Quentin Tarantino Reveals His Favorite Science Fiction Movies Ever

Quentin Tarantino is world-famous for his unique filmmaking style, which is built on a deep love for movies from the 20th century. While most people know he loves the gritty violence of westerns and gangster films, he is also fascinated by genres he hasn’t even tried yet.

Even though his movies like Django Unchained and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood are always set in the past, Tarantino has a secret soft spot for the future. During an episode of his The Video Archives podcast, Tarantino talked about science fiction and used a word he usually saves for the very best.

He explained that he doesn’t like to throw around the m-word—meaning masterpiece—unless a movie really deserves it. However, he admitted that the 1974 cult classic Dark Star is exactly that. He called it a science fiction masterpiece and a perfect example of counterculture filmmaking from the early 1970s.

Dark Star was the directorial debut of John Carpenter and was written by Dan O’Bannon, who later went on to write Alien. The movie is a dark comedy about a group of bored astronauts whose mission is to destroy unstable planets.

Tarantino loves the film’s anti-establishment energy, though he jokingly mentioned that one of the actors, Cal Kuniholm, looked more like a hippie buddy they just recruited off the street rather than a professional actor.

Tarantino is clearly a massive fan of John Carpenter because he also highly recommends the 1982 horror-sci-fi hit The Thing. He believes the practical special effects in that movie are some of the greatest ever put on a movie theatre screen.

While many horror movies just rely on “jump scares,” Tarantino says The Thing is one of the few films that actually made him feel true terror. He loves how the story focuses on suspense and the paranoia of not knowing which character is actually a monster.

His love for sci-fi also goes back to his childhood and the classics of the 1930s and 40s. He once shared that Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein was his favorite movie when he was a very little boy.

He was amazed that a movie could be both a scary monster film and a funny physical comedy at the same time. He credits this “mash-up” of styles as the reason he spends his entire career trying to mix different genres together in his own work.

As of this year, Tarantino is keeping fans on their toes regarding his tenth and final film. After famously scrapping The Movie Critic because he felt it wasn’t the right story to end on, he has been focusing on other creative outlets.

He is currently finishing a stage play, which he has hinted could be his next major project before he finally returns to the director’s chair one last time. He has also been working with David Fincher on a sequel to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood titled The Adventures of Cliff Booth, which is expected to hit Netflix later this year.

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