The unlikely crossover Quentin Tarantino called his greatest inspiration
In many ways, Quentin Tarantino redefined cinema and has influenced a whole generation of filmmakers since his debut, Reservoir Dogs, arrived in 1992. However, he is known to be a voracious consumer of films and draws influence from many places himself, including an obsession with spaghetti westerns. It’s no shock, considering his early career as a video store assistant.
During a conversation with The Talks, Tarantino claimed that at his most obsessive, he was watching an average of 200 films a year, so pinpointing his greatest inspiration can prove difficult. Admitting that his favourites changed day-to-day when asked for his top three, he did announce a rather surprising favourite in the form of an iconic comedy duo: Abbott and Costello.
One of the most popular comedy duos of the 1940s and 1950s, they were the highest-paid entertainers during the Second World War. Throughout their careers, they delivered several acclaimed comedy movies, including The Naughty Nineties, One Night in the Tropics, The Time of Their Lives, and Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.
A fan of Abbott and Costello when he was a child, Taramtino claimed that their 1948 Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein was currently his biggest inspiration. Talking about the film, he said, “I saw that when I was a little boy, and it was my favourite movie at that time. Part of the reason was the combination of genres…the Abbott and Costello stuff is pretty funny, and when Frankenstein’s monster shows up, it’s pretty scary.”
The movie sees Bela Lugosi return to the role of Count Dracula, who wishes to reanimate Frankenstein’s monster, but in order for the process to work, he needs a new brain. Cue a brain that just so happens to belong to Lou Costello’s Wilbur Grey, who works with none other than Bud Abbott’s Chick Young as a baggage clerk. Interestingly, the comedy duo weren’t the most enthusiastic about the film, and it was nearly scrapped due to Universal Pictures’ bankruptcy, but somehow the film got made. And a good thing: who knows where Tarantino might have been without his first favourite film?
The main reason for Tarantino’s appreciation was its mixing of genres, a technique he himself has been “doing his whole career”. From his early crime films to the martial arts of Kill Bill and onto revisionist histories, each genre he takes on contains hints and glimmers of others, each underpinned by darkly comedic elements. But even he was impressed with his younger self for “making genre distinctions when [he] was five”. Clearly, a career in film was written in the stars for him. In true film-lover fashion, he goes on to state Taxi Driver and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly as the other two in his trio. Much less surprising and perhaps a little bit derivative of boring Quentin.
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