Anne Brodie Aug 20, 2009

M O N S T E R S  A N D  C R I T I C S

Filmmaker and actor Eli Roth made a big impression on the horror world with his edgy outings Cabin Fever and Hostel. But he deals with real world horror in Quentin Tarantino’s WWII outing Inglourious Basterds. They worked together previously on Grindhouse but Basterds looks takes a look at a factual pit of hell – the Holocaust.

Roth plays a sergeant under Brad Pitt’s command in a motley crew of foot soldiers who call themselves The Inglourious Basterds. Roth plays the Jew Bear, a ‘huge and obnoxious” baseball bat wielding Boston Jew who beats his Nazi prey. His men scalp them, their goal – 100 scalps a day each. They spread terror throughout Nazi-occupied Europe and inspire others to stand up against the invaders.

Eli Roth – “We had scalping class. My character used a baseball bat. I’m the sergeant and in charge of them collecting scalps. I’m from Boston so it’s not too far from who I am! Quentin said to the guys in scalping class that whoever does the best job gets close-ups doing it. You can over scalp and scalp too fast and it’s a very delicate art to scalp it properly and make it look good.”

AB – The way Tarantino has shot the film, despite its brutal content, it’s a kind of feel-good movie that would warm the hearts of millions around the world.

ER – “The fictionalised story actually taps into something so real which is the human wish fulfilment of going back in time and sacrificing something to save thousands in this case millions of Jews. Like after 9/11 how I fantasised that I was on those planes and killing the hijackers. Something really, really real. It’s brilliant. It takes an artist like Quentin Tarantino to do it.”