Quentin Tarantino Edited This Pulp

Fiction Scene To Avoid NC-17 Rating

     Throughout his thirty-year film career, Quentin Tarantino has been known for his embrace of extreme and stylized violence, sometimes overblown to the point that even veteran horror directors have a tough time watching it. As such, it's really no surprise to learn he has a long history of tension with the MPAA ratings system, often in different ways. As noted by Ryan Looney in Collider, perhaps the most notable example is Pulp Fiction, still widely considered his magnum opus, which contains what is possibly the most unexpected and darkly comedic death in his filmography.

     Although the movie has many iconic moments, the darkest of all might be the moment where Vincent Vega (John Travolta) accidentally shoots Marvin (Phil LaMarr) in the face without warning, just as the pair are passionately discussing how unpredictable bullets can be. "For an event so unexpected, it can be easy to forget how quickly the moment passes, showing only a brief splatter of blood against the windshield of the car," Looney says. "Instead, the rest of the scene lingers on the aftermath, leaving Vincent and his colleague Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) to transition from confusion to bewilderment to panic. In addition to being the peak of black comedy, it also proves important to the plot, bringing them straight into the path of Pumpkin (Tim Roth) and Honey Bunny (Amanda Plummer) during their diner robbery.

     This was not intentional. The fateful shot was originally supposed to strike Marvin in the neck, forcing Vincent to kill him with a second shot as an act of mercy. The scene also was meant to be more graphic in nature, with Marvin’s head exploding into blood and brain matter, which can actually still be seen in later shots as the frantic discussion between Jules and Vincent continues. Officially, though, the MPAA reacted strongly to the gore, forcing Tarantino to cut down the death to a brief shot in exchange for avoiding an NC-17 rating, which has long been taboo and remains so even today.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY

Forget Sam Spade: Why Mothers

Often Make the Best Detectives

If you’re like many mystery fans [and writers], 99% of the detectives we read about or watched on the screen when we were young were men. Whether they were elegant or clumsy, unshaven or the owners of a notorious mustache, the Y chromosome was clearly essential for the job. However, as Ayelet Gundar-Goshen recently wrote in Novel Suspects, in real life the best sleuths sometimes are mothers, who excel in the five qualities that make the best detectives in our favorite books, television shows, and movies.

• Intuition: Detective fiction is full of somewhat mystical moments, in which the detective senses that there’s something wrong. He smells something, or even better, he “feels in his body” when something “is just not right.” Well, mothers do this all the time, just without the fanfare.

• Razor-sharp memory. Detectives are known to pay attention to the smallest details...and so does a mom. She knows her kids’ routines, which one hates peanut butter, who hit whom, and what exactly was the punishment.

• Ruthlessness. The detective’s quest for knowledge is often brutal, but anyone who has listened to a typical dinner-time conversation about college admissions knows that mothers can be just as ruthless as hard-boiled detectives.

• Self-destruction. Most detectives are so focused on their job that they they’re willing to risk everything else, including their own lives. Sadly enough, this description fits many mothers, as well…just substitute the word “kids” with “criminals.”

• Blind Spots. A detective is known for having a sharp eye and penetrating gaze, yet there’s something he’s bound to miss. Same with mothers, who may think they want to know everything about their children...but do they really?

Why Trains Are So Irresistible To

Thriller Fans—And Alfred Hitchcock

     Ever since early audiences purportedly fled in terror at the sight of the locomotive roaring into the station in an 1895 silent short by the Lumière brothers, filmmakers and novelists have explored the thrilling possibilities of this singular form of travel. As Debbie Babitt recently wrote in Crime Reads, trains are almost irresistible to suspense auteurs because of their confined, claustrophobic interiors that force strangers into intimate proximity with few places to hide and no means of escape.

Alfred Hitchcock was particularly fond of setting key scenes on trains, and they play a major role in many of his classic pictures, from The 39 Steps to Suspicion to Spellbound, to his 1959 tour de force North By Northwest." Then there’s The Lady Vanishes, adapted from the aptly titled novel The Wheel Spins, which is his only film where the action is set almost entirely on a train. This 1938 spy classic, shot on a ninety-foot set in a London film studio, brilliantly captures the sense of confinement ideal for attempting to conceal sinister doings (including a scene in a baggage car) in the story of an elderly woman who disappears aboard a European express where everyone denies having seen her.

