Tagarchief: Quentin Tarantino

Double Bill #17: Kill Bill Vol. 1 & Kill Bill Vol. 2

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

After Jackie Brown, Tarantino took a long break (six years), but when he returned, he did so with a vengeance. If you’re going to compare a Tarantino movie, you compare it to every other movie ever made that wasn’t made by Quintin Tarantino. By that standard, the two-part Kill Bill saga stands among the finest pieces of cinematic art of the century so far. Here, Tarantino does what he does best – lifting fragments from forgotten genre and exploitation cinema and fusing them into something wholly original – better than ever before. It’s a double-edged sword in many ways: a bold blend of Eastern and Western influences, effortlessly shifting between comic-book ultraviolence and moments of genuine emotional weight. This tonal balance works largely thanks to Uma Thurman’s superb central performance as The Bride, which anchors the madness with real feeling. The story itself is simple, yet utterly captivating. The characters are fascinating and endlessly quotable. The style is unmistakable and unmatched. Volume 1 plays like the ultimate samurai/yakuza/action movie of your childhood – the one you could watch endlessly – only somehow even better. Volume 2, by contrast, leans into the rhythms of a spaghetti western, offering more of Tarantino’s signature dialogue and a terrific performance by David Carradine, who reimagines his Kung Fu character Kwai Chang Caine as a pop culture loving and psychopathic mentor. Structured in ten chapters and told out of chronological order, Kill Bill unfolds as a true epic, packed with all of Tarantino’s hallmarks: razor-sharp humor, wax-museum characters, stylized violence, brilliant music choices, and a Pussy Wagon–load of pop culture references. The only Double Bill I actually experienced in theaters – back when Volume 2 was released in 2004 – and one I’ll never forget. Whenever The Whole Bloody Affair finally arrives in European theaters, I will be there for sure.

Dungeon Classics #39: True Romance

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

FilmDungeon’s Chief Editor JK sorts through the Dungeon’s DVD-collection to look for old cult favorites….

True Romance (1993, USA, France)

Director: Tony Scott
Cast: Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Dennis Hopper
Running Time: 119 mins.

In the early nineties, Tarantino wrote a couple of screenplays, including True Romance and Reservoir Dogs. He chose Reservoir Dogs for his directorial debut and was willing to sell True Romance. In 1993, after his debut was released, he took a date to the perfect date movie: True Romance, the film he had written. And boy, did it turn out to be a good movie; great fucking movie. Just looking at the cast members rolling by in the opening credits is astonishing; seeing so many (future) stars in one ensemble cast is rare. Director Tony Scott couldn’t deal with the screenplay’s non-chronological structure, so he changed it to a linear one. But aside from that, it’s a real Tarantino movie: the sharp dialogue, the great characters, the humor, the sudden bursts of violence; it’s all there. And then there’s an amazing sequence, one of the best he ever wrote: the famous Sicilian scene with Dennis Hopper and Christopher Walken. Oh man, that is legendary. Also memorable is the brutal confrontation between Alabama and the sadistic Virgil, played by James Gandolfini. The whole movie is basically a rollercoaster in which the two main characters – Clarence (Christian Slater) and Alabama (Patricia Arquette) – fall in love, get married, kill Alabama’s pimp, take off with his coke, and head to Hollywood to sell it, stumbling into one crazy situation after another while always keeping the film’s romantic core intact. True Romance is Scott’s best film and by far the best Tarantino movie not directed by Tarantino. In other words: it’s a must-see.

Cult Radar: Part 12

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

FilmDungeon.com is glad to explore the video trenches to find that oddball treasure between the piles of crap out there. Of course, a treasure in this context can also be a film that’s so shockingly bad it’s worth a look, or something so bizarre that cult fans just have to see it. Join us on our quest and learn what we learn. Hopefully we’ll uncover some well-hidden cult gems.

Researched by: Jeppe Kleijngeld

Across 110th Street (USA, 1972)

Directed by: Barry Shear
Written by: Luther Davis, Wally Ferris
Cast: Anthony Quinn, Yaphet Kotto, Anthony Franciosa

Tarantino’s Jackie Brown opens to the same rip-roaring title song as this movie: ‘Across 110th Street’ by Bobby Womack. It’s a homage to an exploitation classic, a New York set crime thriller about a gang of black criminals who rob the mob, sparking a brutal chase involving both the Mafia and the police. The police duo in charge consists of the corrupt captain Frank Matteli (Anthony Quinn) and Lieutenant William Aylesworth Pope (Yaphet Kotto); a street guy versus a guy who wants to do it by the book. Their chemistry is electric, giving the movie an emotional and moral backbone amid the chaos. The film was slammed at the time for the extreme violence, and while the film is indeed gritty, it is generally well acted and executed. Beneath the grit lies a sharp commentary on race, corruption, and urban decay in 1970s America. Watching it now, it’s easy to see why Tarantino holds it in such high regard.

The Curse of Frankenstein (UK, 1957)

Directed by: Terence Fisher
Written by: Jimmy Sangster (screenplay), Mary Shelley (novel)
Cast: Peter Cushing, Hazel Court, Robert Urquhart, Christopher Lee

Peter Cushing stars as Dr. Frankenstein and Christopher Lee as the creature in Hammer Studios’ retelling of the Frankenstein legend. Directed by Terence Fisher, who would go on to make Horror of Dracula a year later, this film is often regarded as one of the finest adaptations of Mary Shelley’s novel, even rivaling the classic Universal versions. Told in flashback from a prison cell, Victor Frankenstein recounts the story of how his obsession with discovering the secret of life led him to commit unspeakable crimes. For a film made in 1957, the horror remains remarkably effective, due in large part to Lee’s chilling performance. As Hammer’s first color horror film, The Curse of Frankenstein was notable for its bold use of gore in color and its vivid gothic style. It marked the beginning of the studio’s signature brand of horror and launched a successful series of sequels, with Fisher directing several of them.

