Quentin Tarantino isn’t crying Uncle yet, and is still pimping the shite out of his widely debated and utter box-office failure GRINDHOUSE, specifically his contribution to the double feature, DEATH PROOF. Now that they’ve decided to release the two films separately overseas, DP is playing Cannes this week, in a brand new, 113 minute cut of the film. Do the added scenes make for a better ride? The reports are in…
The added scenes are obviously the Lap Dance scene, which was replaced with a ‘Missing Reel’ title card in the U.S. theatrical release- which pissed everyone off in the theater I was in, as it was one of the most anticipated scenes in the entire movie! The reports are in from Cannes, and survey says: Ferlito’s sexy dance routine proves worth the wait over these several months. Nice! Not that I expected anything less, but still good to know that it rocked about as hard as I imagined.
One other scene was added in the second half of the film, with Kurt Russel’s Stuntman Mike stalking the ‘final’ group of girls in the film. The scene goes down like this: there is an encounter between Mike and his new intended victims at a roadside convenience store. The sequence goes to black and white. While one woman goes to buy a magazine, Stuntman Mike menacingly plays with the dangling bare feet of another girl as they hang from the backseat window. About all this adds is an opportunity for Mary Elizabeth Winstead to sing, quite well by the way, the classic rock ballad “Baby It’s You.”
While I can’t say I’m dying to see that scene, it does explain why I don’t recall the above photo in the version I saw… cause it wasn’t in it! Either way, the extra scenes sound like fun, and as I loved DP, I can see it only propelling my enthusiasm for the flick. Will it change your mind if you’re a DP hater? Probably not… but who out there, regardless if you liked it or hated it, wasn’t dying to see that Lap Dance??
Check out the International Trailer for DEATH PROOF HERE, and get ready for that pimped out DVD release of GRINDHOUSE, which is sure to show it’s ugly head here soon enough.