Quentin Tarantino is responsible for some of the bloodiest outbursts of violence in cinema history. But Inglourious Basterds and Co. are never particularly scary, which is why many fans have been wanting a horror film from the director for a long time. That he is definitely one A knack for horror stuff Tarantino proved 28 years ago with Pulp Fiction – if only for a few minutes.
Maybe you already know which scene I’m talking about. The gangster film offers many moods over its two and a half hour running time. The journey through the LA underworld is sometimes grotesque, sometimes funny, sometimes surreal. Around the middle, the atmosphere tilts briefly abysmal.
The scariest Tarantino moment comes all of a sudden
Exactly, I mean the limp-leg sequence. Originally: The Gimp. Cheating boxer Butch (Bruce Willis) is wanted by gang boss Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames). Butch has just got hold of his father’s beloved watch in dire straits and happens to be running down the street in Marsellus. The argument ends in a pawn shop. Both get knocked down and awake in torture chamber by Maynard (Duane Whitaker) and Zed (Peter Greene).
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New rules apply in this basement, it is a safe space for Zed and Maynard, who can live out their rape fantasies here undisturbed. It’s probably the most dangerous place Butch and Marsellus could stumble into in this situation. One after the other they are to be raped and who knows what else. The prospect of their possible fate follows immediately: After an almost tender small talk between the sex torture buddies, the words fall: “Bring out the Gimp”.
Of the Sex slave limp “lives” in a locked chest in the next room. He is led back to the scene on a chain.
Some exciting information about the hinkebein scene
I have nothing against people who like to dress in leather suits. Every jack is different. What me minutes after the Hinkebein appearance with a cold feeling somewhere between the belly button and the spinal cord sits still is the overall dehumanizing violence of the sequence. There this leather creature sits, only the eyes visible from the face through two slits, and giggles maliciously in the face of the new victims of its (!) tormentors.
Watch the trailer for Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction
Pulp Fiction – Blu-ray Trailer (German)
Everything that makes him human has been taken away from Hinkebein. Starting with freedom, through personality to the will to regain one’s freedom. He is subjected to constant sexual abuse and yet he doesn’t seem to have any ideas of escape. He devoted himself to his new life, somehow came to terms with it. He’s holding onto what little he has left.
The amputated soul is expressed in his demeanor. Apparently he’s dumb and just making his way through strange dance moves and gestures noticeable. Limping is more spirit than man under that suit. What a terrible, gloomy, hopeless and joyless existence!
I don’t know of course what exactly is going on in this mysterious figure. When I think about Hinkebein’s fate, and I do that every time I watch the film, the following questions haunt me:
It’s good that Quentin Tarantino likes to talk and that there are detailed answers to many of the questions.
© Miramax
Limping leg in Pulp Fiction
Hinkebein’s backstory makes the Tarantino scene even worse
How did Hinkebein get into the basement and how long has he been there?
In an interview with Empire, Tarantino revealed the character’s backstory and confirmed my worst fears. He says that limp “was a hitchhiker or anyone they picked up 7 years ago. They trained him and he’s their perfect victim.” phew
Why can’t Hinklebein speak?
It gets even meaner, because Hinkebein actor Stephen Hibbert unpacked, well, moving background information about his cult figure in an interview in 2018.
I assumed Hinkylegs was kidnapped and lived a life as a sex slave for God knows how long. We decided, that they cut out his tongueso the poor limp couldn’t speak.
Well, thank you very much, I didn’t want to know that exactly.
Does Hinkebein die at the end of Pulp Fiction?
Hinkebein, or whatever his real name was, had to lead a life as a tongueless and willless sex slave for no longer than 7 years. According to Quentin Tarantino, the character died by strangulation after being knocked out by Bruce Willis’ character.
That sounds like salvation to me. But was it for Hinkebein too? Would he have liked to have lived on, even under these inhuman conditions? Precisely because the scene elicits such unimaginable questions from me, it is by far Tarantino’s most disturbing.
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