14. It's A Spiritual Follow Up To The Thing
It should come as no surprise that Tarantino only screened one film to the cast during filming: The Thing. Hopefully Kurt Russell has no problem watching himself. There are a lot of obvious references to the classic horror - and not just the presence of the magnificently moustachioed Russell. Obviously, Ennio Morricone created similarly haunting scores for both, and more generally, there are distinct thematic similarities: the cold setting, the paranoia, the duplicitousness. It's no accident that the end sees two characters - one black, one white - waiting to die. Even more specifically, three songs from The Thing's soundtrack are included as part of The Hateful Eight's soundtrack (two didn't actually make it into the film itself). Plus the scene in which OB and Mannix put down a line between the Haberdashery and the outhouse is a delightfully spot-on nod.