Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman), while having an overdose in Pulp Fiction

The films of Quentin Tarantino are an ode to the films, the actors, the T.V.-series and the style of the Seventies. In Pulp Fiction we are reminded of > Carrie (Brian de Palma, 1976)  when Mia Wallace is rescued from an overdosis with an adrenalin injection in her heart. 
When she regains conciousness the needle is still in her chest just like Carrie's mother when she also walked around with a knife in her chest for a while. > Deliverance (John Boorman, 1972)  is cited in the scene in which Marcellus Wallace and Butch are captured by two Hillbillies, and after Wallace has been raped he says, "Don't tell anybody about this", just like Bobby Trippe said twenty years before.

Pam Grier in Jackie Brown

Pam Grier The third film of Quentin Tarantino, > Jackie Brown  (1997), was specifically written around Pam Grier, a cult actress who became popular in the sexploitation and blaxploitation films of the Seventies like Beyond the Valley of Dolls (Russ Meyer, 1970), Women in Cages (Gerardo de Leon, 1971), Black Mama, White Mama (Eddie Romero, 1972), Coffy (Jack Hill, 1973) and Foxy Brown (Jack Hill, 1974). With Jackie Brown Tarantino takes the same course as he did in Pulp Fiction.  A Seventies icon in the lead role, references to films an t.v.-series and a swinging Seventies soundtrack with songs that seem to provide an ironic commentary on the action.

When it concerns references to the Seventies, Tarantino's diptych Kill Bill ( > Part1 &  > Part2 ) beats its predecessors easily. Both films seem almost entirely to consist of quotations and references to this period. It already starts in the opening credits: we look at the logo of the legendary filmstudio Shaw Brothers, repsonsible for the worldwide popularity of the martial-arts film in the beginning of the Seventies. Next to David Carradine, there are prominent roles in Kill Bill for the formerly martial-art stars Gordon Liu and Sonny Chiba.

Furthermore the films are an outright homage to > Bruce Lee. The suit, worn by 'the bride' when she has the confrontation with O-Ren Ishii is a copy of Bruce Lee's outfit in Game of Death (Robert Clouse, 1978). The masks of the Grazy 88's are the same as the mask Lee wore in the t.v. series The Green Hornet (1966-1967), like 'the bride' remarks, while the tune of the series also appears on the soundtrack. Kill Bill is like a postmodern potpourri, that includes so many references and quotations, that some fans make it a sport to find them all. On the internet you can find websites (like Everything Tarantino and Kill Bill Study Guide) which exhaustively describe where you can find these quotations and references in the films.

Part 1 of this article sequence on the > films of Quentin Tarantino