The John Carpenter movie that inspired Quentin Tarantino’s debut feature film
Back in 1992, Quentin Tarantino announced himself on the movie scene with his now iconic debut feature movie Reservoir Dogs. It stars Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Chris Penn, Steve Buscemi, Michael Madsen and Tarantino himself as a gang of diamond thieves and tells of a heist gone wrote.
Tarantino’s debut is indicative of many of the themes that his future films would go on to express: criminal violence, reference to popular culture and a non-linear narrative. Reservoir Dogs is indeed a unique film, but it’s not without its influences. Tarantino once said that he had been inspired by one of John Carpenter’s best films, his 1982 science fiction horror The Thing, starring Kurt Russell in the lead role.
In an early interview from 1992, Tarantino explained how he had been inspired by The Thing. “The film that is actually a big influence on the film is John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing,” the director began. “It’s very similar, alright, and I didn’t take anything from it, but I wanted to capture that same feeling in The Thing.”
The Thing is Carpenter’s remake of the 1951 movie The Thing from Another World and tells of a group of American scientists on an Antarctic research station who are terrorised by a strange extra-terrestrial lifeform who imitates the members of the research team, who become increasingly paranoid and distrustful of one another.
Tarantino explained, “You have all these guys trapped in this room, alright, and no one can trust anybody else, and they can’t go anywhere else, and they just have to deal with each other. Which is exactly the exact same situation in Reservoir Dogs.”
The effect Carpenter’s movie had on Tarantino when he first saw it at the cinema was something that would stick around with him until it was time to make his debut feature. “What I wanted to achieve, and what that film achieved when I first saw it at the theatres, was the tension of those guys in that situation being so great,” he said.
The director signed off, “There was no release from it because it was so claustrophobic that the only place that tension could go was right out into the audience. That’s how I felt when I was looking at The Thing, and that’s what I wanted to achieve in my movie.”
Check out the interview below and also the trailer for John Carpenter’s The Thing.
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