In his bookCinema Speculation,Quentin Tarantinowaxed poetically aboutRolling Thunder, a 1977 exploitation flickthat he called"the greatest savage, fascist, Revengeamatic flick ever made.” The director has a genuine affinity for the film,which he placed on his Sight & Sound top 10 listalongside the likes ofApocalypse Now,His Girl Friday, andTaxi Driver(lofty company indeed).In Tarantino’s estimation,Rolling Thunderwill"change your life,“as it did when he saw it by sheer chance when it played as the second half of a double bill alongsideEnter the Dragon. As witnessed by his own filmography, this chilling examination of male rage had a lasting impact on cinema’s patron saint of the grindhouse, and is an important building block in Tarantino’s origin story.
‘Rolling Thunder’ Tapped Into the Anger of the Flower Child Generation
William Devaneplays Major Charles Rane, who returns to his hometown of San Antonio, Texas, after spending seven years ina Vietnamese POW camp. Although he’s welcomed home as a hero, Maj. Rane can’t re-assimilate to life at home, especially since his wife, Janet (Lisa Blake Edwards), is engaged to another man and his son, Mark (Jordan Gerler), has already moved on to his new father. The town tries its best to welcome Maj. Rane home, gifting him a brand-new Cadillac and 2,555 silver dollars, one for each day he was held prisoner. A group of thugs shows up at Rane’s home to steal the silver dollars, mangling his hand in the garbage disposal and killing his wife and son. Rane awakens in the hospital with a metal hook where his hand used to be, and he enlists his fellow POW veteran, Master Sergeant Johnny Vohden (Tommy Lee Jones), to help him track down his assailants and exact revenge.
Although the 1970s are remembered as a time of peace and love, they were actually a decade of tremendous upheaval. The revolution of the civil rights and anti-war movements was met with disgust by conservative Americans who couldn’t abide by protests and changing mores. The backlash to the counterculture found its way into movies likeJoeand TV shows likeAll in the Family, which satirized hippie punchers andRichard Nixonvoters. Yet whatever side one was on at the time, public resentment towardsoldiers in Vietnamdid surface — some viewed them as participants in an unjust war, while others resented them for failing to bring home a clear victory.Rolling Thundertapped into that anger, but more significantly, it explored the lasting damage inflicted upon soldiers when they returned home.
The original script forRolling Thunderwas written byPaul SchraderandHeywood Gould, who similarly explored the simmering rage of a Vietnam veteran inTaxi Driver. Even before he and his family are attacked, it’s clear that Maj. Rane is a ticking time bomb, set to go off at any moment. The murder of his wife and child is just the spark, but really, it could’ve been anything. The masterstroke ofRolling Thunder, which was re-written by Gould and directed byJohn Flynn, is that it roots Rane’squest for revengein a deeply personal tragedy, one that elicits sympathy from even the most pacifist audience member. By the time Rane and Vohden are painting the walls of a brothel with blood, the viewer is rooting for them to succeed, and thus, our own bloodlust is interrogated.
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‘Rolling Thunder’s Influence Can Be Seen in All of Quentin Tarantino’s Films
Ever since his Sundance debut,Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino has been accused of fetishizing violence, even though the most explicitly violent scenes in his films — an ear getting cut off and a needle plunging into a heart — happen largely off-screen. While it may be true that Tarantino loves cinematic violence more than any American filmmaker working today, it’s not without merit. Just like withRolling Thunder, Tarantino uses violence asa means of bringing retributionto those that society has failed to keep safe from harm. The bloodshed might be fun, but it serves a greater purpose as well.
TakeKill Bill, for instance, which centers on a woman known only as The Bride (Uma Thurman) who enacts revenge on the people who left her for dead at the altar. OrDjango Unchained, which involves an enslaved man (Jamie Foxx) who buys his freedom to save his wife. Films likeInglourious BasterdsandOnce Upon a Time in Hollywoodrewrite history to bring a revisionist reckoning to the victims of the Holocaust and the Manson Family murders, respectively. In all of these cases, the violence is exciting to watch, but it comes from a need to right a wrong that can only be solved by a gun, a flamethrower, or a samurai sword. That’s also the case with Maj. Rane, who would’ve been perfectly content to go about his life had everyone left him alone.
Rolling Thunder
