Pulp Fiction: 5 Movies That Influenced It (& 5 Movies It Influenced)

Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, widely regarded to be the notorious writer-director’s masterpiece, was the result of a disparate range of influences, from spaghetti westerns to French New Wave crime films. Drawing from the annals of film history, Tarantino uniquely envisioned his second directorial effort as a kind of rock ‘n’ roll neo-noir urban spaghetti western.

In turn, Tarantino’s sophomore effort became one of the most influential movies ever made, inspiring an endless slog of outright rip-offs, as well as work by filmmakers who took a stroll through the doors that Q.T. opened. Here are five movies that influenced Pulp Fiction, as well as five that were influenced by it.

10 Influenced It: Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

The most obvious influence that Tarantino took from the classic 1955 film noir Kiss Me Deadly is the mysterious glowing briefcase, which first appeared in Robert Aldrich’s movie. But the general pulpy tone of this movie heavily influenced Pulp Fiction.

Tarantino also modeled the character of boxer Butch Coolidge after Ralph Meeker’s portrayal of Mike Hammer in Kiss Me Deadly, whom the director described as “a bully and a jerk.”

9 Influenced By It: The Boondock Saints (1999)

If all those pesky dialogue scenes didn’t get in the way of Jules and Vincent’s cold-blooded killing of Marsellus’ targets, then what would remain is something resembling cult hit The Boondock Saints.

Sean Patrick Flanery and Norman Reedus (aka young Indiana Jones and Daryl Dixon) star as two badasses who become vigilantes after killing two Russian mobsters in self-defense.

8 Influenced It: Black Sabbath (1963)

The long development of Pulp Fiction began with Tarantino and Roger Avary writing a short film in the hopes that it would be easier to get funded than a feature. Realizing that no producers were making shorts, the project morphed into an anthology movie telling three different stories.

The primary inspiration behind this trilogy-like structure was the classic Italian anthology horror film Black Sabbath, directed by the great Mario Bava, although the tone is very different.

7 Influenced By It: Go (1999)

Directed by Doug Liman and written by John August, Go is one of the best Tarantino knockoffs. Much like Pulp Fiction, it revolves around three intertwining storylines featuring three groups of characters.

The pacing is fast and furious, the ensemble cast is spectacular, the stories are driven by snappy dialogue, and the humor is super dark (although not quite as dark as Pulp’s “Gold Watch” storyline).

6 Influenced It: Curdled (1991)

Tarantino got the idea for a crime scene cleaner — who became the Winston Wolf character in “The Bonnie Situation,” Pulp Fiction’s third and final story — from Curdled, a short he once saw at a film festival.

He cast the short’s lead, Angela Jones, as cab driver Esmeralda Villalobos in Pulp Fiction and later helped the filmmakers behind Curdled to produce a feature-length remake.

5 Influenced By It: Lock, Stock, And Two Smoking Barrels (1998)

Guy Ritchie brought the gangster antics of Pulp Fiction to the streets of London with Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, a crime thriller that made him one of the UK’s most popular filmmakers overnight.

Just like the Tarantino-helmed classic, Lock, Stock has a pitch-black comic sensibility and an ensemble cast featuring a mixture of established stars and fresh faces (some of whom later became established stars, like Jason Statham).

4 Influenced It: Bande À Part (1964)

Although the two dances are very different, the Jack Rabbit Slim’s dance sequence in Pulp Fiction was strongly influenced by a similar scene in Jean-Luc Godard’s Bande À Part, dubbed “the Madison scene,” in which the characters spontaneously begin dancing in a café.

The exact dance moves weren’t copied from Godard’s film, but the spirit of the scene — that the characters aren’t great dancers, but they’re having a great time dancing — was carried over into Pulp, and Tarantino showed the Madison scene to John Travolta and Uma Thurman before they filmed the Jack Rabbit Slim’s dance contest.

3 Influenced By It: The Way Of The Gun (2000)

Long before he was helming massive-scale Mission: Impossible movies, Christopher McQuarrie made the transition from writing to directing with The Way of the Gun, a cult classic starring Benicio del Toro and Ryan Phillippe and featuring James Caan in a scene-stealing supporting role.

Like much of Tarantino’s work, The Way of the Gun is a genre riff, blending together many B-movie genres, including action-packed gangster flicks and “gun fu.”

2 Influenced It: His Girl Friday (1940)

Mia and Vincent’s flirtatious dialogue is right out of a Howard Hawks screwball comedy. Mia’s line “Mind rolling me one of those?” is taken directly from Hawks’ 1940 classic His Girl Friday, which Tarantino ranks among his favorite films of all time.

Tarantino originally wrote that storyline as part of an early screenplay for a crime movie, but never got past the scene in which Vincent arrives at the house. This scene remained virtually unchanged when the director recycled it for Pulp Fiction.

1 Influenced By It: Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead (1995)

Perhaps the most blatant of the many Pulp Fiction rip-offs, Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead desperately tries to emulate the tone of Tarantino’s masterpiece without any of the freshness, individuality, or artistic substance.

Andy Garcia stars as Jimmy the Saint, an ex-gangster who’s roped into another job with some fellow hitmen by his old boss, who then sends another hitman to kill those hitmen. It’s like Pulp Fiction if every character was Jules, but without the input of Samuel L. Jackson or Quentin Tarantino, the two people responsible for Jules’ mesmerizing coolness.

About The Author

Ben Sherlock
(3465 Articles Published)

Ben Sherlock is a writer, comedian, independent filmmaker, and Burt Reynolds enthusiast. He writes lists for Screen Rant and features and reviews for Game Rant. He’s currently in pre-production on his first feature (and has been for a while, because filmmaking is expensive). You can catch him performing standup at odd pubs around the UK that will give him stage time. Previously, he wrote for Taste of Cinema, Comic Book Resources, and BabbleTop.

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