Over the course of thirty years, thirteen screenplays, and nine directorial features, Quentin Tarantino has established himself as one of the greatest directors of the 21st century. With a penchant for suspenseful filmmaking, clever camerawork, and razor-sharp dialogue, he's also pushed the boundaries of violence in cinema while maintaining his signature style and charm.

RELATED: Every Quentin Tarantino Movie, Ranked By Rotten Tomatoes

Be it by way of scalping Nazis with blunt Bowie knives or severing heads with samurai swords, Tarantino's distinctive brand of violence has left an impression on fans of genre filmmaking. With influences ranging from the Spaghetti Westerns of the 60s and 70s to the Kung-Fu/Wuxia films of the 80s and 90s, his soft spot for silver screen gore is truly something to behold.

7 Mr. Blonde Tortures The Cop – Reservoir Dogs (1992)

Michael-Madsen-as-Mr-Blonde-in-Reservoir-Dogs

In Tarantino's feature-length directorial debut Reservoir Dogs, Michael Madsen's Mr. Blonde tortures Kirk Baltz's Marvin Nash. While dancing to Stealers Wheel's "Stuck in the Middle with You," Blonde slashes Nash's face with a straight razor and then proceeds to cut off his left ear.

Tarantino's choice to set the scene in a warehouse is representative of Mr. Blonde's mental state — a location filled with violence, apathy, and sadism. The music and his dancing further heighten his insanity as he tortures Nash. When Mr. Blonde finishes his abuse, the music abruptly mutes, and out walks a man who is seemingly calm and sane.

6 The Bride Inflicts Death By Door – Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)

KILL BILL 2003 THE BRIDE DEATH BY DOOR

Tarantino's fourth directed film follows Uma Thurman as "The Bride", a former member of an assassination squad who seeks revenge after her crew tries to kill her and her unborn child. Described as "the deadliest woman in the world," The Bride wakes from a four-year coma and kills a man who intends to rape her, along with the hospital worker who has been selling her body while she was comatose.

RELATED: The 10 Most Iconic Movie Weapons, Ranked By Leathality

This scene is especially gruesome, with The Bride biting her attacker's bottom lip, which kills him in the bleed-out. She then proceeds to wait by the door for the other hospital worker — slashing his Achilles tendon and slamming the door into his skull. The Bride grabs his "P***y Wagon" car keys and leaves his lifeless body, convulsing from muscle spasms, in her wake.

5 Mandingo Fight At Candieland – Django Unchained (2012)

Leonardo DiCaprio and Jamie Foxx in 2012's Django Unchained

Django Unchained is Tarantino's seventh directed feature. The film follows Jamie Foxx as Django, a slave who trains under the mentorship of a German bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz), with the objective of reuniting with his wife (Kerrie Washington). Upon introducing themselves to Calvin Candie, a slave-owner played by Leonardo DiCaprio, the two protagonists are subjected to watching a Mandingo fight.

In the scene, two slaves are forced to fight to the death, for the sake of their owners' wealth and entertainment. When one of the slaves bests the other, Candie tosses a hammer into the fight and exclaims "Finish him." The somber looks from the surrounding people in the room, including the other house slaves, holds an emotional weight over the scene, as brutal and as violent as it is.

4 The Bride Kills The Crazy 88 – Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)

kill bill 2003 the bride crazy 88s

The first volume of Kill Bill climaxes with a fight between The Bride and The Crazy 88s. Tarantino takes notes from films like Lady Snowblood (1973) and Navajo Joe (1966) to create an ultraviolent affair with plenty of blood, guts, and glory.

Slashing chests, axing heads, bisecting bodies, and plucking out eyeballs, The Bride injures and/or kills every single yakuza member (save for one teenage boy) in a showdown at the House of the Blue Leaves. The MPAA forced Tarantino to tone down the violence, but they never specified how — so, he placed a black and white filter over select shots to limit the obscene gore.

3 Drinking The Poisoned Coffee – The Hateful Eight (2015)

Jennifer Jason Leigh in The Hateful Eight (2015).

The Hateful Eight boasts an ensemble cast of big-name actors who love to work with Tarantino. Each character's death is violently unique and brutal, but it's Kurt Russell's character, John "The Hangman" Ruth, whose demise is the goriest of them all.

RELATED: 5 Performances That Should Have Won An Oscar

O.B. is the first to go, after taking a sip from a pot of poisoned coffee. Realizing his fate, John smacks Daisy Domergue across the face and onto the floor, before spewing an ungodly amount of blood onto her face. The tension throughout the scene is palpable; it's the closest Tarantino has come to the genre of horror.

2 Cliff Booth Kills Three Members Of The Manson Family – Once Upon A Time... In Hollywood (2019)

ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD 2019 TARANTINO CLIFF BOOTH MANSON FAMILY

The third act of Once Upon A Time... in Hollywood is filled with all the brutal violence that the first two acts lacked. In Tarantino's universe of alternate history, the Manson Family didn’t go to Sharon Tate’s house. Instead, they went to her neighbor's house: TV Western star, Rick Dalton.

The murderous trio is greeted by Dalton's stunt double, Cliff Booth, who is high from smoking an acid-dipped cigarette. Booth commands his dog to take down two of the intruders while he takes care of the third. He proceeds to bash their skull against a wall-mounted telephone, a stone fireplace ledge, and a coffee table. Bloody, bruised, beaten, and battered, Cliff collapses after being stabbed in the leg.

1 Nazi Movie Theater Massacre – Inglourious Basterds (2009)

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS 2009 NAZI MOVIE THEATER MASSACRE

The Nazi theater massacre in Inglourious Basterds takes the Tarantino-verse of alternate history to an entirely new level of unadulterated, graphic violence. Re-writing history, Tarantino traps the core leaders of the Third Reich, including Adolf Hitler, in a movie theater screening Nazi propaganda.

Behind the screen, Jewish theater-owner Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) plants 350 nitrate film prints which, as the narrator describes, burns three times faster than paper. The "Basterds", an assassination squadron dedicated to killing Nazis, then proceed to cut down the crowd from an elevated stage booth in a hail of machine-gun fire. It's an affair of mass murder and mayhem, and it's the most violent death scene that Quentin Tarantino has ever directed.