The comedy double act that inspired Quentin Tarantino
While Quentin Tarantino has inspired so many of his fellow filmmakers over the years since his debut movie Reservoir Dogs arrived in 1992, it is also fair to say that the director himself has been influenced by several of those who came before him, subtly altering his style and method of storytelling.
There are few directors as inspiring in the eyes of Tarantino as Sergio Leone, and he’s gone on record several times to state his admiration for his spaghetti westerns. So, too, do we know that Tarantino was deeply impacted by the works of Brian De Palma and once said that he was “obsessed” with him in his 20s.
There’s one rather surprising inspiration of Tarantino’s, though, a comedy pair that we would never have expected to have been a deep inspiration for the iconic director. In a conversation with The Talks, Tarantino was asked what his three favourite films are, although he admitted that it might change day to day.
He then drew attention to the 1948 Charles Barton horror comedy Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, which sees Bela Lugosi portray Count Dracula, who wants to reanimate Frankenstein’s monster. However, to get the process to work, he needs a new brain for the monster, which just so happens to belong to Lou Costello’s Wilbur Grey, who works with Bud Abbot’s Chick Young as a baggage clerk.
Discussing the film, Tarantino said: “I would say Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein because I saw that when I was a little boy, and it was my favourite movie at that time. Part of the reason was the combination of genres – The Abbott and Costello stuff is pretty funny, and when Frankenstein’s monster shows up, it’s pretty scary.”
Abbott and Costello were one of the most popular comedy duos of the 1940s and 1950s and were the highest-paid entertainers during the Second World War. They delivered several acclaimed comedy movies throughout their careers, including The Naughty Nineties, One Night in the Tropics, The Time of Their Lives and Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.
The real reason that Tarantino admires the pair and the 1948 film, in particular, is because of the mixing of genres, something that Tarantino admits he is partial to in his own work. “I didn’t know I was making genre distinctions when I was five, but I was,” the director said. “But that’s what I have been doing my whole career, mixing genres together.”
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