The Australian movies that inspired Quentin Tarantino: “Love the film’s energy”
Quentin Tarantino is the director of Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, Django Unchained and for our purposes here, The Hateful Eight. You know the list. Tarantino has always worn his variegated influences on the sleeves of his checkered shirts, never shy to reference an incomprehensible arthouse film or an exploitation movie in the same rapid fire cadence. His love for cinema reaches as far as claiming to have enjoyed Todd Phillips’ Joker: Folie à Deux.
The famous director (or infamous, depending on your palate) has said on numerous occasions that his mother preferred high art and his dad liked lowbrow films. Whatever you may think of the bifurcation between high and low art, watching Ingmar Bergman one night and Pam Grier in Coffy the next has its fingerprints all over his work, including The Hateful Eight.
It’s a movie that received more lukewarm reception than most of Tarantino’s acclaimed filmography since the reconsideration of his freshman debut in Reservoir Dogs—which is now well regarded but was considered middling upon its release. The same thing may happen in years to come with The Hateful Eight—or maybe not—but in the meantime, Tarantino was pleased as ever to give a litany of what inspired the film.
The Guardian interview reports, “He’s credited several Australian productions for directly influencing his work, including schlock-tastic 1978 thriller Patrick, which inspired some of Kill Bill. On countless Australian DVD dust jackets, the writer/director/uber film nerd’s name appears underneath an effusive quote, from classic surfer drama Summer City (“love the film’s energy!”) to chopsocky action pic The Man from Hong Kong (“this movie fucking kicks ass!”).”
As a cinephile of the highest order, Tarantino has probably seen these films. You probably haven’t, unless you’re an Australian with very specialised interests. But it’s his thing; he’s the guy who worked in a video store and watched all of the movies on the shelves. The guy you rolled your eyes at when he told you about the movie he was going to make one day.
But in this case, you would have been wrong to do so. Further describing the issue at hand, Tarantino claimed ‘Ozsploitation’ as a term for these lowbrow films that have a certain campy appeal but would never in a million years get a wide release. These are midnight movies for people who want to see something weird and corny, people who are bored of predictable and saccharine Hollywood dreck. People like Quentin Tarantino. Most countries and cultures have a storied tradition of this, and it’s the equivalent of enjoying Worldstar more than a UFC fight.
Highbrow vs lowbrow art is has been contested since before anyone reading this was born. Whether it’s the avant-garde in cinema, the theatre of cruelty, the actual lowbrow art movement, titled as such with pride in the 1960s or bawdy tavern songs from the days of Shakespeare and Marlowe. What separates this work from the florid and high-flown art of the glitterati. If Tarantino has a gift, it’s in stapling this distinction shut.
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