Tarantino’s eighth feature film, “The Hateful Eight,”, is the story of bounty hunters seeking refuge from a Wyoming blizzard after the Civil War — so basically “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” meets “Frozen.” To get ready, I spent a week on the couch with Tarantino’s oeuvre, watching people die and swear a blue streak. When someone was killed by a gun or a sword or a venomous snake, or someone was called a “motherfucker” or a “cocksucker,” I made a note of the event and the time. Then I did it all over again a few seconds later. What resulted was hard-won data that showed me the essential tempos of Tarantino’s films, and how they’ve changed over time. The guy’s getting bloodier in his old age.
Some mild assumptions were necessary for this project. For one, I’m not a medical doctor, but I assumed that if, say, someone had numerous limbs cut off or took a direct blade to the torso in a samurai sword battle, that person would indeed bleed out and die. And for profanity in foreign languages — mainly in Chinese and Japanese in the “Kill Bill” films and French in “Inglourious Basterds” — I relied on the theatrical subtitles.
Also, it’s occasionally difficult to make out the profane language precisely. If you recently had your one remaining eyeball plucked out, for example, I may not have understood every word you screamed in horror. But I did my best to count all the curses, from the mild hells and damns and asses to the more potent shits, fucks and n-words.
| FILM | CURSES | DEATHS | CURSE/DEATH RATIO |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jackie Brown | 368 | 4 | 92.0 |
| Pulp Fiction | 469 | 7 | 67.0 |
| Reservoir Dogs | 421 | 10 | 42.1 |
| Kill Bill: Vol. 2 | 69 | 11 | 6.3 |
| Django Unchained | 262 | 47 | 5.6 |
| Inglourious Basterds | 58 | 48 | 1.2 |
| Kill Bill: Vol. 1 | 57 | 63 | 0.9 |
| Total | 1704 | 190 | 9.0 |