“It was just as bad”: the godawful sequel Quentin Tarantino walked out of after 20 minutes
It might sound unusual for someone who openly adores cinema as much as Quentin Tarantino to cut their losses and walk out of a movie well before it’s finished, but everyone has their limits.
What makes it even more bizarre is that it was the sequel to a film he’d also walked out of, even if he had his reasons for subjecting himself to the follow-up to a flick he couldn’t even survive until the end credits. Still, he must have had some inkling that the worst kind of filmic lightning was about to strike twice.
For the most part, Tarantino perseveres with a movie once he’s started. It’s a sentiment shared by many cinephiles, who can’t bring themselves to either turn off their TV or vacate their local multiplex, having already committed to watching something from beginning to end.
Reviews aren’t supposed to be taken as gospel either, which was another flaw in Tarantino’s master plan. While Pauline Kael remains his all-time favourite critic, he also has a soft spot for longtime Los Angeles Times reviewer Kenneth Thomas, who had a whole chapter dedicated to him in the two-time Academy Award winner’s book, Cinema Speculation.
When a critic he admired was singing the praises of an exploitation flick, the gnarly subgenre Tarantino had been avidly devouring since his youth, then it stands to reason that the impressionable filmgoer would take Thomas at his word. He did, twice, and he regretted it on both counts after being burned by Thomas’ glowing appraisal.
“Same thing for his positive notice of the bad South African martial arts flick Kill and Kill Again,” he wrote. “Which was the sequel to the equally bad Kill or Be Killed, which I saw and thought was so lousy that I walked out after 40 minutes (I’d do that from time to time, but I didn’t make a habit of it).”
The opening instalment is standard exploitation fare: a former Nazi who lost a karate bout to a Japanese martial artist during World War II organises an entire tournament for the express purpose of seeking revenge. The sequel was equally ludicrous, following an intrepid team of fighters as they seek to recover a doctor who’d been kidnapped after stumbling upon the secrets of mind-control while researching potatoes, so high art was never on the agenda.
“After reading Kevin’s well-written appreciation of the sequel, I took a chance the film would be different than the godawful original,” Tarantino recalled. “Nope. It was just as bad. After 20 minutes, I walked out of this one too. But I never begrudged Kevin Thomas his enthusiasm.”
Kill or Be Killed and Kill and Kill Again run for a combined total of 194 minutes, but Tarantino only gave them 60 minutes of his time. He walked out of the sequel twice as quickly as he’d abandoned the original, too, so it’s understandable that he was feeling a little irritated that Thomas’ review had left him so misled.
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