In 1994, right before Quentin Tarantino was about to blow up with his Oscar/Palme d’Or-winning sophomore feature “Pulp Fiction,” he had a profile in the September issue of Details. The profile also included a list of 15 “must-see films” from him.
I’ve always been fascinated by this list. Back then, I was a budding cinephile, looking for recommendations on films that would bulk up my cinema knowledge. And here we had a list that ran the gamut: Westerns, crime flicks, French New Wave offerings, ‘70s dramas, even a Blaxploitation flick.
It wasn’t until recently that I found out that many of the films on this list made up a program Tarantino curated for the Stockholm International Film Festival in 1994, where he also won several awards for “Pulp.”
If you look back at Tarantino’s three-decade-plus career, you can see how these films actually influenced a lot of things in his filmography, from characters to scenes to whole plots. So, in no particular order, here are the dozen films that pretty much made Tarantino the iconic filmmaker he is today:
“Blow Out” (1981)
WHAT TARANTINO SAID: “It’s Brian De Palma’s finest film, which means it’s one of the finest movies ever made because, as we all know, Brian De Palma is the greatest director of his generation. John Travolta, by the way, gives one of the best performances of all time in this movie.” – From a 1993 news piece in “Quentin Tarantino – Visits Video Archives,” 2018
WHAT IT INFLUENCED: Much like when De Palma boldly hired lovable song-and-dance man Travolta to star in his paranoid, political thriller, Tarantino eventually did the same thing, giving Travolta a career-rejuvenating role as a hitman in “Pulp.”
“One-Eyed Jacks” (1961)
WHAT TARANTINO SAID: “If I had to pick 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 IT INFLUENCED: Marlon Brando directed and stars in this scabrous Western, a tale of disreputable gunslingers double-crossing and seeking revenge that’s not unlike what Tarantino did in his all-star chamber piece “The Hateful Eight.”
“Rio Bravo” (1959)
WHAT TARANTINO SAID: “It’s one of the great hangout movies. There are certain movies where you hang out with the characters so much, they actually become your friends… My whole thing was if I ever liked a girl and we started, like, seeing each other a little bit, I would show her ‘Rio Bravo’ – and she better like it!” –From “Quentin Tarantino talks Rio Bravo,” 2007
WHAT IT INFLUENCED: Tarantino always makes films where you get to know the characters, from the band of bad guys in “Reservoir Dogs” to the loners, lasses and losers who occupy Tinseltown in “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.”
“Bande a part” (1964)
WHAT TARANTINO SAID: “I remember at the Fox Venice [movie theater], they had a big [Jean-Luc] Godard film festival… I really, really liked ‘Bande a part,’ in particular. It really kinda grabbed me. But, then again, one of the things that grabbed me is that I almost felt like I could’ve done that. I could’ve attached a camera to the back of a convertible and just had somebody drive around Venice Boulevard if I wanted to.” — From “Quentin Tarantino on Jean-Luc Godard,” 2016
WHAT IT INFLUENCED: Not only did Tarantino name his A Band Apart production company after the movie, he modeled his memorable ‘Pulp’ dance number between Travolta and Thurman after the cafe dance scene the three leads do in the movie. (Thurman even rocks a wig that makes her look like Godard muse Anna Karina.)
“For a Few Dollars More” (1965)
WHAT TARANTINO SAID: “[‘Fistful’] is terrific, but the second movie is so great and takes the whole idea… and takes the whole idea to such a bigger canvas that it obliterates the first one.” — From Club Random Podcast, 2024
WHAT IT INFLUENCED: The second installment in the Man with No Name Trilogy, with Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef’s bounty hunters joining forces to take down a ruthless bank robber, sounds a lot like when Jamie Foxx and Christoph Waltz joined forces to take down Leonardo Di Caprio’s slave owner in “Django Unchained.”
“Le Doulos” (1962)
WHAT TARANTINO SAID: “‘Le Doulos’ has always been probably my favorite screenplay of all time—just from watching the movie. I just loved the wildness of watching a movie that up until the last twenty minutes I didn’t know what the f*ck it was I was looking at. And the last twenty minutes explained it all.”— From Film Comment, 1994
WHAT IT INFLUENCED: The tone of Melville’s unpredictable, unraveling crime flick certainly inspired Tarantino’s most novelistic movies (‘Dogs,’ ‘Pulp,’ the ‘Kill Bill’ films,’ “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 film’s opening night in Los Angeles, on a double feature with ‘Enter the Dragon,’ it blew my fucking mind!… What I used to claim about ‘Rolling Thunder’ was it was the best combination of character study and action film ever made. It still is.” – From “Cinema Speculation,” 2022
WHAT IT INFLUENCED: If it wasn’t for this Paul Schrader-penned exploitation flick, with William Devane as a Vietnam vet hunting down the thugs who killed his family, we wouldn’t have a lot of the films in Tarantino’s vengeance-filled filmography. He also named a short-lived film distribution company he founded after the movie.
“Breathless” (1983)
WHAT TARANTINO SAID: “Jim McBride’s version of ‘Breathless” was an extremely influential movie for me… Here’s a movie that’s indulging completely in all of my obsessions: comic books… rockabilly music… and also in the form of movies. Not that the characters sit around and talk about movies all the time, but with the use of cheap process shots going on behind them throughout the whole film.” – From the BBC documentary “Quentin Tarantino: Hollywood’s Boy Wonder,” 1994
WHAT IT INFLUENCED: McBride’s Americanized remake of Godard’s French New Wave groundbreaker has Richard Gere as a cool-but-geeky outlaw, just like Christian Slater’s protagonist in the Tarantino-written “True Romance” — and Tarantino himself.
“His Girl Friday” (1940)
WHAT TARANTINO SAID: “I remember how I came across Howard Hawks; I saw ‘His Girl Friday’ and I thought that it was the best movie I ever saw. Then I saw ‘To Have and Have Not’ and didn’t like it as much, but I could tell it was a Howard Hawks movie. My aim is that some kid in 50 years time has the same experience with me and my films. At the end of a director’s career you don’t look at just one movie – you look at all of them.” – From The Guardian, 2010
WHAT IT INFLUENCED: The savvy, rat-a-tat dialogue Hawks and Charles Lederer & Ben Hecht brought to this screwball “The Front Page” adaptation made enough of an impression on Tarantino to make the characters in his movies spout similar, clever banter.
“The Long Goodbye” (1973)
WHAT TARANTINO SAID: Since Tarantino has become one of Altman’s most hardcore detractors, it’s difficult to find anything positive QT has said about an Altman film. But the film did have a 50th anniversary screening at his New Beverly Cinema in 2023.
WHAT IT INFLUENCED: Several scribes have mentioned how Altman’s rambling neo-noir adaptation of the Raymond Chandler classic is much like Tarantino’s most LA-centric films, particularly “Jackie Brown.”
“They Live by Night” (1949)
WHAT TARANTINO SAID: Nicholas Ray’s 1949 film noir is another one Tarantino has been mum about throughout the years, although it does seem obvious that…
WHAT IT INFLUENCED: …he lifted its lovers-on-the-run premise for “Romance” and “Natural Born Killers,” two road movies he wrote but didn’t direct.
“Coffy” (1973)
WHAT TARANTINO SAID: “The film that just knocked my socks off the most was ‘Coffy,’ from the moment she 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 It Is… What It Was!,” 1997
WHAT IT INFLUENCED: Tarantino eventually got Pam Grier to star in “Brown,” aka his very own Blaxploitation film. Vengeful beauties can also be found in the “Bill” movies and “Basterds.”