The movie Quentin Tarantino called “the exploitation version of ‘Mean Streets'”
Martin Scorsese may have never been concerned with exploitation cinema to a significant extent, but Quentin Tarantino definitely has, with B-tier genre films being a key part of his upbringing as an ardent cinephile.
The filmmaker’s love for the lower rungs of the filmic ladder were ultimately realised when he and Robert Rodriguez partnered up for the double-feature Grindhouse, only for the duo to dramatically overestimate how much the general public cared about their fondness for gonzo fare.
While he’s told his fair share of hard-hitting, violent, and unsettling stories on the big screen, Scorsese and exploitation have rarely been mentioned in the same breath. It’s fitting that when they did, it was Tarantino who found himself in the middle of that unexpected maelstrom, comparing Mean Streets to a little-seen crime flick with a distinctly B-tier title.
The only feature of writer and director Ralph De Vito, The Death Collector marked another first as Joe Pesci’s maiden credited appearance on-screen. It was only a supporting role, but the actor made enough of an impression that it led him directly into Scorsese’s orbit.
As he told Tarantino in conversation for the Directors Guild of America, The Death Collector was “how we got Joe for Raging Bull“. Robert De Niro had seen the film and been blown away by the performances of Pesci and Frank Vincent, both of whom would appear in not only Scorsese’s classic boxing drama with De Niro but also Goodfellas and Casino.
“Well, I heard it was playing at the Arcade,” Tarantino said of his first time seeing The Death Collector, which didn’t come until years after its 1976 debut. “And I go, ‘Wow’. It was like right after the Raging Bull. I go, ‘That’s the movie’. The only way to see it was to go there at four in the morning. I’m not going to go there at eight at night.”
Pesci didn’t appear in another feature for four years after The Death Collector, but when he did, he earned an Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Supporting Actor’ after collaborating with Scorsese for the first time on Raging Bull, setting them up for a beautiful friendship that’s produced plenty of greatness along the way.
For Tarantino, he saw it as “like an exploitation version of Mean Streets,” which isn’t too far wide of the mark when the story tracks a young criminal with lofty aspirations rising through a New Jersey racket. Hollywood really is full of little coincidences that pan out in the long run; if it wasn’t for The Debt Collector, then Pesci may not have been on Scorsese’s radar, and the first time Tarantino saw it long before he befriended the legendary director, the first thought on his mind was his breakthrough Mean Streets.
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