Tarantino is another filmmaker who has never been afraid to court controversy. As a fan of hyper-violent, marginal cinema it's something that the director readily embraces. He knows that, in the end, it is going to help his film be seen by more people. The controversy surrounding his debut feature certainly helped the young Tarantino make a name for himself in Hollywood. Reservoir Dogs is now viewed as a landmark film in independent filmmaking, but at the time most of the talk was centred around the film's violent sequences, in particular the infamous ear cutting sequence. It was a scene that caused some cinema patrons to walk out, with Tarantino claiming that it happened in every single screening of the film he attended in 1992. While never outright banned, Reservoir Dogs' UK video release was delayed by two years when it was caught up in the panic of violence on video (stemming from the aforementioned Child's Play 3/James Bulger case). All the controversy helped make Reservoir Dogs a cult hit and one of the most talked about films of the 90s.
