The movie Quentin Tarantino calls “an early 1970s masterpiece”
We’re not entirely sure whether there is another soul on earth who knows late 20th-century cinema better than Quentin Tarantino, the iconic filmmaker and student of the moving image whose own movies are imbued with some of history’s greatest releases. Inspired by the likes of Akira Kurosawa, Sergio Leone, Martin Scorsese and Takeshi Miike, each of Tarantino’s flicks are a tribute to the history of cinema.
Whilst he adores cinema from each and every decade of movie history, the 1970s might be his favourite, housing such releases as Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and Steven Spielberg’s Jaws. The latter is even one of the few movies Tarantino states is utterly “perfect”, sharing the sparkling accolade alongside other releases of the decade, including Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, William Friedkin’s The Exorcist and Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
A decade of experimentation and innovation in the world of Hollywood, the 1970s saw the rise of the ‘Movie Brats’, with the power shifting from studios to creative individuals such as Brian De Palma, George Lucas and Paul Schrader among others. Another filmmaker who rose to prominence on the fringes of the industry was John Carpenter, helming the horror game-changer Halloween in 1978 after working his way up the industry.
Indeed, there was one Carpenter flick from the ‘70s that Tarantino loved more than any other, and it wasn’t his slasher horror classic.
“It’s a science fiction masterpiece,” Tarantino says of Carpenter’s 1974 debut Dark Star, “It’s a counter-culture, anti-establishment, hippie filmmaking masterpiece. It’s an early 70s masterpiece. So that is my take on Dark Star, I actually think it’s a classic now that I’ve revisited it”.
Having helmed multiple short films throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, Dark Star was the director’s feature debut and first foray into the sci-fi genre he would later become known for. Co-written by himself and Dan O’Bannon, the film told the story of a small space crew who go on a solitary mission into the cosmos only for things to go rather hilariously wrong.
In 2021, Carpenter sat down with the BFI to discuss his first film, stating: “I’ve loved science fiction since I was a kid…and some of the film was paying tribute to the old science fiction films… the beach ball alien was like the 50s rubber monsters running around. We had no money to compete with 2001, but its religious overtones insulted me so much that I just said ‘I’m not going to do that, I’m going to make a down-to-earth movie, how do you clean your underwear when you’re on a spaceship’ and so on”.
Listen to Tarantino discuss his love for Carpenter’s lesser-known sci-fi, below.
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