10 Movie Scenes You Won't Believe Didn't Use CGI
4. Death Proof - Zoe Bell Actually Clung To The Challenger Hood
This one shouldn’t shock fans of stuntwoman extraordinaire Zoe Bell, who has stood in for countless stars during her impressive onscreen career. In Tarantino’s least favourite of his own flicks, 2007’s sort-of-slasher/ half of the Grindhouse double feature Death Proof, the storied stunt performer plays herself as one of a group of young women stalked and pursued by Kurt Russell’s psychotic driver/ homicidal maniac Stuntman Mike.
The film meanders its slow and shaggy way to a suddenly very exciting climax wherein Bell and her mates mete out violent revenge on Mike after an impressive car chase, but it’s the earlier sequence where Mike almost kills Bell that really impresses.
Bell is playing Shipman’s Mast, a game which involves clinging to the bonnet of a moving car (in this case a Dodge Challenger) when Mike begins slamming his own Charger into the vehicle’s side, with each impact threatening to throw her onto the asphalt or worse, beneath either car’s speeding wheels.
It’s an unbearably tense sequence made far more effective by the reality that yes, it’s CGI-unassisted—that’s actually Bell taking her life in her hands for the scene, a fact that various wide shots revel in.