Mario Brava: The B-movie director who inspired Quentin Tarantino to greatness
Even though he’s never made a straightforward horror movie in the truest sense of the term – despite the majority of his filmography containing at least one instance of wince-inducing violence – Quentin Tarantino has been open in how heavily the genre at large helped inspire and shape him into the filmmaker he became.
Breaking through as the creator of labyrinthine crime thrillers that played with the concept of structure and convention, the two-time Academy Award winner would eventually try his hand at martial arts-inspired revenge stories, revisionist historical epics, Westerns, and love letters to Los Angeles.
With just one feature left before he retires from directing, though, it’s a cinematic itch that Tarantino will leave unscratched. Death Proof came the closest by far to taking him into full-blown horror territory with the caveat of substituting a typical slasher villain for a maniacal murderer who wields a car as their weapon of choice, making it rather ironic that his sole flirtation with terror is regularly deemed his weakest effort.
And yet, one of the most important influences on his entire career was Mario Brava, nicknamed the ‘Master of the Macabre’. A prolific creative who would often churn out anywhere up to five movies on an annual basis in various capacities, what he lacked in budget he more than made up for in ingenuity and visual style, leaving behind a legacy as one of horror’s godfathers at a time when the medium was only at the beginning of its mainstream acceptance.
As somebody who would devour as much cinema as possible before he got his foot in the door, it’s unsurprising that Tarantino referred to Bava as “one of the first directors I got to know by name”. Creating an inadvertent connection with an era-defining musical act, too, it was “because I saw Black Sabbath on late night television and would get excited to see it pop up again”.
Explaining to SiriusXM that “it has this cool operatic quality about it”, the Pulp Fiction and Django Unchained architect listed Bava alongside Sergio Leone as the two names above all who “got me thinking about shots”. From watching their respective back catalogues, he “recognised a cinematic style, signature, and quality to the movies that went beyond the movie just being good or not.”
Fully aware that not even his idols boasted a 100% hit rate, Tarantino admitted that “even when I saw a Bava movie I didn’t like, I still recognised that same operatic quality.” As a writer, director, cinematographer and special effects artist that regularly wore multiple hats on the same production, the Italian idol was inevitably going to fluctuate between quantity and quality.
Nonetheless, even his lesser-heralded efforts managed to make a mark on Tarantino, helping the aspiring filmmaker develop what would soon become recognized as his own signature style.
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