The 80s and the 50s were the worst time for movies ever because it was just this kind of politically correct time. Now in the ' 50s it was different because that was just was society was that in the 80s it was self it was uh self-censorship. Tarantino hates the 80s calls it a ballless decade but even he admits these six films are worth watching. the real noise. In his own words, one got its director fired mid-shoot, one was dumped by a bankrupt studio, and one got labeled racist and tanked so hard it nearly erased a career. These are the only8s films Tarantino actually respects. Michael Chamino somehow convinced a studio to give him 24 million bucks and final cut after the nuclear fallout of Heaven's Gate. And what did he hand in? A racist, violent, xenophobic thriller that Hollywood immediately tried to bury. Mickey Ror chain smokes his way through Chinatown playing a Vietnam vet turned NYPD hard ass who's been told to clean up gang activity. He ends up in an escalating war with John Loan, a slick restaurant owner turned drug kingpin trying to take over the Chinese mob. The whole thing builds to a massive shootout that looks like it wandered in from a John Woo movie. The script was co-written by Oliver Stone, so you already know subtlety wasn't the goal. Critics slammed it as xenophobic. Chinese American groups protested its release. Chimino claimed the controversy helped sell tickets. It didn't. The film tanked. But Tarantino is a fan. He named Year of the Dragon one of his favorite films of the 80s. He especially loves the final shootout. Called it his favorite killer movie moment. You forget to breathe during it. That was his exact line. Before the Silence of the Lambs won Oscars and turned Hannibal Lectar into a household name, Michael Man quietly dropped Manhunter, a sleek, unsettling adaptation of Red Dragon, starring Brian Cox as Dr. Lectctor. It bombed at the box office, made only $8 million against its 15 million budget. Nobody cared enough to actually watch it, but Tarantino did. He said flat out he prefers Manhunter to Silence of the Lambs. Man's version had a clinical icy look. The synth score, the lighting, the mood, it's cold and methodical, but it's got style for days. Cox, by the way, has never publicly compared his version of Lecter to Hopkins. Apparently, the two of them made a pact to never talk about it. That pact still holds. And this almost wasn't man's film at all. The producers originally wanted David Lynch to direct. Lynch actually considered it, got involved for a while, and then backed out, said it was too violent, too degenerate, had no redeeming qualities. He just didn't want that in his life. So, man took it. He already had Thief under his belt. A film Tarantino's called a game changer. When man arrived on the crime scene with Thief, Tarantino said it felt like John Carpenter and Walter Hill just got steamrolled by the new guy. Manhunter didn't make money, but it paved the way for a different kind of serial killer movie. And for Tarantino, it was already ahead of the curve. Tarantino didn't just like Breathless. He once said it was the only movie he saw in theaters that actually felt like the kind of film he was writing in his head back then. That's saying something. This is a remake of the 1960 French film with Richard Gear playing a small-time criminal who shoots a cop, steals a car, and ends up tangled with a confused 19-year-old girl while trying to collect a debt. Michael Man originally worked on the script, but bailed to go make the keep. What ended up on screen was a bizarre mix of comic book obsession, rockabilly energy, and sleazy erotic thriller vibes. very much gear in his early sex symbol era. Back when it came out, critics hated it, called it shallow, trashy, pointless. Roger Eert said it was a lurid melodrama about sex and death with no real emotional core. But even he admitted it was stylish, fun to look at, and had a weird sense of morbid humor. Today, it holds up better than it did back then. It grossed $20 million on a 7 million budget, so it wasn't a financial failure, just a critical punching bag. But for Tarantino, it was exactly the kind of thing he'd later build a career on. All style, all pop culture references, and no apologies. 8 Million Ways to Die was supposed to be a slam dunk. Hal Ashb directing Jeff Bridges starring script by Oliver Stone based on a well-known detective novel by Lawrence Block and then everything fell apart. Ashb had been one of the most respected directors of the 70s, Shampoo, Being There Coming Home. But by the mid80s, drugs had taken their toll and this was the last film he ever made. He was fired right after Principal Photography wrapped. The studio took over the final cut. The script was rewritten mid-production. Alexandra Paul later said the movie that ended up in theaters didn't even resemble what she'd signed on for. Oliver Stone disowned the film. His original script was gutted and reworked by R. Lance Hill, who bypassed Ashb entirely and reported straight to the producer. Hal Ashb was furious. The result is a broken, chaotic noir that doesn't really work, but has flashes of brilliance. If Heat is the polished version, this is the busted prototype, and Tarantino says it's one of his favorite films of the 80s. Tarantino's been a Paul Verhovven fan for a long time. He's even gone on record defending showgirl, said people misunderstood it. But when it comes to Verhovven's 80s output, the one Tarantino really rates is Flesh and Blood. Set in medieval Europe, the film follows a young noble woman played by Jennifer Jason Lee who ends up in a twisted relationship with the same band of common mercenaries who kidnap her. Lee would go on to work with Tarantino decades later and here she gives one of the film's most intense performances. Rutgger Hower leads the cast and Tarantino called him fantastic in this. For Hovind wasn't interested in romanticizing the Middle Ages. He wanted to show it as it actually was. Violent, filthy, brutal. A time where poverty, disease, and death were everywhere, and a peaceful end was rare. That realism is all over the screen in this one, and it's uncomfortable by design. The production itself was a disaster. For Hovind and Hower had worked together five times before, but things got so bad on Flesh and Blood, they never spoke again. for Hovind even called it the worst filming experience of his life and said it nearly made him quit directing altogether. And that's not even touching the US release. The original cut had what Verhovven called a staggering amount of nudity and sexual violence. It was so much they had to heavily trim it down just to get it released in the states. Tarantino is a huge fan of this one. In a 2015 interview, he called himself the biggest fan of Near Dark and said he followed Katherine Bigalow's entire career after seeing it. This was her first solo film as a director. A horror western low-budget cult favorite. A gang of vampires tearing through the American Midwest. Tarantino was especially into the massacre scene. He said he saw the movie five times just for that one sequence. The plot simple. A farmer's kid gets bitten by a drifter, joins her crew, and slowly figures out what he's really gotten himself into. The cast is made up of actors James Cameron had just worked with on Aliens. Lance Henrikson, Bill Paxton, and Janette Goldstein. That was Cameron's suggestion to Bigalow, and it worked. Everyone agrees Paxton's performance is a standout. Bigalow and her coowwriter started with the idea of making a western, but by the mid80s, no one in Hollywood wanted to fund westerns. So they pivoted, combined it with horror, which was booming at the time. Unfortunately, the timing couldn't have been worse. The studio Delorent Entertainment Group collapsed right as the movie came out. Near Dark ended up being its final release before bankruptcy. With no marketing support, the film bombed at the box office. [Music]