Kill Charley Varrick? Kill Bill?
I noticed this movie in the trivia section of Pulp Fiction, is the title Kill Bill another Tarantino connection?
shareTarantino uses a quote from Charley Varrick in Pulp Fiction. The Marcellus Wallace line about the "pair of pliers and a blowtorch" is a direct lift from when the Bank Manager asks Boyle what the Mob will do to him now that their money has been stolen.
When Fiction was in theaters, you always knew the Charley Varrick fans in the audience because they'd all go nuts when Wallace spoke the line!
Tarantino has said that he is a big fan of Charley Varrick and Don Siegel...
share"Kill Charley Varrick" seems to have been an international release title to try to make the movie sound more exciting.
It went into production under the title of the novel it was based on("The Looters"), but that told audiences nothing. Siegel tried to call it "The Last of the Independents"(which is Varrick's crop dusting slogan, which we see burning up at film's beginning and end), but finally gave up and used the old "charcter name as the title" gambit (see: Erin Brockovich, Forrest Gump, Michael Clayton.)
I think "Charley Varrick" was meant to remind us of "Dirty Harry." "Harry" and "Charley" seem to be similar types of names.
Calling it "Dirty Charley" would have been too much, though.