‘Near Dark’: The horror movie Quentin Tarantino is the “hugest fan” of
There are few mainstream filmmakers who utilise violence and gore more frequently than Quentin Tarantino. From the moment he released his debut feature, 1992’s Reservoir Dogs, he committed himself to an intense yet stylistic form of on-screen violence, placing Stealers Wheel’s ‘Stuck in the Middle with You’ over a gritty hostage scene and indulging in blood spurts aplenty.
Three decades later, this grisly yet playful take on brutality has become essential to Tarantino’s auteurship. From the slick violence of the aptly titled Kill Bill series to the mammoth kill count in Inglorious Basterds, Tarantino has continually provided modern cinema with some of its bloodiest and boldest moments. Despite this, he has rarely ventured into the one genre that thrives on gore and gruesomeness.
Horror is the undisputed home of on-screen violence. The genre has provided audiences with scares and squirms for decades while offering directors the opportunity to use bloody effects and stylistic violence. Tarantino has dipped his toes into horror, with his 2007 slasher Death Proof, for example, but he seems to prefer working within other genres, such as war epics and westerns.
Horror may be largely exempt from Tarantino’s own filmography, but this isn’t the case for his watching habits. Some of his favourite films exist within the world of horror, from Brian De Palma’s version of Carrie to Kathryn Bigelow’s contribution to the genre, Near Dark. During a chat with author Bret Easton Ellis, Tarantino declared him the “hugest fan” of Bigelow’s film.
Released in 1987, Near Dark combined elements of horror with the world of westerns in a tale of violence and vampires. Adrian Pasdar starred as Caleb Colton, a cowboy who unexpectedly becomes infatuated with a member of the undead. He decides to join her and her crew of vampires, grappling with his new life.
Tarantino was so taken by the film that he followed Bigelow’s career for decades following, as she went on to direct iconic action flicks like Point Break and took home an Academy Award for 2008’s The Hurt Locker. It’s easy to see why Tarantino was particularly intrigued by Near Dark, which contained so many of the elements he uses in his own approach to violence.
It wasn’t just a straightforward horror film; it was a genre-blending effort that pulled the worlds of cowboys and vampires together. Bigelow also committed to truly grisly scenes of violence, from death by tractor to bloody vampire bites. Gory and daring when it came to using genre, Near Dark was exactly the kind of film that would capture Tarantino’s attention and exactly the kind of film he would go on to emulate.
Just five years after the release of Near Dark, Tarantino began his own filmmaking career and followed in Bigelow’s footsteps by combining unexpected genres. He combined his love for pop culture references, comedic moments, and killer soundtracks with tales of crime, martial arts and revenge. The result was a style that was distinctly Tarantino’s.
He didn’t need to commit entirely to the world of horror; he created his moments of terror and disgust in his own stories of cults and crime. In fact, many of his films are more violent and more unsettling than those that exist within the horror genre, proving that there are more ingenious ways to create audience reactions than straightforward jump scares.
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