Death Proof Extended and Unrated
January 2009 Reviewed by: Rad Bennett Format: Blu-ray	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

When it comes to DVD and Blu-ray releases, I’m not an across-the-board fan of extended director’s cuts. They can be improvements, as in the case of The Warriors and Dark City, both of which were thoughtfully re-cut and re-ordered, but more often they include a few violent moments that matter little except to the studio that can hawk a new version and get more money from the same fans that bought the theatrical version.

That said, this new cut of Death Proof does make a significant difference in an assessment of the movie and has won me over as a fan. Admittedly, I was already primed. I liked the original movie best of the two presented in the theatrical Grindhouse release, in which directors Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino tried to re-create an evening at a drive-in theater circa 1960s by tying two "B" movies together with faux trailers and real drive-in-theater ads for concessions. Death Proof, then much shorter because, we were told, several reels of film had been "lost," was placed second, coming after Rodriguez’s Planet Terror, a noisy, non-stop-action, science-fiction thriller rip-off that left one gasping for breath. By the time Death Proof started, many in the theater were worn out and not up to seeing another film. This also happened at drive-in theaters showing the original grindhouse double bills. People would just leave or get back to making out or whatever they really came for in the first place. The drive-in was a social place, not an art house.

Death Proof, then, was at a real disadvantage. Tarantino must have realized this because he made a new extended standalone cut for Cannes, "discovering" those lost reels. The result was an uneven but consistently interesting homage movie full of the director’s characteristic energy and respect for movies of another era and a specific genre. The latter would be the biker movie. In a lengthy prologue we meet Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) and see how he sets up a head-on collision with a car full of beautiful babes. The latter all die (horribly to boot), but Mike is free to go on living. After all, he’s a stuntman. In the second part of the movie we flash forward over a year and meet a new group of sexy women. They run afoul of Stuntman Mike at the local bar, and when three of them hit the road to test a new car, he terrorizes them at high speed. But this is a female-empowerment movie as well, so the gals turn the tables on Mike.

In this new version, we get to know the characters in more depth. Russell is amazing as Mike, all menace and crazy dude behind an oily, suave exterior. The veteran actor nails all of Stuntman Mike's nuanced layers. All of the women are superbly cast, notably stuntwoman Zoe Bell (billed as Zoë Bell), who can act as well as do daredevil feats. Russell and especially Bell are wonders. And the stunts are all real, there’s no CGI in this film. Hosting several of the extras on this disc, Tarantino goes enthusiastically (sometimes near maniacally) into great detail in explaining how the stunts were created, introducing us to the daring people who designed and executed them. The filming of these scenes is close, exacting, and exciting -- as good as any stunt footage I’ve ever seen.

When Death Proof was part of Grindhouse, it was riddled with imposed damage, so it would look like the kind of tattered film stock usually shown at drive-in theaters. So was Planet Terror, but the Blu-ray release of that film offers a "scratch-free" print from a "newly discovered negative." I wish that Death Proof had experienced the same lucky course of events. As it is, the prologue is considerably (and artificially) scratched up, with some really jerky cuts (faux splices), and then these techniques are largely forgotten for the second part of the movie, though there is one curious point where it goes into gorgeous, smooth black-and-white for four or five minutes (there’s nothing wrong with your monitor). The sections must have been shot with entirely different equipment. The prologue is gritty and riddled with effective grain, while the latter sections are as clean and clear as modern technology can provide. Leaving the scratches in one section just serves to underline the difference too heavily. If one is to liberate this film from being a faux-drive-in flick and elevate it to a contemporary homage to that genre, why not go all way in the effort?

The Blu-ray transfer seems totally accurate to the film, complete with its faults, but the sound has been re-equalized quite a bit for the extended version. The car rev-ups have bass and realistic burst that weren’t evident in the original movie (nor would they be with the small, hang-on box speakers usually provided at a drive-in theater). Though the sound is a bit front heavy and could have used the surrounds to greater effect, it is definitely feature-film audio. In addition to the already-mentioned extras, there are extended music scenes (Tarantino always picks dynamite source music for his movies, and this one is no exception), profiles of Russell and film editor Sally Menke, as well as trailers and a still-frame gallery of posters.

I’d recommend this movie as a rental to anyone. It’s energetic, exciting, and just plain fun. When was the last time you rented a title that was fun? Fans will probably want to purchase it, and they can do so knowing it has received a first-rate Blu-ray transfer. For once, more is definitely better. While wrongly keeping the artifacts that made the movie a successful part of the original pair, the extra footage serves to turn the movie into something of an art film too good for mere grindhouse designation.

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