Quentin Tarantino Loves This Brutal Streaming Western, Says One Scene in Particular “blew [his] f**king mind”
Quentin Tarantino has made a career of making moviegoers squeamish with his gritty depictions of onscreen violence. But before the student became the teacher, he spent his formative years in cinemas studying the works of influential creators. The Jackie Brown director famously explained that he didn’t go to film school but instead went to films. Tarantino has certainly made the most of his self-taught crash course in cinema. Now an Academy Award-winning creator, he is influencing future generations of filmmakers, bringing his journey full circle.
As a lad, Tarantino saw plenty of movies that influenced his cinematic journey. In his book, Cinema Speculation, the Pulp Fiction director recounts the first time he watched the gritty Western A Man Called Horse. Of that influential experience, Tarantino recalls, “The eagle-claws-through-the-chest initiation rite in A Man Called Horse blew my f**king mind.”
That’s quite the endorsement, coming from the man responsible for traumatizing audiences with the infamous ‘ear scene’ in Reservoir Dogs. If A Man Called Horse made that kind of impression on Tarantino, you know it has to be nothing short of brutal.
The setup for this gritty effort favored by Tarantino goes like this:
In 1825, English big game hunter John Morgan (Richard Harris) is captured and enslaved by a Sioux tribe, forced to labor for tribal matriarch Buffalo Cow Head (Judith Anderson) as a common pack animal. Slowly, with the help of fellow slave Batise (Jean Gascon), Morgan learns his captors’ language, and then proves his bravery in a battle with a neighboring tribe, earning their respect. Losing his associations with his previous life as a British aristocrat, Morgan becomes one with the Sioux.
Elliot Silverstein directed A Man Called Horse from a screenplay by Jack DeWitt. Genre fans may know Silverstein from the underrated exploitation film The Car, or from the handful of Twilight Zone episodes he helmed.
Where is A Man Called Horse available to stream?
If you find yourself curious to see just how mind-blowing the sequence in question is, you can scope the flick on Tubi (for free with ads) as of the publication of this post.
That’s all that we have for you at present. Be sure to stay tuned to Dread Central in the very near future for more essential recommendations from your favorite cinematic luminaries. If you would like to chat further about the influence of exploitation cinema on Tarantino’s cinematic oeuvre, come find me on Threads @FunWithHorror.
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