In 1994, just before Quentin Tarantino was about to break out with his Oscar/Palme d'Or-winning second feature, “Pulp Fiction,” he had a profile in the September issue of Details. The profile also included a list of 15 “must-see movies” of his.
I have always been fascinated by this list. Back then, I was a budding film buff looking for movie recommendations that could expand my film knowledge. And here we had a list that ran the gamut: westerns, crime movies, French New Wave offerings, '70s dramas, and even a Blaxploitation movie.
It wasn't until recently that I discovered that many of the films on this list formed a program for which Tarantino curated. the Stockholm International Film Festival in 1994where he also won several awards for “Pulp.”
If you look back at Tarantino's three-decade-plus career, you can see how these films really influenced many things in his filmography, from characters to scenes to entire plots. So, in no particular order, here are the dozen films that practically made Tarantino the iconic filmmaker he is today:
“Explosion” (1981)
WHAT TARANTINO SAID: “It's Brian De Palma's best movie, which means it's one of the best movies ever made because, as we all know, Brian De Palma is the best director of his generation. “John Travolta, by the way, gives one of the best performances of all time in this film.” – From a 1993 news item in “Quentin Tarantino – Visits Video Archives”, 2018
WHAT INFLUENCED: Just like when De Palma boldly hired the lovable singer-dancer Travolta to star in his paranoid political thriller, Tarantino eventually followed suit, giving Travolta a career-rejuvenating role as a hitman in “Pulp.”
“One-Eyed Jacks” (1961)
WHAT TARANTINO SAID: “If I had to choose my three favorite westerns, they would be “Rio Bravo”, number one; “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” number two; and “One-Eyed Jacks,” number three. – From a 1993 interview in 'Quentin Tarantino: Interviews', 1998
WHAT INFLUENCED: Marlon Brando directed and stars in this lurid western, a story of disreputable gunmen who betray and seek revenge that is not unlike what Tarantino did in his stellar chamber piece “The Hateful Eight.”
“Rio Bravo” (1959)
WHAT TARANTINO SAID: “It's one of the great reunion movies. There are certain movies where you spend so much time with the characters, that they actually become your friends… My idea was that if I ever liked a girl and we started seeing each other a little, I would show her 'Rio Bravo'. ' – And you better like it! –From “Quentin Tarantino talks about Rio Bravo”, 2007
WHAT INFLUENCED: Tarantino always makes movies where you get to know the characters, from the gang of bad guys in “Reservoir Dogs” to the loners, girls and losers who occupy Tinseltown in “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.”
“Band aside” (1964)
WHAT TARANTINO SAID: “I remember at the Fox Venice [movie theater]they had a great [Jean-Luc] Godard Film Festival… I really liked 'Bande a part', in particular. It really got me. But again, one of the things that got me is that I almost felt like I could have done that. “I could have put a camera in the back of a convertible and just had someone drive down Venice Boulevard if I wanted to.” — From “Quentin Tarantino on Jean-Luc Godard”, 2016
WHAT INFLUENCED: Tarantino not only named his production company A Band Apart after the film, but he also modeled his memorable 'Pulp' dance number between Travolta and Thurman after The café dance scene performed by the three protagonists of the film.. (Thurman even sports a wig that makes her look like Godard's muse, Anna Karina.)
“For a few dollars more” (1965)
WHAT TARANTINO SAID: “[‘Fistful’] “It's fantastic, but the second movie is great and takes the whole idea… and pushes the whole idea onto such a big canvas that it erases the first.” — Of Random Club Podcast2024
WHAT INFLUENCED: The second installment of the Man with No Name trilogy, with bounty hunters Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef joining forces to take down a ruthless bank robber, is a lot like when Jamie Foxx and Christoph Waltz joined forces to take down Leonard. DiCaprio's slave owner in “Django Unchained.”
“The Doulos” (1962)
WHAT TARANTINO SAID: “'Le Doulos' has always been probably my favorite script of all time, just from watching the movie. I loved the insanity of watching a movie that until the last twenty minutes I didn't know what the hell I was watching. And the last twenty minutes explained it all.” Of movie commentary1994
WHAT INFLUENCED: The tone of Melville's unpredictable and revealing crime film certainly inspired Tarantino's more fictionalized films ('Dogs,' 'Pulp,' the 'Kill Bill' movies, 'Inglourious Basterds.')
“Rolling Thunder” (1977)
WHAT TARANTINO SAID: “When I first saw 'Rolling Thunder' with my mother and her boyfriend Marco in 1977 on the night of the film's premiere in Los Angeles, in a double feature with 'Enter the Dragon,' it blew me away! head!… What I used to say that 'Rolling Thunder' was the best combination of character study and action movie ever made. “It still is.” – From “Film Speculation”, 2022
WHAT INFLUENCED: If it weren't for this exploitation film written by Paul Schrader, starring William Devane as a Vietnam veteran hunting down the thugs who killed his family, we wouldn't have many of the films in Tarantino's revenge-filled filmography. . He also named a short film distribution company founded after the film.
“Breathless” (1983)
WHAT TARANTINO SAID: “Jim McBride's version of 'Breathless' was an extremely influential film for me… Here is a film that completely indulges all my obsessions: comics… rockabilly music… and also in form of movies. It's not that the characters sit around and talk about movies all the time, but rather that they use cheap process shots behind them throughout the entire movie.” – From the BBC documentary “Quentin Tarantino: Hollywood's Boy Wonder”, 1994
WHAT HE INFLUENCED: McBride's Americanized remake of Godard's groundbreaking French New Wave stars Richard Gere as a cool but geeky outlaw, as does Christian Slater's protagonist in the Tarantino-written “True Romance,” and Tarantino himself .
“His Girl on Friday” (1940)
WHAT TARANTINO SAID: “I remember how I met Howard Hawks; I saw 'His Girl Friday' and thought it was the best movie I had ever seen in my life. Then I saw 'To Have and Have Not' and I didn't like it that much, but I realized it was a Howard Hawks movie. My goal is for some child in 50 years to have the same experience with me and my films. At the end of a director's career you don't see just one film, but all of them.” – Of the guardian2010
WHAT INFLUENCED: The smart, fast-paced dialogue that Hawks, Charles Lederer and Ben Hecht brought to this crazy adaptation of “The Front Page” made enough of an impression on Tarantino that characters in his films cracked similar clever jokes.
“The Long Goodbye” (1973)
WHAT TARANTINO SAID: From Tarantino has become one of Altman's staunchest detractorsit's hard to find anything positive that QT has said about an Altman film. But the film had a 50th anniversary screening at its New Beverly Cinema in 2023.
WHAT INFLUENCED: Several scribes I have mentioned how the rambling neo-black The adaptation of Raymond Chandler's classic plays a lot like Tarantino's more Los Angeles-centric films, particularly “Jackie Brown.”
“They Live at Night” (1949)
WHAT TARANTINO SAID: The 1949 Nicholas Ray Film black is another one that Tarantino has kept silent about over the years, although it seems obvious that…
WHAT INFLUENCED: …he raised the premise of lovers on the run for “Romance” and “Natural Born Killers,” two road movies that he wrote but did not direct.
“Coffy” (1973)
WHAT TARANTINO SAID: “The movie that blew me away the most was 'Coffy,' from the moment he shot the guy in the head with a sawed-off shotgun and his head exploded like a watermelon. “I had never seen that before and then it just got better from there.” – From “What is… What was!”, 1997
WHAT INFLUENCED: Tarantino finally got Pam Grier to star in “Brown,” aka his own Blaxploitation movie. Vengeful beauties can also be found in the “Bill” and “Basterds” movies.