The Switchblade Sisters - 1975

The Switchblade Sisters Masterprint
12 in. x 16 in.

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Mounted


Jack Hill's 1975 drive-in opus, Switchblade Sisters, has all the requisite cheese and then some: girl fights, gun duels, sex-starved reform school guards, flashes of nudity, and even African-American-Maoist-revolutionary-butt-kicking chicks who don't take nonsense from anyone.

The story is a prime example of how the influence of great filmmakers can be reprocessed into pure exploitation: Maggie (Joanne Nail), a smart, new member of a distaff gang, presents a threat to the group's established leader (Robbie Lee). The intricacies of their subsequent relationship--love, betrayal, and a battle for control--has numerous echoes of the films of Nicholas Ray and Howard Hawks, and Hill plays it all with a seriousness that underscores the heart within this trash classic.

No wonder Quentin Tarantino became this film's latter-day benefactor, promoting its 1998 theatrical re-release under the auspices of his revival imprint, Rolling Thunder Pictures.

Reservoir Dogs - 1992

Reservoir Dogs Poster
22.5 in. x 34 in.

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Framed   Mounted


Most of the action in Quentin Tarantino's pulp crime movie takes place in a cavernous warehouse, to which the surviving participants of a botched jewelry heist have repaired to lick their wounds. The crooks amuse themselves by accusing each other of treachery (someone tipped off the police), waving their guns, screaming obscenities, and torturing a cop whom one of them has captured. This is, explicitly, a man's world.(There isn't a woman with a speaking part in the movie.)

Tarantino emphasizes the characters' absurdity; they're all presented as demented children, little boys with big guns. He wants us to feel as if we had crash-landed in an alternate universe: the Planet of the Goons. The movie runs on film-school cleverness-a homemade pharmaceutical cocktail of pop music, visual jolts, and allusions to Scorsese and Peckinpah. As supercool young directors go, Tarantino (whose first film this is) is fairly engaging: his nihilism is antic and oddly cheery. But the picture is less than the sum of its outrageous gags and inventive bits of business. The dramatic possibilities of infantile bullies goading each other to violence are sadly limited.

The story is impressively bloody, but the blood is thin, and it keeps leaking out; Tarantino has all he can do to maintain the movie's pulse. The film, for all its mayhem and fury, is too distant to be truly disturbing; it treats everything with an impatient, born-too-late shrug. This is a reasonably lively picture about nothing, and that's apparently just what it was meant to be. With Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Steve Buscemi, Michael Madsen, Lawrence Tierney, and Chris Penn.

Pulp Fiction - 1994

Pulp Fiction Poster Set
24 in. x 36 in.
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Pulp Fiction (1994) is an American crime film directed by Quentin Tarantino, who cowrote its screenplay with Roger Avary. The film is known for its rich, eclectic dialogue, ironic mix of humor and violence, nonlinear storyline, and host of cinematic allusions and pop culture references. The film was nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture; Tarantino and Avary won for Best Original Screenplay. It was also awarded the Palme d'Or at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival. A major critical and commercial success, it revitalized the career of its leading man, John Travolta, who received an Academy Award nomination, as did costars Samuel L. Jackson and Uma Thurman.

Directed in a highly stylized manner, Pulp Fiction joins the intersecting storylines of Los Angeles mobsters, fringe players, small-time criminals, and a mysterious briefcase. Considerable screen time is devoted to conversations and monologues that reveal the characters' senses of humor and perspectives on life. The film's title refers to the pulp magazines and hardboiled crime novels popular during the mid-20th century, known for their graphic violence and punchy dialogue. Pulp Fiction is self-referential from its opening moments, beginning with a title card that gives two dictionary definitions of "pulp". The plot, in keeping with most of Tarantino's other works, is presented out of chronological sequence.




Pulp Fiction 3 Dimensional Poster
18.5 in. x 26.5 in.
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The picture's self-reflexivity, unconventional structure, and extensive use of homage and pastiche have led critics to describe it as a prime example of postmodern film. Considered by some critics a black comedy, the film is also frequently labeled a "neo-noir". Critic Geoffrey O'Brien argues otherwise: "The old-time noir passions, the brooding melancholy and operatic death scenes, would be altogether out of place in the crisp and brightly lit wonderland that Tarantino conjures up. [It is] neither neo-noir nor a parody of noir".

Similarly, Nicholas Christopher calls it "more gangland camp than neo-noir", and Foster Hirsch suggests that its "trippy fantasy landscape" characterizes it more definitively than any genre label. Pulp Fiction is viewed as the inspiration for many later movies that adopted various elements of its style. The nature of its development, marketing, and distribution and its consequent profitability had a sweeping effect on the field of independent cinema (although it is not an independent film itself). A cultural watershed, Pulp Fiction's influence has been felt in several other media.