The 10 greatest Quentin Tarantino death scenes
Ever since Reservoir Dogs ignited the film world in 1992, Quentin Tarantino has carved his name into the annals of cinema with the precision and depth of a Hattori Hanzō samurai sword. Borrowing liberally and shamelessly from film classics and obscure B-movie gems of a bygone era, as well as embellishing with his own distinct brand of post-modern storytelling, the auteur has forged such a singular brand of filmmaking that Tarantino-esque is an actual entry in the dictionary.
What makes a Tarantino film so… well, Tarantino-esque? Exquisite cinematography, beautiful costumes and period-authentic production design captured on glorious and luminescent 35mm celluloid film. Sensational, career-best performances from a mix of Tarantino regulars and the occasional turn from some of Hollywood’s biggest and brightest stars. Quick, snappy, pop-culture-laden dialogue that jumps off the screen and can be quoted at parties, in university dormitories and by the office water cooler. And last, but certainly not least, death.
Yes, death. Bloody, gory, spectacular death — and tons of it, too. Perhaps more than any other component of his writing/directing style, the movies of Tarantino are characterised by their violence and death — so much so that a cursory glance on YouTube will expose your average layman to infinite video interviews of the prodigal director defending his choices for depicting so much violence. Bullet wounds, car crashes, decapitations or a flying hatchet to the face; name a way of murder, and chances are Tarantino’s prepared it for you.
Now, while death isn’t the only defining part of the maestro’s oeuvre, it certainly plays a prevalent role, whether the director cares to admit it or not. Even Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, his latest feature, which nearly lulled us into thinking he’d made a gore-free film, ended up giving us one of the most graphic and gruesome sequences to date. Regardless, it’s come to be one of the things we love about Tarantino best. Unless he truly does decide to make a filmmaking departure with his upcoming swan song, The Movie Critic, audiences will once again sink into their theatre seats and gleefully await the tsunami of blood to wash over them. In the meantime, let’s celebrate.
The 10 best Quentin Tarantino death scenes:
10. The Nazi massacre – Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Tarantino has long been interested in re-writing history to give power to the persecuted and switch power roles. Such is evident in 2012’s Django Unchained, 2019’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and particularly 2009’s Inglourious Basterds, a story which follows a group of Jewish US soldiers and a vindictive theatre owner who swears revenge on the Nazis in France during World War II.
The entire film leads up to a climactic Nazi massacre in which Tarantino revels in showing the death of Adolf Hitler on screen alongside countless other evil officers, supporters and more. It’s a fantastically cathartic scene of spectacular overindulgence.
9. Calvin Candie gets his comeuppance – Django Unchained (2012)
Tarantino is responsible for the creation of a good number of iconic villains, from Christoph Waltz’s Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds to Jennifer Jason Leigh’s Daisy Domergue in The Hateful Eight. Yet, his most sinister might be Calvin Candie from 2012’s Django Unchained. Played by Leonardo DiCaprio, the insidious owner of the slave plantation is one of the main obstacles standing in the way of the two protagonists searching for the titular character’s wife.
Finally, the characters (and indeed the audience) get what they came for, with Waltz’s Dr King Schultz flicking out a concealed gun, Assassin’s Creed-style, to shoot Candie straight in the middle of the white flower that hung over his heart.
8. The O-Ren Ishii duel – Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003)
Created as an ode to his love for old martial arts and samurai movies, Tarantino’s Kill Bill series is undoubtedly the most violent of his whole filmography, telling the story of a bride (Uma Thurman) seeking revenge on a group of assassins who betrayed her. This predictably results in a number of iconic action sequences, with the finest and most stylish of the bunch being the Bride’s battle with O-Ren Ishii.
Taking place in the snowy Japanese courtyard of a restaurant, the bride engages in a long duel with O-Ren Ishii, only to defeat her with a killer blow that removes the top part of her scalp. It’s classic Tarantino, oozing with class and fake blood.
7. Louis kills Melanie – Jackie Brown (1997)
In 1997, Tarantino released his forgotten masterpiece in the form of Jackie Brown, an altogether more composed dramatic thriller that moves far slower than his other movies. Following the story of a flight attendant who gets arrested for drug smuggling and becomes an informant, the film features a number of iconic performances, from the likes of Pam Grier to the great Robert De Niro.
One of the most well-executed scenes comes when De Niro’s Louis Gara bickers with Bridget Fonda’s Melanie Ralston whilst he struggles to find his vehicle in a mall car park. Led by the excellent performance from De Niro, whose face increasingly tightens as Melanie’s goading torments him, Louis finally has enough and shoots her dead in broad daylight.
6. Bill is killed – Kill Bill, Vol. 2 (2004)
Nearly four hours and two films later, after first being introduced to the iconic character that is Uma Thurman’s ‘The Bride’, we finally got to meet in the flesh this Bill character that everyone’s been so worked up about — and boy, it does not disappoint. Played sensationally by Bill Carradine, Tarantino presents us with a gentle, well-mannered, well-dressed, lisp-afflicted man in his 60s who ostensibly poses no threat whatsoever.
