Death Proof
Death Proof is Quentin Tarantino's film from the Grindhouse double feature. Whereas Planet Terror is a poor parody, Death Proof is a finely crafted homage. Death Proof is unmistakably a Tarantino film. In particular the dialogue is an example of the best kind of Tarantino dialogue. It manages to be both natural and cool, without being extravagant or self-indulgent. It is a fine line Tarantino often often crosses. Pulp Fiction was nearly perfect, but Kill Bill was a mess.
The direction is great, including one of the most interesting car crashes I've seen on film and one of the best car chases. The film manages to evoke the basic feeling of a slasher type film, with a male villain terrorizing attractive young women. However the women are never portrayed as weak and in the end get their revenge.
An interesting point to compare Death Proof and Planet Terror is how they used the missing reel. In Planet Terror, the scene after the missing reel has one character thanking the other for revealing his past, clearly making a joke about the missing information. However in Death Proof the missing scene is not a particularly important one, but one that would clearly be considered exploitative of one of the female characters. By allowing that scene to be missing, the film is less exploitative than the full length version. In fact the missing scene from Death Proof would probably have been much like the opening scene of Planet Terror.
If Death Proof and Planet Terror were to be available on separate DVDs I would definitely buy Death Proof, I would not buy Planet Terror.