Tarantino revs his engine

There's a single scene in Quentin Tarantino's "Death Proof" that's worth the entire price of admission to the 200-minute experience that is "Grindhouse." Hanging out on the back porch of Guero's, an Austin, Texas, dive where Joe Tex and Pacific Gas & Electric are jukebox regulars, Kurt Russell's Stuntman Mike sizes up his nubile, young female victims by sweet-talking one of them into a lap dance. The dialogue is pure Tarantino, and the mood is so tense that you could hear a car start in the theater parking lot. Later, when Mike dismembers and shaves the faces off the ladies with his death-proof stunt car, it's shocking not because of the gore but because the first half-hour of "Death Proof" actually made us care about Mike's doomed victims. \nHerein lies the success of "Death Proof." Tarantino's homage to car chase and slasher films is not populated with cardboard cutouts of women but women so real you can almost smell their perfume after an extended diner scene reminiscent of the opening shot in "Reservoir Dogs." You might be hearing stories of people walking out of "Death Proof's" early scenes after 100 minutes of Rodriguez's zombies, tits, testicles and explosions, and all I can say is that those folks clearly missed both the point and the boat. "Death Proof" hits the brakes after the explodo-fest that is "Planet Terror," only to punch the gas time and time again as its heroines are stalked by and eventually stalk Stuntman Mike. Consider Kurt Russell made relevant again, as were John Travolta in "Pulp Fiction" and Pam Grier in "Jackie Brown," with a performance that starts off coyly demonic and devolves into one of the most alarming breakdowns I've ever seen on-screen. The ladies turn in fine efforts, too. Sydney Tamiia Poitier is compulsively watchable as Jungle Julia, and Vanessa Ferlito is tortured eye candy as Arlene, a.k.a. Butterfly. Tracie Thoms and Zoe Bell, as a couple of stuntwomen on break from their film set, are the picture of female empowerment as they turn the tables on Mike after an un-CGI'ed, how-the-hell-did-they-do-that car chase sequence. \nThe two fake trailers immediately preceding "Death Proof" are Edgar Wright's hilarious "Don't" and Eli Roth's gloriously gory "Thanksgiving." Wright, the director of "Shaun of the Dead" and the upcoming "Hot Fuzz," imagines an even campier "House on Haunted Hill" where the constant repetition of the title admonition is useless in stopping the doomed characters from meeting their fate. Roth, hot off "Hostel," packs "Thanksgiving" with so much blood, nudity, fellatio and rape that one can't help but wish he'd make it into an actual "Grindhouse" feature. \n"Death Proof" might be minor Tarantino, but it's certainly better than anything else clogging the multiplex during this year's stagnant post-awards season period. As opposed to Rodriguez's "Planet Terror," which is content to simply honor grindhouse cinema by being another superbly entertaining addition to the canon, Tarantino aims a few feet higher, adding his own brand of snappy dialogue and ability to coax memorable performances out of has-beens and relative unknowns. The result is the best car chase movie since the '70s and another gold star on Quentin's career report card.