Next up - after an eight-minute "intermission" for three more tasty trailers - is Tarantino's unapologetically low-brow contribution, Death Proof. This one is characteristically wordy, as the director develops his characters by keeping them chattering away for a painfully long time. In fact, it starts off like a female version of his Reservoir Dogs, with four girls talking about sex and drugs, yet doesn't manage to be quite as hip or cool.

When the plot does kick into action, we follow the girls out for a night on the town in Austin, Texas. But things go downhill when Stuntman Mike (an absolutely simmering Kurt Russell as a serial killer who terrorizes women in death-proof his lethal race car) strikes up a conversation with Pam (McGowan again, this time as a blonde). Before long, Pam and a girl crew - Jungle Julia (Sydney Poitier) and Shanna (Jordan Ladd) and Arlene (Vanessa Ferlito) - find themselves on a collision course with Stuntman Mike.

This all builds into a ladies' revenge tale in the second half when Mike finds yet another group of girls - actress Lee (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), make-up artist Abernathy (Rosario Dawson), and stuntwomen Zoe (Zoe Bell, best known as Uma Thurman's stunt double in Kill Bill) and Kim (Tracie Thoms) – who decide they want some payback on Stuntman Mike for attempting to ride them off a cliff. We finally end up with a doozy of a car chase that takes up the last part of the second half, and, after all the talking, the pedal-to the-metal is appreciated.

With its endless gore and cartoon-ish action, Planet Terror will be more popular with moviegoers; by contrast, Tarantino gives us copious freeze-frames, vibrant colour schematics and the chick-ogling that emulate drive-in movies. The action itself is some of the most amazing stuff put on film in recent years, with exciting shots of high-octane car chases, none of which were accomplished with an ounce of CGI.