Why Quentin Tarantino Claims He’s “Not a Hitchcock Fan”—Even Though He Remade One of His Best Stories
Quentin Tarantino is arguably the biggest “film geek” in Hollywood history. His movies are love letters to the past, pulling inspiration from everything from Italian Spaghetti Westerns to obscure Hong Kong action flicks. However, there is one legendary filmmaker Tarantino has a surprisingly complicated relationship with: the Master of Suspense himself, Alfred Hitchcock.
While Tarantino famously reimagined one of Hitchcock’s most iconic television episodes for his segment of the 1995 comedy Four Rooms, he recently confessed that he isn’t actually a fan of the director’s work.
The Bet: Steve McQueen vs. Quentin Tarantino
Both Hitchcock’s 1960 episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (titled “Man from the South”) and Tarantino’s 1995 short (“The Man from Hollywood”) are based on the same macabre short story by Roald Dahl.
The premise is simple and terrifying: A man bets his pinky finger against a stranger’s luxury car. The challenge? He must light his cigarette lighter ten times in a row without it failing once.
In the Hitchcock version, a young Steve McQueen plays the gambler under the watchful eye of Peter Lorre. The tension is unbearable, but the story ends with a twist that saves McQueen’s finger—the bet is revealed to be a con by the antagonist’s wife.
In Tarantino’s version, the director plays a boozy, fast-talking filmmaker named Chester Rush. He recreates the exact same bet with a friend (Paul Calderón) and a terrified bellboy (Tim Roth). But unlike Hitchcock, Tarantino doesn’t pull his punches. The lighter fails on the very first flick, and the bellboy instantly chops the finger off before walking away with his money.
Why Tarantino Thinks Hitchcock “Petered Out”
Speaking on the 2 Bears, 1 Cave podcast, Tarantino shocked hosts when he bluntly stated: “Not a Hitchcock fan.”
While he acknowledged Hitchcock as “one of the greatest directors who ever lived,” he argued that the legend was “held back by the times that he worked in.” Tarantino’s main gripe? The third acts. He feels that Hitchcock’s endings often “peter out” because of the Hays Code—the strict set of industry rules that governed sex, violence, and morality in Hollywood from the 1930s through the late 60s.
According to Tarantino, Hitchcock’s stories were never allowed to reach their full, dark potential because the censors simply wouldn’t allow a “bad” ending or extreme gore.
Finishing What the Master Started
When viewed through this lens, “The Man from Hollywood” isn’t just a tribute; it’s a “fix.” Tarantino took the same high-stakes tension Hitchcock built in 1960 and gave it the brutal, messy ending he felt it always deserved.
By plunging a meat cleaver through a character’s bone in the final seconds of Four Rooms, Tarantino essentially “finished” what Hitchcock started 35 years prior. He proved that while the Master of Suspense could build the room, Tarantino was the one willing to burn it down.
For Tarantino, the thrill isn’t just in the suspense—it’s in the payoff. And in his world, if you lose a bet, you lose the finger. No exceptions.