Dark Star (USA, 1974)

Directed by: John Carpenter
Written by: John Carpenter, Dan O’Bannon
Cast: Dan O’Bannon, Dre Pahich, Brian Narelle

John Carpenter’s debut film gives us a cynical look at outer space travel. Not the majestic kind Kubrick showed us in 2001: A Space Odyssey, but more like space travel as a monotonous, blue-collar grind. Dark Star is the name of the ship that looks like a surf board. The job of its crew is to destroy unstable planets. And while this may sound exciting, the five crew members – who have been on board Dark Star for twenty years – are mostly bored out of their minds and increasingly detached from reality. Co-writer and actor Dan O’Bannon originally conceived the idea of an alien aboard the ship, but budget limitations forced him to turn that concept into the film’s now-infamous beach-ball creature. His alien idea would later become Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979). Tarantino once called this movie a masterpiece. I don’t see it that way, but I like the 2001 parody concept and the execution, including the inventive special effects, is certainly well done.

Man Bites Dog | C’est arrivé près de chez vous (Belgium, 1992)

Directed by: Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel, Benoît Poelvoorde
Written by: Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel, Benoît Poelvoorde
Cast: Benoît Poelvoorde, Jacqueline Poelvoorde-Pappaert, Nelly Pappaert

In this notorious cult classic from the French part of Belgium, a three-headed camera crew follows the gleefully depraved serial killer Ben, as he spends his days gruesomely murdering people for sport and profit. During the shoot, the crew becomes more and more complicit in Ben’s crimes. The sheer amount of killings is not very realistic, but the profiling of the killer, chillingly portrayed by Benoît Poelvoorde, convinces in all its sickness. The mockumentary concept was pretty new at the time, and the approach – taking the viewer inside the mind of a horrible human being, who – when he’s not busy killing people against depressing urban backdrops – is offering his warped and racist views in interviews – makes for disturbing cinema. The filmmakers, who worked on a shoestring budget, wanted to make something different, and they have succeeded in this task. C’est arrivé près de chez vous (‘It Happened Near You’) became a unique, deeply unsettling, and darkly comic milestone of cult cinema.

The Lady in Red (USA, 1979)

Directed by: Lewis Teague
Written by: John Sayles
Cast: Pamela Sue Martin, Robert Conrad, Louise Fletcher

Farm girl Polly moves to Chicago, where she becomes romantically involved with gangster John Dillinger. The film is curious in that it’s not really about Dillinger, but about his girlfriend and the unwitting role she played in the gangster’s famous demise at a movie theater. It traces Polly’s own descent into crime: she starts out as a seamstress, tries her hand at prostitution, and eventually ends up in jail. After Dillinger’s death, she organizes a dangerous but lucrative armed robbery on her own. Written by John Sayles, directed by Lewis Teague, and produced by Julie Corman – indeed, Roger Corman’s wife – the film unmistakably feels like a Corman-style exploitation picture, complete with plenty of bloody, machine-gun action. In his 2021 book ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood‘, Quentin Tarantino mentioned that in an alternate Hollywood universe, he directed a remake of this film. It certainly sounds like something he’d do well. Who knows – maybe an idea for his tenth and final movie?

The Outfit (1973)

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

Nobody plays rougher than The Outfit…Except maybe Earl, Cody and Bett!

Directed by:
John Flynn

Written by:
Donald E. Westlake (novel ‘The Outfit’ as Richard Stark)
John Flynn (screenplay)

Cast:
Robert Duvall (Earl Macklin), Karen Black (Bett Harrow), Joe Don Baker (Jack Cody), Robert Ryan (Mailer), Timothy Carey (Jake Menner), Richard Jaeckel (Kimmie Cherney), Sheree North (Buck’s Wife), Felice Orlandi (Frank Orlandi), Marie Windsor (Madge Coyle), Jane Greer (Alma Macklin)

Forgotten, gritty ’70s crime flick loosely adapted from a novel by Richard Stark (a follow-up to ‘The Hunter’, the book that inspired Point Blank and Payback).

The novel’s central character, Parker – named Earl Macklin here for some reason – has a score to settle with the crime syndicate known as the Outfit. After they murder his brother in retaliation for a robbery the two pulled on one of their banks, Macklin decides they owe him payback.

True to Parker’s nature, he demands compensation in his own way: together with his buddy Jack Cody and girlfriend Bett Harrow, he begins hitting the Outfit’s operations one by one. In return they set a trap for him, but Macklin is not a man easily cornered. It ends in a memorable shootout in the mansion of the Outfit’s top boss.

The film is directed by John Flynn (Rolling Thunder), who also wrote the screenplay. Flynn was a fine, efficient, and sadly underrated filmmaker who specialized in lean, mean crime pictures. He’s a director admired by Quentin Tarantino – as Tarantino noted in ‘Cinema Speculation’, his book on ’70s cinema – and it’s easy to see why. The film is stylishly shot and Robert Duvall is great in the lead tough guy role.

That said, it misses the real hard-boiled coolness or cinematic innovation that made John Boorman’s Point Blank, which was again based on similar source material, such a memorable film.

Rating:

Quote:
EARL MACKLIN: “Now, the Outfit’s gonna pay me money for my trouble. I figure 250.000 to make things right. Tell your friends. That’s the bill: 250. I hit you until you pay me. What I take in between is extra.”

Trivia:
The Outfit (1973) (much like The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) and other crime films of this period) has been included on many lists of lesser known films recommended by 21st century film analysts.