With Quentin Tarantino’s latest release Deathproof now in cinema’s, he brought a homage to the old grind house movies of the 1970s. Though it was first released as a double feature with Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror, it again is a real Tarantino movie: violence, gore and strong language are the main ingredients. And of course the filmmaker’s infamous jibber-jabber comes standard.

Most foreigners who know anything about the Dutch marijuana policy, learned that from the following description: “Yeah, it’s legal, but it ain’t a hundred percent legal. I mean, you can’t walk into a restaurant, roll a joint and start puffin’ away. You’re only supposed to smoke in your home or certain designated places. It breaks down like this: it’s legal to buy it, it’s legal to own it, and, if you’re the proprietor of a hash bar, it’s legal to sell it. It’s legal to carry it, but that doesn’t really matter ’cause – get a load of this – if you get stopped by the cops in amsterdam, it’s illegal for them to search you.” It’s a typical Tarantino dialogue which made his movie Pulp Fiction (1994) such a big success. Winning a ‘Palme D’Or’ during the Cannes Film Festival in France for this gangster movie made it his magnum opus, but the Tarantino show already started two years earlier.

In 1992, the Unites States born, 44 year old film director released his debut Resevoir Dogs, which instantly became an independent film classic. The movie about a botched jewel heist contained lots of blood gushing around, even more swearing and cynical dialogues, which soon became the trademark for Tarantino movies. He repeated this gag with Pulp Fiction: killing, drug abuse and even rape, but the audience loved it, making Tarantino into some sort of cult legend. Although his third big success Jackie Brown (1997), in which Pam Grier plays the title role, had much of the violence and profanity happening off screen, the movie was obviously rated R. It was this homage to blaxploitation movies, about an airline flight attendant who gets coerced by the cops to help them bring down an arms smuggler, in which Tarantino really got the jibber-jabber level to a new high.

After a long and for his fans killing silence surrounding their movie making hero, QT announced the coming of an epic-length revenge drama: Kill Bill (2003). It took him six years, but now the old and the new fans had the change to once again watch an over-the-top violent movie which included homage’s to earlier film genres, such as martial arts/samurai movies and spaghetti westerns. And this time in two volumes, with a running time of nearly four hours. Kill Bill Vol. 2 released in the spring of 2004, having let everybody wait for half a year so see how the movie ended. Yet it wouldn’t be the last time Tarantino would build up the tension concerning a double feature.

Together with his friend and fellow director Robert Rodriguez, Tarantino co-written, produced and directed the 2007 anthology film Grindhouse. Originally, like the movie was released in the Unites States, Grindhouse consisted of two feature-length segments: Planet Terror by Rodriguez and Death Proof by Tarantino. Next to the two ninety minute movies, the audience could also enjoy fictional trailers for upcoming attractions, advertisements and in-theater announcements. But everywhere else in the world, as an effect of the poor ticket sales, the movies were released separate in extended version. In reaction, Tarantino denied this reason, by stating: “Especially if they were dealing with non-English language countries, they don’t really have this tradition (…) not only do they not really know what a grind house is, they don’t even have the double feature tradition.”

So now we have Death Proof, released the 22th of Februari, running in cinemas. Telling the story about a psychopathic stuntman (played by Kurt Russel) who targets young woman, murdering them with his ‘death proof’ stunt car, the film is a tribute to the slasher film/serial killer genre. Tarantino, some critics think he has a ‘sick’ mind, came up with the story from his fascination for the way stuntmen would ‘death proof’ their cars. As long as they were driving, stuntmen could slam their cars headfirst into a brick wall at 100 km/h and survive. Stuntman Mike (Russel) proves that his 1970 Chevy Nova really is ‘death proof’ by sadistically killing five innocent women, self only suffering minor injuries. If Stuntman Mike himself is ‘death proof’, you need to find out yourself. But I can tell you that Tarantino isn’t satisfied with only the blood of five people…

If movies about gangsters or stuntman weren’t already bloody and violent enough, QT is now working on a war movie, called Inglorious Bastards, of which he finished the script just last year. Not being a remake, the movie is going to be more of a homage (again) to the Italian 1977 movie Quel maledetto treno blindato, in the United States known as Inglorious Bastards. If the movie will be produced, Michael Madsen (who also starred in Resevoir Dogs and Kill Bill) is expected to play a leading role in this movie about a band of U.S. soldiers facing death by firing squad for their misdeeds and who are given a chance to redeem themselves by heading into the perilous no-man’s lands of Nazi-occupied France on a suicide mission for the Allies.

In order to gap the time before the (expected) release of Inglorious Bastards, you can already enjoy the by 27 minutes extended version of Death Proof now and will only have to wait till the fourth of April for the release of Rodriguez’s Planet Terror. But only if you’re stomach can handle it.