You can now watch an underrated Tarantino film on Netflix. It was not only inspired by a sci-fi horror film, but also by his own work
When you think of Quentin Tarantino and westerns, you probably think of Django Unchained first. But the film that the cult director made afterwards is at least as good. With The Hateful 8, Tarantino has returned to the Western and yet has done everything differently than before. The film is set in the snow, which is completely atypical, and instead of long riding scenes through the prairie, there is a tight chamber play.
You can now stream The Hateful 8 by Quentin Tarantino on Netflix
Two bounty hunters enter Minnie’s corsetry – That’s what The Hateful 8 is all about
On the way to the mountain town of Red Rock, bounty hunters Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) and John Ruth (Kurt Russell) meet. The latter has the prisoner Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) in tow, whose bounty he wants to collect. Due to an approaching snowstorm, they stop off at Minnie’s general store
(The Hateful 8 is now streaming on Netflix)
Minnie is not there. Instead, the Mexican Bob (Demián Bichir) holds down the fort and entertains the new arrivals as well as the aspiring sheriff Chis Mannix (Walton Goggins), the secretive cowboy Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), General Sandford Smithers (Bruce Dern) and the Englishman Osvaldo Mobray (Tim Roth). These eight strangers don’t dare cross each other’s path and soon the tension in the small cabin is so thick that any wrong word could be a death sentence.
This is the closest Tarantino has ever come to making a horror film with a western
One of Tarantino’s absolute favorite films is the sci-fi horror The Thing from Another World (OT: The Thing). The classic had already inspired him in Reservoir Dogs, which sometimes positioned a small number of characters in a confined space and drew its charm from this. This concept is taken further in The Hateful 8. The horror is not created by a monster “among us”, but by the fear of false identities and sudden outbreaks of violence from unexpected corners. Just like in Carpenter’s horror classic The Thing, the cabin is snowed in and there is also a musical reference to the classic: the score by film legend Ennio Morricone includes three pieces that were originally composed for The Thing.
In its own way, The Hateful 8 is also influenced by Reservoir Dogs. From the cult director’s point of view, the circle has come full circle, so to speak, and his eighth film shows references to his first major work. Anyone who has not yet recognized the parallels between the films will find a 15-minute video essay that shows quite well how similar the films actually are, but also what differences there are.
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