The Killer Inside Me is one of the many never-realized projects by master director Quentin Tarantino. The film failed even before the first day of shooting due to the violence of the story
In the mid-1990s, Quentin Tarantino became one of the most sought-after directors of his time. After the huge success of Pulp Fiction, the filmmaker suddenly had a larger budget at his disposal and set his sights on adapting a novel that had been causing outcries for decades. Even though Tarantino had a finished script and a top-class cast in the meantime, he had to throw in the towel on The Killer Inside Me in the end.
Quentin Tarantino wanted to film The Killer Inside Me with Brad Pitt and Uma Thurman
The novel The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson caused a sensation back in 1952 when it hit the bookshelves in the USA. As Den of Geek reports, Tarantino was a big fan of the author’s works and included an homage to Thompson’s novel The Getaway in From Dusk Till Dawn.
(Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood)
For The Killer Inside Me he ultimately had more extensive plans and cast Brad Pitt, Juliette Lewis and Uma Thurman, among others. However, after the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, the film studios in Hollywood shied away from realizing a script of this brutality, according to the Times . So Tarantino dropped the project and turned his attention to other films.
The thriller is about the Texan deputy sheriff Lou Ford, who falls in love with the prostitute Joyce and enters into a sadomasochistic relationship with her. When the two make a fresh start in another town, Ford’s true face as a psychopathic murderer comes to light.
The Killer Inside Me was made into a movie after all in 2010 – but not by Tarantino
Almost a decade later, the novel was taken up by director Michael Winterbottom and realized with Casey Affleck, Kate Hudson and Jessica Alba in the leading roles. The Killer Inside Me screened at the Sundance Film Festival and the Berlinale in 2010, where it caused the expected outcry. The depictions of violence against women were particularly criticized
Watch the trailer for The Killer Inside Me here:
At Rotten Tomatoes the thriller holds an audience score of 40 percent against a press rating of 56 percent. The Moviepilot community rates the film with an only slightly more gracious 5.9/10 points.
