The horror movie Quentin Tarantino called fantastic: “Blew me away”
While it’s quite clear that Quentin Tarantino simply loves the cinematic medium, it’s fair to say that he certainly has his favourite genres, one of which is undoubtedly horror. The director and screenwriter has stated his love for all things gory, spooky and splatter on several occasions, revealing his passion for the darker side of cinema.
While Tarantino himself has never made a direct horror movie per se, bar perhaps his half of 2007’s Grindhouse, the motifs, themes and even aesthetics of the horror genre have cropped up in the director’s works on many occasions. For instance, Tarantino has never shied away from scenes dripping in gore and blood.
Still, Tarantino has his biggest loves in the horror world, and he’s previously spoken of William Friedkin’s The Exorcist and John Carpenter’s The Thing as being amongst his favourites. It’s also clear that Tarantino harbours a deep passion for the body horror works of David Cronenberg, particularly one of his earliest movies.
“When it comes to infected people movies, probably my very favourite is David Cronenberg’s Rabid,” Tarantino once noted. “I love Rabid; that was the first of David Cronenberg’s movies I ever saw.” At the time, Tarantino didn’t know who the Canadian director was, and he barely knew the lead actor of Rabid, Marilyn Chambers.
In Rabid, Chambers plays Rose, a young woman who undergoes experimental plastic surgery following a motorcycle accident. The surgery leaves her with a strange phallic appendage under her armpit that she uses to feed on people’s blood, leaving them with a rabies-like infection.
Watching Cronenberg’s film for the first time at the Rolling Hills Twin Theater in Torrance, CA, Tarantino was “going along with it thinking, ‘Oh, this is pretty good.'” As the movie progressed, though, the future director realised that Rabid had much more on offer than he had originally thought.
He noted, “Then I was like, ‘Wow, this is getting a little rougher than I was expecting.’ When the operation scene happens, the doctor takes the nurse’s finger and cuts it off with the scissors. I was like, ‘Oh my God, what am I watching?'” From there, things just got “crazier and crazier” in the film, and Tarantino gained a newfound respect for Cronenberg.
Rabid served as the first time that Tarantino “really noticed people being infected.” By the time Cronenberg’s body horror had ended, Tarantino was completely mesmerised by the Canadian director’s effort. “Ending it with the people in the hazmat suits picking up the bodies and throwing them in the garbage truck, including our heroine,” he said. “The whole thing just blew me away; I thought it was fantastic.”
Rabid saw Cronenberg lay down his blueprint for the body horror movies that would come over the next few decades of his career. Tarantino saw the Canadian director’s The Brood just a few years later and was similarly impressed, just as he likely was with the likes of Scanners, Videodrome and The Fly.
Tarantino’s love for the horror genre is well known, and it’s clear that he sticks David Cronenberg alongside some of his favourite horror filmmakers, such as Eli Roth, William Friedkin, and John Carpenter. When it comes to body horror, it looks like Rabid was the movie that showed Tarantino the subgenre’s true brilliance.
Never Miss A Take
The Far Out Quentin Tarantino Newsletter
All the latest Quentin Tarantino content from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.