The Hateful Eight Movie References guide

The Hateful Eight - movie/TV references and inspirations

Movies

• The Great Silence - Spaghetti Western w/ Snowy mountain backdrop
• Cut-Throats Nine - Euro Western w/ Snowy backdrop / prisoners, including an opening with a nearing stage coach, and some other themes, like distrusting strangers meeting in a haberdashery,etc.
• 3:10 to Yuma also has an opening shot of a stage coach slowly approaching from afar, even more reminiscent.
• For A Few Dollars More - Spaghetti Western feat/ Bounty Hunters. Col. Douglas Mortimer, ex Civil War soldier turned bounty hunter like Major Marquis Warren.
• Sledge - Spaghetti Western w/ at least a scene of a stagecoach heading through a snowy blizzard
• The Thing - John Carpenter's horror classic, similar settings, and some of the (unused) music for it was reused by Morricone for The Hateful Eight

TV

“It’s less inspired by one Western movie than by Bonanza, The Virginian, High Chaparral...Twice per season, those shows would have an episode where a bunch of outlaws would take the lead characters hostage. They would come to the Ponderosa and hold everybody hostage, or to go Judge Garth’s place — Lee J. Cobb played him — in The Virginian and take hostages. There would be a guest star like David Carradine, Darren McGavin, Claude Akins, Robert Culp, Charles Bronson or James Coburn. I don’t like that storyline in a modern context, but I love it in a Western, where you would pass halfway through the show to find out if they were good or bad guys, and they all had a past that was revealed. “I thought, ‘What if I did a movie starring nothing but those characters? No heroes, no Michael Landons. Just a bunch of nefarious guys in a room, all telling backstories that may or may not be true. Trap those guys together in a room with a blizzard outside, give them guns, and see what happens.’" - Quentin Tarantino

Tarantinoverse

• There is at least one shot in the movie where foreground and background are both in focus, a blurry line separating the shot. Those can be found in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction
• Both Michael Madsen and Tim Roth starred in Tarantino's first movie Reservoir Dogs, which shares a similar "whodunnit" premise and also takes place in a singular location
• Samuel L. Jackson has starred in most of Tarantino's movies (Pulp Fiction, True Romance, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, in Inglourious Basterds as voice, Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight)

Further Reading

• References guide at McMBuzz.com

Video: QT on the five movies to see before The Hateful Eight