The cult classic Quentin Tarantino called one of the best movies of the 1970s: “It blew me through the back wall”
The 1970s generated some of the most important and influential movies of all time. Nobody knows this more than Quentin Tarantino. Born in 1963, the acclaimed auteur would have come of age in the decade, which has shaped his own work in various ways. The entirety of both Kill Bill movies are homages to ’70s exploitation films, while Pam Grier was cast in Jackie Brown solely based on her work in the genre.
In addition to shouting the period out in his films, Tarantino has committed his love of the 1970s to the page. In 2022, he published Cinema Speculation, a book inspired by the leading film critic of the time, Pauline Kael. In it, he highlights many ’70s movies of all shapes and sizes, from classics like Taxi Driver and Bullitt to lesser-known pictures like Paradise Alley – Sylvester Stallone’s directorial debut.
On an even smaller scale, Tarantino references a scene from the 1975 Russ Meyer film Supervixens, in which a police officer kills a female character after she makes fun of him. When asked by Deadline if this inspired a similar moment in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the director revealed that it was completely coincidental.
“I know I hadn’t seen Supervixens when I had done that movie,” he said. “I saw Supervixens fairly recently when I was doing research on [Los Angeles Times film critic] Kevin Thomas. I knew he was a big Russ Meyers fan, so I started looking up some of the reviews. I read the review for Supervixens. Even though he’s saying that that’s where the movie goes wrong, his description of the bathtub scene was so electric and so exciting. It was like, ‘I have to watch that right now.’”
After an argument with her husband, the hypersexual SuperAngel (Shari Eubank) is confronted by policeman Harry Sledge (Charlies Napier), following complaints from their neighbours. To get back at her other half, Angel tries to have sex with Sledge, only to find that he can’t perform. After she mocks him, Sledge violently murders her, pushing her into a bath full of water and repeatedly stomping and jumping on her, leaving her a bloody mess. When Angel attempts to crawl out of the bath, he throws in a portable radio, electrocuting her to death.
“I watched it, and it blew me through the back wall,” Tarantino said of his first encounter with this particular moment. “This is one of the great violent scenes of ’70s cinema. This is right up there with Straw Dogs. This is right up there with Deliverance. This is right up there with The Deer Hunter.” While it feels wrong to praise such a heinous display of violence against women, there is something viscerally engaging about watching Napier lose his mind and deliver such an unrelenting assault on his victim. It doesn’t even pay off later in the story, as the final scene of the movie is Sledge plotting to kill again.
Everything about this scene, from the violence to the excessive blood to the hammy way in which Eubank sells being shocked, feels like Tarantino at his most ridiculous. Even though he hadn’t seen Supervixens, the movie and its ilk clearly had a huge effect on how the generational talent views aggression as a storytelling device.
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