Three friends, Arlene, Shanna and Julia travel to a bar in Austin, Texas. Julia is a DJ and she made an announcement on her radio show that whoever comes up to Arlene will get a lap dance if they call her “Butterfly”, recite a portion of a poem, and buy her a drink. A sociopathic killer stuntman, played by Kurt Russell, with a death-proof car, claims the lap dance, after following the women from their house to the bar. 

Death Proof is a part of the double feature called Grindhouse, by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodiguez. Robert Rodriguez’s film in the double feature is called Planet Terror and they are both an homage to the “grindhouse” cinemas. Grindhouse refers to rundown theaters that would often play B movies, like horror or exploitation films, and would play back to back like Death Proof and Planet Terror. The double feature has fake movie trailers, theater announcements, and regular advertisements. Two of the fake movie trailers have been made into actual feature films, Machete and Hobo with a Shotgun. Machete is made by Rodriguez and it has a sequel as well, and Hobo with a Shotgun was made by an independent third party. The film is purposefully damaged so that it skips around and suddenly cuts throughout the film.

Tarantino thought of the idea of the movie because he wanted to make a slasher film, but he wanted it to be unique so he thought about the idea of a stuntman killing women with his death-proof car. Tarantino hadn’t seen a good car chase in a film since Terminator 2: Judgement Day, so he decided to make his cinematography debut in Death Proof. Tarantino decided to cast Kurt Russel in the film because he had not been in a major role since Tarantino was young and he epitomized the aging stuntman. When the films are put together, Death Proof is about 45 minutes shorter, so he cut out most of the dialogue heavy scenes that he is known for and kept the violent and gory scenes.