Five filmmakers heavily influenced by pulp storytelling

Posted On October 2, 2024October 2, 2024

If you say the word “pulp” to most film fans, they’ll likely think of Pulp Fiction—and they’d be right to. Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 crime classic changed cinema forever, cementing him as one of Hollywood’s most prominent proponents of pulp storytelling. However, there are several other filmmakers who also have pulp in their veins.

What exactly is “pulp fiction”? It’s more than just the title of Tarantino’s iconic film. The term originates from the mass-produced fiction of the 1920s through the 1950s in America. These cheaply printed paperback novels and magazines, named after the low-quality wood pulp paper they were produced on, were known for their sensationalist stories packed with adventure, violence, and sex.

Pulp encompassed many genres, from crime to sci-fi to western and from horror to fantasy to adventure. Many film noirs, movie serials, and superhero comic books had their origins in pulp, and when filmmakers like George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg began crafting Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark, they were also heavily influenced by the style.

So, without further ado, here are five filmmakers from the last 30 years whose movies have always been the best kind of pulpy.

Directors influenced by pulp storytelling:

5. Shane Black

In 1986, Shane Black sold a buddy cop script to Warner Brothers for $250,000. Three years later, he sold another crime caper to David Geffen Co for an insanely lucrative $1.75 million. These scripts were Lethal Weapon and The Last Boy Scout, and they made him the highest-paid screenwriter in Hollywood. Not bad for a guy whose writing style was almost entirely inspired by the hardboiled crime novels of Mickey Spillane and the pulpy spy tales of Donald Hamilton.

Interestingly, around this time, a woman in Black’s life actually called him at two in the morning to tell him she believed he was “sick for writing this stuff and making so much money”. She claimed his work was too violent and he had no time for female characters. He chuckled during a conversation with the Los Angeles Times, saying that she was adamant, “I should be ashamed of myself because there are real writers out there struggling, and I write this trash.” Black’s response? “I write about male heroes because I write adventure fiction. So sue me.”

Over the years, this unapologetic attitude to purveying the kind of pulp he grew up with kept Black trucking along in Hollywood. His crowning achievements as a director are Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and The Nice Guys, two crime comedies which contain as many laughs as they do tough guys getting filled full of lead. His next movie is Play Dirty, based upon the hardboiled criminal Parker, who appeared in novels by Richard Stark, AKA Donald E Westlake. Hell, Black also spent years trying to get a Doc Savage movie off the ground, but as of yet, he hasn’t been able to transfer the ’30s pulp adventurer to the big screen.

4. Joe Carnahan

Joe Carnahan’s debut film, Blood, Guts, Bullets, and Octane, was pure pulp. His second feature, the underrated modern crime classic Narc, brought a more mature and gritty tone, showcasing a powerful performance from Ray Liotta. However, it was with his third film, Smokin’ Aces, that Carnahan fully embraced his pulpy influences, delivering an ultra-violent, wildly over-the-top spectacle.

Unfortunately, Smokin’ Aces didn’t fare well with critics. However, its plot, centred around a Las Vegas magician and the chaos that ensues when contract killers, bounty hunters, mobsters, and master-of-disguise assassins converge on a Lake Tahoe hotel to take him out, feels more like a Frank Miller comic brought to life than a mere attempt to replicate Pulp Fiction.

Carnahan made a few more hard-edged movies over the following decade or so, dipping into the survival thriller genre with The Grey and time loop sci-fi with Boss Level. But he returned to his pulp roots with 2021’s Copshop, a ’70s inspired thriller in which a police station in a small, forgotten town becomes the stage for a battle between a con artist, a hitman, and the inexperienced officer caught in the middle.

3. S Craig Zahler

In 2018, S Craig Zahler told Riot Fest that he spends the money he makes from selling screenplays on three things – heavy metal albums, EC horror comics from the pre-Comics Code era in the 1940s and ’50s, and pulp magazines/books from the 1920s and ’30s. These purchases will make perfect sense if you’ve seen any of Zahler’s films.

In 2015’s Bone Tomahawk, Zahler introduced audiences to the gritty world of the horror western, delivering one of the most disturbing on-screen deaths in recent memory—one that will forever change the way you view a wishbone. He followed this with Brawl in Cell Block 99, a brutal take on prison pulp, and Dragged Across Concrete, an exploration of corrupt cop pulp.

It’s also worth mentioning that Zahler is an accomplished novelist, not just a filmmaker. His books have titles like Wraiths of the Broken Land, A Congregation of Jackals, and Mean Business on North Ganson Street. You know what? He might be the most “pulp” man who ever lived.

2. Joe Johnston

Pulp storytelling doesn’t have to be all about gun-toting tough guys, sexy femme fatales, and bloody violence – there’s also a rich vein of pulp that’s all about adventure and derring-do. In the ’90s, Hollywood saw the success of Tim Burton’s Batman – a character whose origins lie in pulp magazines and movie serials – and decided it knew exactly what to do. Audiences didn’t want more superheroes, the executives thought – they wanted more pulp heroes.

This questionable trend brought us Alec Baldwin’s The Shadow, Billy Zane’s The Phantom, and Billy Campbell’s The Rocketeer. The latter was a delightful nod to classic adventure, featuring a stunt pilot who discovers a jet pack and uses it to soar through the skies and battle Nazis. Directed by Joe Johnston, a former LucasFilm concept artist and special effects expert, Johnston would later helm the fantasy adventure Jumanji and the old-school monster flick The Wolfman.

Johnston’s aptitude for pulp was so well-drawn that they turned to him when it came time for Marvel to bring the original Nazi-punching superhero Captain America to the screen in 2011. He managed to imbue the character with just the right amount of sincerity, a feeling which is present in the pulp stories of a similar ilk. At the time of the movie’s release, he told Film School Rejects, “For me, I wanted to walk right up to that point where it becomes schmaltzy, then pull back a little bit. I think the movie has a lot of heart and that there’s a great message there.”

1. David Twohy

Astounding Science Fiction. Startling Stories. Other Worlds. Fantastic Adventures…

These are all names of science fiction magazines from the pulp era, and they could all apply to the kinds of movies David Twohy makes. In the mid-1990s, he initially gained recognition as a screenwriter for action films such as The Fugitive, Terminal Velocity, and G.I. Jane. However, his affinity for pulp storytelling truly emerged when he transitioned to directing. His work included the alien invasion film The Arrival and the supernatural submarine thriller Below, but his most notable contribution to the genre is undoubtedly the Riddick series.

Beginning with the 2000s Pitch Black, Twohy and Vin Diesel began telling the story of notorious space criminal Richard B Riddick. With his goggles hiding surgically modified eyes and signature curved blades, Riddick was kind of like an edgy modern updating of classic pulp sci-fi/fantasy heroes like John Carter of Mars, Conan the Barbarian, and Dan Dare.

While Pitch Black was very much a contained sci-fi horror movie, Twohy and Diesel were granted a grander canvas to work with on sequel The Chronicles of Riddick. The result was one of the most unexpectedly ambitious Hollywood blockbusters of the 2000s, with Riddick finding himself in the middle of a sci-fi/fantasy epic. In an interview with Cinema Confidential, Diesel revealed that the change in genre was a team effort. He explained: “We all know that David Twohy is incredibly proficient in the sci-fi world, which I don’t know that much about. I’m a fantasy guy. So I brought the fantasy element to the picture, he brought the sci-fi, and it came together. You see that in every aspect of the film.”

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