But after a sudden explosion of menace and a flash of glinting blades, a mere second-long fight ends with the bride having disarmed Bill. Then, with a precise flick and prodding of her fingers, she performs on him The Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique’ — a legendary martial arts move thought previously lost to history that guarantees only a few steps will result in complete heart failure in the victim. “You look ready,” a tearful bride says, gently nudging her adversary to his inevitable demise.
5. Beaumont’s death – Jackie Brown (1997)
One of Tarantino’s most sophisticated, classy and mature cinematic entries also includes one of the most tastefully executed (pardon the pun) death scenes. Starting a sort of tradition of using comedians that he would revisit less than ten years later with the casting of Mike Myers in Inglorious Basterds, Tarantino’s casting of Chris Brown as Beaumont in Jackie Brown was a stroke of genius.
After Samuel L. Jackson’s character, Ordell, manages to successfully convince Beaumont to hide in a trunk ahead of an ambush on Korean criminals, he drives away, seemingly to this planned ambush. The camera pans up, then settles on a very wide shot of a car park less than a minute away, which Ordell’s car promptly pulls into and stops. Before we even have a chance to wonder why he’s stopped so early, the tiny figure of Ordell has opened the trunk and shot Beaumont dead with a faint pop of gunsmoke. Exquisite.
4. Mr Blonde’s torturous end – Reservoir Dogs (1992)
One of the most brutal scenes from Tarantino’s debut – one that remains one of his most iconic even to this date – sees Michael Madsen’s Mr Blonde sadistically torture a cop in the heist gang’s warehouse. Blonde has little to gain from bringing some seriously cruel pain to Los Angeles police officer Marvin Nash, but he slashes his face with a knife and cuts his ear off anyway, showing his true nature as one hell of a psychopath.
The most sickening thing of all, though, is the carefree attitude Blonde carries, dancing around to Stealer’s Wheel’s ‘Stuck in the Middle with You’ and then laughing once he’s done the damage. Birds sing, and people chatter as Blonde heads outside to get a can of gasoline, and the song resumes when he heads back in. He follows up on his first wave of infliction by dousing Nash in the highly flammable liquid, and then just as he is about to set him alight, up pops Mr Orange (Tim Roth), an undercover cop himself, to bring Blonde’s torture to a thankful end.
3. The basement bar shoot-out – Inglorious Basterds (2009)
For a film about an elite Jewish task force maiming and murdering their way to the top of Nazi high command, it’s impressive that one death(s) scene stands out above all the rest. In an absolute masterclass of tension and suspense, Tarantino presents us with a scene in which some of our heroes, led by film critic-turned-undercover spy Archie Hicox (played wonderfully by Michael Fassbender), are cornered by a top-ranking SS Officer.
As the dialogue dances back and forth, each character cleverly skirts around the real truth of the matter — they know that the Nazi knows that they’re spies. The tension bubbles, reaches a rolling, simmering boil, stretched to a point of excruciating suspense — and then erupts into a blood-bath of a shoot-out, where all but one person remains alive in a room full of dozens.
2. Manson Family showdown – Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)
Tarantino’s ninth film (considering Kill Bill Vol. 1 & 2 as a solitary movie) is something of a return to form for Tarantino after the divisive The Hateful Eight. The film, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, is jam-packed full of wonderful moments, but its most violent segment arrives towards the end and is easily one of the most memorable. Once Upon a Time loosely tells of the murder of famed Hollywood actor Sharon Tate by members of the infamous Manson Family, and its final scene is a real spectacle.
At the film’s conclusion, we find Cliff Booth (Pitt), stuntman for actor Rick Dalton (DiCaprio), in Dalton’s house, having recently smoked an LSD-laced cigarette, when the Manson members suddenly break in. All hell breaks loose in a typically Tarantino style for the first time in the film; Booth’s dog bites one of his assailants before he gets a knife lodged in his thigh, reacting by crushing a woman’s skull on the household furniture. Then to top it off, in comes Dalton with a flamethrower to burn the remaining Manson member to death. Simply unforgettable.
1. “I shot Marvin in the face!” – Pulp Fiction (1994)
Over the course of nine films, we’ve seen people meet their demise in almost every violent way imaginable, but this moment in his sophomore feature was truly career-defining. In this movie alone, the body count is high, but the death of Marvin in Pulp Fiction remains perhaps the most definitive scene in Tarantino’s catalogue.
By blending shock value, gallons of blood and a hilariously dry quip from John Travolta’s character, Vincent Vega (“Oh man! I shot Marvin in the face!”), this scene where an innocent informant gets his head blown off by accident came to utterly define the director’s tone and style, and nearly 40 years on still stands as one of cinema’s most iconic moments. It was from Marvin’s exploding face onwards that audiences knew Tarantino was a director unlike one they’d ever witnessed before.
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