Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof

Directors Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez spent $53 million to pay loving tribute to the vintage hundred-thousand-dollar exploitation fare that inspired Grindhouse's two-movies-for-the-price-of-one thrill ride. Tarantino's half of the exercise (which also includes Robert Rodriguez's self-scored Planet Terror) features another effusive slice of the director's eclectic musical sensibility to underscore its manic tale of stuntman/psycho-killer Kurt Russell and his muscle-car-fueled exploits. Tarantino works from a familiar formula that variously mixes evocative, semi-obscure Italian film cues from Morricone and Dinaggio, contrasting slices of '60s catalog from the great Jack Nitzsche and Brit Invasion also-rans DDDBM&T and some '70s fodder from both ends of the Top 40 via Smith and T. Rex, also stirring in a savory mid-disc run of R&B that stretches from PG&E's upbeat read of "Stagger Lee" through more familiar fare from Joe Tex, Eddie Floyd, and the Coasters. The director also serves up a couple of those deliciously off-kilter obscurities that have come to be his musical trademark as a coda: Eddie Beram's thumping "Riot in Thunder Alley" and April March's infectious ditz-pop take on Serge Gainsbourg's loopy "Chick Habit." --Jerry McCulley