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Deathproof - All about Sex?The following feature on Deathproof started as a companion piece to Wayfarer's review of Planet Terror , the other half of the Grindhouse project. However, the more I thought about the movie, the weirder things got. Please take this with a pinch of salt - and be warned, Spoilers ahoy...
The closest to “Grindhouse” that I’d personally experienced was going to see movies at The Scala, a repertory cinema in Kings Cross. An old, sprawling one-screen theatre, it had a fully packed rolling programme of one-nighters. Here, Eurotrash rubbed shoulders with Art-house, gore and sex came together in unforgettable ways (the horrid “Salo”, for example). Here, I discovered Amaldovar, Jodorovsky, Borowczyk, Argento, and Russ Meyer. Saturday nights were themed all-nighters, whilst once a month they held Jackie Chan and Heroic Bloodshed Sundays. New Year’s Day was always a horror movie festival. It was here that I first saw the likes of Opera, Society and Akira. So when I watched “Grindhouse”, I definitely got the vibe and could easily imagine watching both movies in The Scala. Tarantino’s movie isn’t as easily accessible as Planet Terror. The suspense builds slowly as we follow around a bunch of girls on a birthday night out, and the viewer’s enjoyment hinges on whether they want to hang out with these girls, or get to the good stuff. At this point Tarantino is riffing on the slasher movies of the ‘70s and 80s. But instead of having a faceless killer, we have the very enigmatic Stuntman Mike, played to the hilt by Kurt Russell. Much like the killers in the Hostel movies, Stuntman Mike deliberately interacts with his victims, getting to know them. In Silence of the Lambs, when the Governor’s daughter is abducted, the consensus is that serial killers in general do not see their victims as human beings, and at the broadcast press conference her mother keeps repeating her daughter’s name in an attempt to make the kidnapper relate to his victim. This is re-enforced when the kidnapper talks to her only in third person (“she rubs the lotion on her skin!”). Stuntman Mike on the other hand, gets to know his victims first. He isn’t your usual, damaged psycho with a troubled childhood, acting out some form of emotional or psychological trauma. He knows what he is doing – he lives for the thrill of seeing how far he can get away with it. By the time the girls get to the second bar, which is where they are properly introduced to Stuntman Mike, Tarantino has thrown in a couple of signposts which point the way to your typical slasher movie – first, we discover the girls are meeting some boys up at some cabin in the woods. Second, the audience has started to identify which girl is likely to be the plucky heroine, just like Neve Campbell, Heather Langencamp and Jamie Lee Curtis before her, Rosario Dawson seems to be the girl who is the focus of Stuntman Mike’s attention…
However, Stuntman Mike’s weapon of choice isn’t a knife, or a gun, or even a sword. It’s his car. The ultimate phallic substitute. And the girls aren’t going to make it to that cabin in the woods. The movie at this point suddenly roars into life, much like Mike’s turbo-charged, “deathproof” car. The murder of the girls is horrific, and Tarantino makes sure we don’t miss a single detail as he shows the collision from each girl’s point of view. Its nasty and gory and no-one is spared. But somehow, Mike gets away with it, and moves on… As the feeling of titillation wears off though, the audience is now wondering if Tarantino is just going to repeat the first half of the movie with a second batch of characters. It certainly seems like it, as the girls chat and bitch with each other, while Mike prowls in the background. While the first half of the movie plays out like a the build-up of a lurid 70’s slasher, the second half is more in tune with free-spirited road movies, such as Vanishing Point and Two Lane Blacktop, as well as the sex-and-violence fuelled melodramas of Russ Meyer, such as Faster Pussycat! Kill, Kill! and Supervixen!
However Tarantino has added a layer of sexual context to the way the movie is structured and paced:
Act One – Mutual Orgasm. The whole initial sequence leading up to the car crash is one long sexual build-up as Stuntman Mike strokes his…ego. It’s a control fantasy, where Mike is literally in the driving seat as he alternately creeps the girls by prowling in his car and even psychologically manipulates one into giving him a lapdance. By integrating himself into their group, Mike’s foreplay coaxes the girls into telling him their destination, thereby allowing him to “meet them halfway”, as it were. The car crash itself is the culmination of Mike’s power trip. Here he has control over even life and death, knowing that he is safe in his little cockpit. The clash of the two cars is a joint climax as the girls succumb to Mike’s deathproof car.
Act Two – Premature Ejaculation Vs Female Orgasm. The first group of girls were pretty feisty, but our second group are even more empowered. One of them is even carrying a gun. This time Mike doesn’t try to get to know them, or find out where they are going. Instead, he is a hunter; the thrill is in the chase. He just wants to kill them. It’s the equivalent of a quickie. A new batch of porn to masturbate to. Unfortunately for Mike, he climaxes too soon. When he calls out to the girls, he’s spent and exhausted. But now the girls are all riled up – if only Mike had indulged in some foreplay! So like a frustrated girlfriend having to bring herself off, the girls chase Mike down to achieve their own sexual closure. And they’re not too gentle with poor spent Mike, who just wants to curl up and go to sleep. When they finally drag him from the wreckage of his car, they need the extra physical contact of beating him to a pulp to achieve their goal. The freeze-frame, simultaneous jump in the air says it all…
(MikeOutWest)
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