Quentin Tarantino Says This Forgotten Movie Blew His Mind

Quentin Tarantino spent his youth soaking up the unique energy of Los Angeles cinema, a world that helped define his later work. While he certainly loved the big hits of the era, he found himself captivated by a much more specific type of movie.

One film that truly grabbed his attention was Rolling Thunder, a dark and intense revenge story that stayed with him for decades. This 1977 thriller was directed by John Flynn and written by Paul Schrader, the same man who wrote the legendary Taxi Driver.

It tells the story of Major Charles Rane, a veteran who returns home only to lose his family to violent criminals. Schrader filled the script with a mix of deep character growth and shocking action, which was exactly the kind of combination that the young Tarantino found so exciting.

Tarantino has been very open about how much this movie affected him, even writing in his book Cinema Speculation that seeing it for the first time blew my mind. He first saw it as a teenager during a double feature with his mother, and it immediately sparked a long obsession.

He loved the film so much that he spent ten years following it to whatever theater was playing it across Los Angeles, long before it was ever available to watch at home. For Tarantino, the magic of Rolling Thunder is that it never chooses between being a smart drama and a thrilling action flick.

He has claimed that it is the best combination of character study and action film ever made, and he still stands by that belief today. It is easy to see how this movie’s balance of personality and violence eventually made its way into his own famous films like Kill Bill or Django Unchained.

As of February, Quentin Tarantino is focusing his creative energy on a very different medium. He has officially put his final film on hold to direct a stage play in London’s West End. The play is already written and is expected to feature many of the actors he has worked with in the past, though the exact plot is being kept under a very tight lid.

In addition to his theater work, Tarantino has been active as a screenwriter for other directors. He recently wrote the script for The Adventures of Cliff Booth, a sequel to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood directed by David Fincher and starring Brad Pitt.

The film, which features Timothy Olyphant and Elizabeth Debicki, is scheduled for a summer release on Netflix. Tarantino also recently took on a rare acting role in the indie drama Only What We Carry, where he plays a character named John Percy alongside Simon Pegg.

Even though fans are waiting for his tenth and final directorial effort, Tarantino seems to be in no hurry to return to the director’s chair for a movie. He has mentioned that he wants his son to be old enough to remember being on the set of his final film. Until then, he continues to stay busy running his New Beverly Cinema and writing about the forgotten movies that first inspired him to become a filmmaker.

Do you think Quentin Tarantino’s decision to move into theater and write sequels for other directors means he might be pushing his final film back even further than we expected? Share your thoughts in the comments.