntman Mike is not only viewing women through the artificial lens of media; it is an outdated form of media centered on an outdated form of masculinity that is no longer relevant.
This scene of photographing the final group of women also hinges the two narratives. In this way, Death Proof seems to be creating a boundary between two distinct eras in horror film, with the first group of women representing 1970s exploitation cinema and the final group of women representing the cultural shift in the 1980s and 1990s. More than any other genre, even more than any other type of horror subgenre, the slasher film has been singled out for its treatment and exploitation of women that conflates sexuality with violence. Ashley Wellman, Michele Meitl, and Patrick Kincade argue that slasher films “contribute to the emphasis on traditional Western expectations for men, known as toxic masculinity, reinforcing gender norms” (662). But how those gender norms play out is dependent upon era. As Barry Sapolsky, Fred Molitor, and Sarah Luque point out in their study of 1980s and 1990s slasher films, “Contrary to popular belief, females were not singled out in slasher films” (29). In fact, their research, which consisted of a content analysis of a number of slasher films, found no significant difference in the number of male victims in a slasher film compared to female victims (29). They also found that men suffer twice as many violent acts as women (35). Read in this way, Death Proof seems to be making a clear division between the brutal violence of 1970s exploitation cinema, which is the reality Stuntman Mike wants to recreate (even if it does not hold up in reality, or perhaps because it does not hold up to reality) and the slasher film of the 1980s and 1990s, which is the world the final group of women occupies. Stuntman Mike’s auditioning, then, reflects his unwillingness to progress to the contemporary world, still preferring to interpret reality according to the old school cinema he waxes on nostalgically about to his first victim, Pam. The second half of Death Proof embodies the cultural shift Sapolsky et al. discuss in their article by positioning Stuntman Mike as the film’s final victim.
The showdown with the final group of women is also where the film inverts the gender dynamics of the first half of the film. In this later section, one of the stuntwomen, Kim (Sydney Tamiia Poitier), uses some distinctly sexualized language when she goes on the offensive against Stuntman Mike, as if she is sexually gratified by violence in a similar manner as him, exclaiming (after a series of innuendo statements), “I’m the horniest motherfucker on the road” (Death Proof 1:42:48)! Aaron J. Anderson writes that the “sexualized dialogue meanwhile simulates the hypersexual car and body dialogue toward the end of Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry” (20). In this, Tarantino is both copying the tropes of older films while imbuing them with different gender dynamics. Tarantino has said that in doing a slasher film, he realized, “I should do it the way I did Reservoir Dogs, which was my weird version of a heist film. So this is my weird version of a slasher film” (Shone 173). Rather than being self-reflexive to the point of being too modern, Tarantino recontextualizes the slasher genre tropes while keeping to the formula, at least for the first half of Death Proof.
The gender inversion continues when they defeat Stuntman Mike and pull him out of the car, and he proceeds to cry and whine in a decidedly stereotypically feminine way that echoes Pam’s pleas from earlier in the film (Death Proof 1:48:30). The final group of women beats Stuntman Mike to a bloody pulp before they kill Stuntman Mike (Death Proof 1:48:34). Tarantino seems to invoke a female empowerment image in the final section of the film, but as Bem questions, “because the film blatantly adopts the conventions of an exploitative genre, can it be described as feminist?” (17). For the majority of the film, Tarantino does adhere fairly closely to the conventions of a slasher film, with only the final group of women seemingly representing a feminist recontextualization of the genre. Tarantino has noted that “slasher films are legitimate” (Nathan 118), so his intention is not an entire subversion of the genre. For the first half of the film Death Proof follows a fairly standard exploitation/slasher film structure, with the details being altered so that instead of a silent and supernatural killer, it is the more congenial Kurt Russell and his car, but the lack of character development, the gore of the killings, the appeal to the male demographic with titillation and violence, are all entrenched exploitation film genre conventions. It is only at the midpoint when the narrative shifts to the final group of women to be stalked by Stuntman Mike that the tone switches to an attempted, if somewhat ambivalent, feminist interpretation of the slasher film. Death Proof is an interesting, if flawed, attempt to re-position the exploitation/slasher film genre, with Kurt Russell providing a layered performance that recontextualizes the gender dynamics of the genre and its centering of toxic masculinity. In particular, the cultural shift of the exploitation cinema of the 1970s that Stuntman Mike so dearly loves is being contrasted against the tropes of the slasher film as it exists in the contemporary era, where there is more potential for an inclusive vision without the regressive politics of these older forms of cinema.
Works Cited
Anderson, Aaron J. “Stuntman Mike, Simulation, and Sadism in Death Proof.” Quentin Tarantino and Philosophy: How to Philosophize with a Pair of Pliers and a Blowtorch, edited by Richard Greene and K. Silem Mohammad, Open Court, 2007, pp. 13-20.
Bem, Caroline. “Cinema | Diptych: Grindhouse | Death Proof.” Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, vol. 58, no. 2, 2019, pp. 1-22.
Church, David. “From Exhibition to Genre: The Case of Grind-House Films.” Cinema Journal, vol.50, no. 4, 2011, pp. 1-25.
Death Proof. Directed by Quentin Tarantino, performances by Kurt Russell, Vanessa Ferlito, Sydney Tamiia Poiter, Zoë Bell, and Rosario Dawson, Troublemaker Studios, 2007.
Kill Bill Volume One. Directed by Quentin Tarantino, performances by Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Lucy Liu, Vivica A. Fox, Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah, A Band Apart, 2003.
Nathan, Ian. Quentin Tarantino: The Iconic Filmmaker and His Work. White Lion Publishing, 2019.
Sapolsky, Barry, Fred Molitor, Sarah Luque. “Sex and Violence in Slasher Films: Re-Examining the Assumptions.” Journalism and Mass Communications Quarterly, vol. 80, no. 1, 2003, pp. 28-38.
Shone, Tom. Quentin Tarantino: A Retrospective. Insight Books, 2019.
Wellman, Ashley, Michele Biscaccio Meitl, Patrick Kincade. “Lady and the Vamp: Roles, Sexualization, and Brutalization of Women in Slasher Films.” Sexuality & Culture, vol. 25, 2021, pp. 660-679.
