"If Death Proof is Tarantino’s fantasy of what women talk about when they get together, it’s a pretty great one. Those “long, long, long” conversations take on a loping, aimless rhythm that mirrors the pulse of the film itself. Perhaps they make Bradshaw uneasy in part because these lengthy girl-on-girl chats are not something we see too often in movies. It feels like watching an actual group of women talk about their lives: How far they’re willing to take things with the men they’re dating, their plans for the evening, how they’re going to score pot. (Not through any men: “We don’t score ourselves, we’re gonna be stuck with them all fucking night.”) With the exception of Rose McGowan and Rosario Dawson, Tarantino cast relatively underexposed actresses to play the lead women. It’s hard to place them in the context of other films, which makes their intrepid characters feel both true to life and super-human. They’re tough, quick-witted women who are simultaneously powerful, unapologetic, sexy, fun, angry, and reckless. They do whatever they feel like doing. And they look so cool doing it. The stuntwomen characters in Death Proof aren’t just stand-ins for actresses on a film shoot; they’re surrogates for the female viewer who perform feats of strength and tenacity that ordinary women can only daydream of. This is why it’s so upsetting that people mistook the film for a fetishistic, misogynist screed. That it was mostly women who protested the film is particularly disappointing. After all, art, as Steiner argues, can do things reality can’t. A decade after its release, Death Proof demonstrates that when it comes to gender violence, 2007, or even 2017, can still feel a lot like the 1970s — and in its cartoonish depiction of evil men, it gives those ordinary women license to get angry about the everlasting problem of brutality against women. Watching Death Proof, or any revenge fantasy, is a powerful act of vengeance-by-proxy — one in which everyone gets to keep their limbs."

"Kim is unapologetic about her gun, and Tarantino rewards her and her friends by ending the movie after they’ve killed Stuntman Mike, instead of portraying the consequences of their crime. But other films of the 1960s and ’70s — the B-movies that Death Proof riffs on — are not so eager to justify their female characters’ violent impulses. In The Warriors (1979), the title gang meets an all-female mob called the Lizzies who invite their male counterparts to hang at their apartment. This seduction turns out to be a ruse, and the Lizzies attempt to kill the Warriors. Of course, the women are all lousy shots, so the Warriors get away, but not before the softest and youngest among them is injured. Director Walter Hill doesn’t include one frame of a woman getting in a punch, but there are plenty of shots of the Warriors nimbly defeating their weaker foils. Tarantino allows his female characters to land more than a few blows. You could argue that he does something similar to what Steiner accuses Andrea Dworkin of doing in her 1990 novel, Mercy. That novel tells the story of Andrea, a woman who endures constant physical and sexual violence over her lifetime and eventually attempts to mitigate her agony by killing men. In her critique of the novel in The Scandal of Pleasure, Steiner points to an unresolved contradiction: The violence that men perpetuate turns out to be the only way to alleviate the protagonist’s pain. So Andrea kills men, a twist of events that Steiner calls “intolerant, simplistic, and often just as brutal as what it protests.” Are the women of Death Proof just as brutal as what they protest? Is Tarantino’s fantasy an imagined corrective to gender-based violence, or just another form of it? Feminist critic Ellen Willis, who died in 2006, might have favored the latter interpretation. In a 1977 Village Voice article, “Beginning to See the Light,” Willis writes about her ambivalence toward punk rocker Patti Smith: “I’m also uncomfortable with her androgynous, one-of-the-guys image; its rebelliousness is seductive, but it plays into a kind of misogyny…that consents to distinguish a woman who acts like one of the guys (and is also sexy and conspicuously ‘liberated’) from the general run of stupid girls.” Her description of Smith could certainly apply to the women of Death Proof: Stuntwomen Zoë and Kim are self-proclaimed “gearheads,” berating the other girls for preferring John Hughes’s Pretty in Pink to classic car-chase movies like Vanishing Point."

"CGI for car stunts doesn't make any sense to me—how is that supposed to be impressive? [...] I don't think there have been any good car chases since I started making films in '92—to me, the last terrific car chase was in Terminator 2. And Final Destination 2 had a magnificent car action piece. In between that, not a lot. Every time a stunt happens, there's twelve cameras and they use every angle for Avid editing, but I don't feel it in my stomach. It's just action. ~ Quentin Tarantino]]"

"Q: Were you daunted by attempting a car chase?"

"Quentin Tarantino: There’s a wonderful aspect that Kurt has that’s fantastic, and it mirrors Stuntman Mike a lot. He’s a working professional and he’s been in this business for a long time. He’s done all this episodic television – he did all those TV series, The High Chaparrals and the Harry O‘s. And he’s worked with f****g everybody. Literally. So he knows the life that Stuntman Mike’s had. He’s even the same generational age and he knows some of the jumping-off points. Cameron Mitchell would have made a really good Stuntman Mike. So would William Smith, or Ralph Meeker back in his day. Kurt knew all those guys, he worked with them when he was a little kid. But also what’s interesting is that he’s known Stuntman Mikes, and there’s one guy in particular he’s basing it on. And it’s nothing to do with wardrobe or tics. The stunt guys too, they’ve all known guys like Stuntman Mike: he never really actually did a whole lot, but just enough to have a career. To make Stuntman Mike real for me, I worked out his entire career. I actually worked out more about his background than I could ever show in the movie."

"Kim Myers - Lisa Webber"

"Clayton Landey - Lorenzo"

"Priscilla Pointer - Dr. Elizabeth Simms"

"John Saxon - Lt. Donald Thompson"

"Penelope Sudrow - Jennifer Caulfield"

"Laurence Fishburne - Max"

"Ira Heiden - William 'Will' Stanton"

"Bradley Gregg - Phillip Anderson"

"Jennifer Rubin - Taryn White"

"Rodney Eastman - Joseph 'Joey' Crusel"

"Ken Sagoes - Roland Kincaid"

"Robert Englund - Freddy Krueger"

"Patricia Arquette - Kristen Parker"

"Craig Wasson - Dr. Neil Gordon"

"Heather Langenkamp - Nancy Thompson"

"If You Think You're Ready For Freddy, Think Again!"

"If you think you'll get out alive, you must be dreaming."

"Freddy's just around the corner..."

"[seeing Nancy Thompson for the first time in six years] You."

"What's wrong, Joey? Feeling tongue-tied?"

"This is it, Jennifer. Your big break in TV. Welcome to prime time, bitch! [slams Jennifer's head into the TV]"

"Robert Englund - Freddy Krueger"

"Sydney Walsh - Kerry"

"Tom McFadden - Mr. Webber"

"Melinda O. Fee - Mrs. Webber"

"Marshall Bell - Coach Schneider"

"Hope Lange - Cheryl Walsh"

"Clu Gulager - Ken Walsh"

"Robert Rusler - Ron Grady"

"Mark Patton - Jesse Walsh"

"The man of your dreams is back!"

"Freddy Krueger is back on Elm Street! Watch out for him - he'll be in your neighborhood soon!"

"Someone is coming back to Elm Street! He is not friendly, he is not patient, and he is not a welcome visitor. But he has something terribly special for the new kid on the block."

"Biology Teacher: [after Jesse wakes up from a nightmare with a snake wrapped around him] If you want to play with animals, Mr. Walsh, join the circus."