Southern California Police Solve

33-Year-Old Cold Case Murder

     Police in southern California last week announced they solved a murder case which had gone unsolved for more than three decades. According to the Ventura Police Department, the body of 42-year-old Danielle Clause was found on a hillside at the top of Tioga Drive in Ventura on July 16, 1991. An autopsy subsequently revealed Clause had been sexually assaulted, and had died due to multiple blunt-force injuries to her head. As often happens with random assaults, few leads emerged in the case and eventually it was suspended.

     A breakthrough in the case came 30 years later in 2021, when detectives and forensic specialists retested crime scene evidence for DNA. By using forensic genetic technology that didn’t exist in the 1990s, they were able to piece together a family tree and verify “distinct characteristics” of the suspect by using phenotyping. Based on their new evidence, investigators identified the suspect as Larry Devon Welch, who died in 1999.

     “My sister was so much more than a victim of a brutal murder; she was an artist, a daughter, a sister, a mother and a wife…she was a good person with a mighty soul, and she was taken way too young,” Danielle’s sister, Marcie Forte, told NBC. “I didn’t really believe the police were going to solve this, because there are other crimes being committed all the time. I’m so grateful that I lived to see at least a meter of justice and that they found out who did this.”

75 Edgar Allan Poe Quotes

On Life, Love and Writing

     As every mystery writer [and reader] knows, Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, editor, poet and literary critic. The Boston native only lived until he was 40 years old, but he was one of the most famous literary pioneers prior to his puzzling death in Baltimore in 1849. His body of work ranges from Gothic horror to fantasy to adventure to humor, and his "Murders in the Rue Morgue," published in the April 1841 issue of Graham's Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine, is widely considered to be the first detective story.

     [Self-deprecating sidebar: When I was in high school I entered a speech contest, wherein I elected to recite the entirety of Poe’s short story “The Tell-Tale Heart”—all 2,093 words of it—in under ten minutes. I learned a great deal about pacing, as well the capacity of the brain to memorize long passages, and I came in dead last.]

     Many of Poe’s works have dark and complex themes, dealing with such issues as death, alcoholism, mental illness, murder, and mourning...but love also was an important aspect of his life. After all, he did marry his first cousin, who was half his age. He also had an unstable home life, losing his parents at a young age and having a strained relationship with his foster parents. I mention all this because Parade magazine’s Kellye Fox recently compiled a list of 75 quotes that you may [or may not] recognize as having come from the pen of the suspense and mystery master.

Now Available!

Beyond All Doubt

[Reed Bunzel writing as Hilton Reed]

“Beyond All Doubt is an edge-of-your-seat fast-moving thrill-ride, kicked off by the reappearance of a dead man and propelling the reader along to the final bullet—and beyond.”— S.J. Rozan, best-selling author of The Mayors of New York

​

“Beyond All Doubt is a taut, smart, and emotionally rich thriller. Reed has a sharp eye for character and a screenwriter's feel for action. This tale is sleek as a mink and fast as a bullet.”— T. Jefferson Parker, author of The Rescue

“Beyond All Doubt is not a 'who done it,' but a twisty, compelling 'who did what.' Cameron Kane is a sympathetic, yet unrelenting bulldog in his pursuit of the truth about his wife's death. Intriguing and intense, Beyond All Doubt is a winner!”—Matt Coyle, bestselling author of the Rick Cahill crime novels

“In this action-packed and engrossing thriller, Reed masterfully balances between a husband’s drive to uncover the truth about his wife’s death and a father’s instinct to protect his family at all costs. Once I started reading, I couldn’t put it down!”— Matthew Farrell, bestselling author of The Woman at Number 6

“Beyond All Doubt has plenty of thrills—deadly snipers, false identities, shocking deaths—but at its heart, this book is about a grieving single father whose desperation propels the plot like a speeding car with its brake lines cut.”— Cayce Osborne, author of I Know What You Did