The 10 films that inspired Quentin Tarantino
No other filmmaker wears their influences on their sleeve quite like Quentin Tarantino. Whilst most artists downplay their inspirations, if not outright deny them, the Tennessee auteur gladly rattles off his forebears like a drinks order at a cocktail bar. Just look at any of his screenplays, and you’ll almost certainly find a dedication to one or several actors, directors and writers he feels deserve some artistic credit for his film.
With a career spanning over 20 years, Tarantino’s filmography is definitive post-modern cinema. And yet it is painfully finite; whilst his legacy in modern cinema cannot be understated, his next film has been confirmed to be his last. The director has maintained that he would only ever make ten films, so if you count Kill Bill Vol 1 and 2 as one film, which the director chooses to do, his final film will be The Movie Critic.
Not much has been revealed about this next film, save for the fact that Tarantino is setting it in 1977, and it will follow a critic who reviews films in a ‘porno mag’. Having worked with consistently massive Hollywood stars ranging from Leonardo DiCaprio to Brad Pitt to Margot Robbie, it’s in keeping with this pattern that rumours have it that Christian Bale might be appearing in The Movie Critic. If true, it would mark the first collaboration between the actor and director and would undoubtedly yield some incredible results.
With the conclusion of Tarantino’s contributions as a director drawing closer, let’s celebrate his films in the same way that his movies celebrate cinema. He’s one of the industry’s biggest cinephiles and film nerds, with a comprehensive knowledge matched by very few. There are almost certainly dozens of references and easter eggs celebrating his forebears in every single picture, but let us take an in-depth look at the movies that have directly influenced and inspired some of his greatest films.
The 10 films that inspired Quentin Tarantino:
10. City on Fire (Ringo Lam, 1987)
It’s hard to over-emphasise just how much Reservoir Dogs has to thank for this classic Hong Kong cop film. Ringo Lam’s City on Fire, with its premise of an undercover detective infiltrating a gang of jewel thieves, influenced Tarantino’s debut film in more ways than one.
From the botched heist to civilians killed in the crossfire, there are numerous plot points and shots that Tarantino directly appropriates. Most famously, however, is the final 20 minutes of both films, which are almost identical; the fleeing criminals hide out in an abandoned space where, fuelled by paranoia, they pull guns on each other in a Mexican stand-off.
9. Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, 1955)
The references snuck into Tarantino’s Palme d’Or winning second film, Pulp Fiction, are so high in number they would warrant their own list. The car window shot from Psycho, the dancing from 8½, his 1994 movie is perhaps the most visually informed of all his films.
But the mysterious briefcase, which casts a shimmering golden glow and drives the entire film’s narrative, is directly inspired by Robert Aldrich’s 1955 film noir, Kiss Me Deadly, in which the characters fight over a ‘radioactive’ box which is believed to contain an ambiguous fortune.
8. Foxy Brown (Jack Hill, 1974)
For his 1997 film Jackie Brown, Tarantino took the Elmore Leonard novel Rum Punch and put a genius twist on it; his film adaptation would be told through the lens of blaxploitation cinema.
Along with Coffy in 1973, Foxy Brown was the definitive film of the genre that helped Tarantino shape his vision for his third feature. From the casting of Pam Grier, the lead in the two 1970s films and several others, right down to his new name for the movie version, Jack Hill’s 1974 film profoundly affected the director.
7. Lady Snowblood (Toshiya Fujita, 1973)
Both Volumes 1 and 2 of Kill Bill feature countless cinematic easter eggs, but the impact of the beauty and setting of Toshiya Fujita’s 1973 samurai film is unrivalled.
The main character is a female swordsman capable of taking on multiple men at once. There’s the blood-soaked mission of vengeance, cutting down anyone in her way. And then there’s the particularly lasting image of a dual in a snowy landscape, which anyone who has seen the first Kill Bill will find extremely familiar.
6. Samurai Fiction (Hiroyuki Nakano, 1998)
Although the influence of this film is felt solely in one scene from Kill Bill, it so strongly inspired Tarantino that, out of all the references, this is the one which he outright stole.
This samurai comedy mash-up is a monochrome masterpiece that parodies the genre whilst delivering genuinely spectacular fight scenes. Using colour sparingly, there is one famous fight scene where the characters are shown as silhouettes, duelling against a red and geometric background, a setting in which Tarantino would place his main character of The Bride, shot-for-shot.
5. The Dirty Dozen (Robert Aldrich, 1967)
Five years after the second Kill Bill movie, Tarantino gave us what many consider to be his magnum opus; the 2009 epic war film Inglorious Basterds.
Following an elite troupe of Jewish soldiers on a covert mission to eliminate the highest ranks of the Nazi regime, including Hitler himself, the film could not have been written without the existence of Robert Aldrich’s own war film, The Dirty Dozen, which basically created the formula of a rag-tag group of soldiers assembling for a secret assignment.
4. The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah, 1969)
Tarantino has cited the influence of pulp director Sam Peckinpah on numerous occasions, but The Wild Bunch is definitely the archetypal film that’s influence has found its way across the director’s entire filmography.
Specifically, a group of subversive characters that perpetrate bloody violence to achieve their goals, rightly or wrongly. Using the skeleton of this film, Tarantino has infused his own with a spaghetti western taste, whether it’s Kill Bill, Inglorious Basterds or The Hateful Eight.
3. Django (Sergio Corbucci, 1966)
No stranger to the spaghetti western, Tarantino’s transportation of the classic genre to the Antebellum South was so directly influenced by this particular film that he just straight up took the name and added an extra word to it.
Unapologetic in its violence, Sergio Corbucci’s 1966 film showed the graphic power of a revolver on the human body, as well as gave us a cool anti-hero to rival Clint Eastwood. So indebted to the film was Tarantino that he had Franco Nero, the original player of ‘Django’, feature in a scene with his own version.
2. Dragon Inn (King Hu, 1967)
Similar to how he lets the western genre seep into his movies, Chinese wuxia films and Japanese samurai often leave an indelible mark on Tarantino’s work as well.
Many elements of King Hu’s classic 1967 film have found their way into other Tarantino movies, but a particularly tense and suspenseful scene taking place in the titular Dragon Inn directly inspired both the basement scene in Inglorious Basterds and the whole premise of The Hateful Eight; bubbling paranoia that erupts into violence.
1. The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)
Whilst ostensibly a science-fiction horror, neither of which are genres Tarantino has ever seriously dabbled in, John Carpenter’s seminal 1982 film remains one of the most influential in the director’s career.
An isolated location, a dangerous unknown enemy, and a group of armed and highly paranoid people ready to pull the trigger at a moment’s notice; the ending of Reservoir Dogs, the Nazi infiltration scenes in Inglorious Basterds and, once again, the entire plot and snowy setting of The Hateful Eight owe a considerable debt to Carpenter’s masterclass in suspense.
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.