taxi driver movie review roger ebert

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

• Upcoming Movies and TV shows
• Trivia & Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
• Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

Movies / TV

No results found.

• What's the Tomatometer®?
• Login/signup

Movies in theaters

• Opening this week
• Top box office
• Coming soon to theaters
• Certified fresh movies

Movies at home

• Fandango at Home
• Netflix streaming
• Prime Video
• Most popular streaming movies
• What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

• Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga Link to Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
• Hit Man Link to Hit Man
• Babes Link to Babes

New TV Tonight

• Evil: Season 4
• Stax: Soulsville, U.S.A.: Season 1
• Jurassic World: Chaos Theory: Season 1
• Tires: Season 1
• Lolla: The Story of Lollapalooza: Season 1
• Trying: Season 4
• Fairly OddParents: A New Wish: Season 1
• Mulligan: Season 2
• The 1% Club: Season 1

Most Popular TV on RT

• Outer Range: Season 2
• Dark Matter: Season 1
• X-Men '97: Season 1
• Fallout: Season 1
• Bridgerton: Season 3
• Bodkin: Season 1
• Hacks: Season 3
• Baby Reindeer: Season 1
• Best TV Shows
• Most Popular TV
• TV & Streaming News

Certified fresh pick

• Bridgerton: Season 3 Link to Bridgerton: Season 3
• All-Time Lists
• Binge Guide
• Comics on TV
• Five Favorite Films
• Video Interviews
• Weekend Box Office
• Weekly Ketchup
• What to Watch

Cannes Film Festival 2024: Movie Scorecard

All A24 Movies Ranked by Tomatometer

Asian-American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander Heritage

What to Watch: In Theaters and On Streaming

Walton Goggins Talks The Ghoul’s Thirsty Fans and Fallout’s Western Influences on The Awards Tour Podcast

Vote For the Best Movie of 1999 – Round 1

• Trending on RT
• Vote: Best 1999 Movies
• Most Anticipated 2025 Movies
• Cannes Film Festival Scorecard
• Best Horror Movies 2024

Taxi Driver

Where to watch.

Rent Taxi Driver on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, or buy it on Fandango at Home, Prime Video.

What to Know

A must-see film for movie lovers, this Martin Scorsese masterpiece is as hard-hitting as it is compelling, with Robert De Niro at his best.

Critics Reviews

Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Martin Scorsese

Robert De Niro

Travis Bickle

Jodie Foster

Cybill Shepherd

Harvey Keitel

Victor Argo

Movie Clips

More like this, related movie news.

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Taxi Driver – review

M artin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) was last revived five years ago, for its 30th anniversary, but any occasion to return it to the big screen is fine. There is, perhaps, little or nothing left to say, other than this is one of the fiercest depictions of insomnia in the cinema: Robert De Niro's Travis Bickle is a Vietnam vet apparently unable to sleep, who drives his yellow cab endlessly through the infernal darkness of New York by night, haunted and obsessed by the squalor, possessed of an ambiguous need to cleanse, to redeem or to destroy. Bernard Herrmann's score is unforgettable and so is Paul Schrader's screenplay. I like to think that Travis's famous line about a real rain coming to wash all the scum off the streets was inspired by Gerald Kersh's 1938 novel Night and the City, the basis of the 1950 London noir by Jules Dassin, in which "the heavy rain shot down at an angle, as if it meant once and for all to wash away all the vermin that swam over the feverish face of this dreary and interminable city." One of my favourite moments is one of the film's quietest: after Travis's tense payphone conversation with Cybill Shepherd, Scorsese's camera moves enigmatically away from him and just gazes down the blank hallway, as if tactfully averting its glance. A film that stays in the bloodstream.

• Taxi Driver
• Drama films
• Robert De Niro
• Martin Scorsese

Comments (…)

Most viewed.

Find anything you save across the site in your account

Underground Man

By Pauline Kael

“Taxi Driver” is the fevered story of an outsider in New York—a man who can’t find any point of entry into human society. Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), the protagonist of Martin Scorsese’s new film, from a script by Paul Schrader, can’t find a life. He’s an ex-Marine from the Midwest who takes a job driving a cab nights, because he can’t sleep anyway, and he is surrounded by the night world of the uprooted—whores, pimps, transients. Schrader, who grew up in Michigan, in the Christian Reformed Church, a zealous Calvinist splinter (he didn’t see a movie until he was seventeen), has created a protagonist who is an ascetic not by choice but out of fear. And Scorsese, with his sultry moodiness and his appetite for the pulp sensationalism of forties movies, is just the director to define an American underground man’s resentment. Travis wants to conform, but he can’t find a group pattern to conform to. So he sits and drives in the stupefied languor of anomie. He hates New York with a Biblical fury; it gives off the stench of Hell, and its filth and smut obsess him. He manages to get a date with Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), a political campaigner whose blondness and white clothes represent purity to him, but he is so out of touch that he inadvertently offends her and she won’t have anything more to do with him. When he fumblingly asks advice from Wizard (Peter Boyle), an older cabdriver, and indicates the pressure building up in him, Wizard doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Travis becomes sick with loneliness and frustration, and then, like a commando preparing for a raid, he purifies his body and goes into training to kill. “Taxi Driver” is a movie in heat, a raw, tabloid version of “Notes from Underground,” and we stay with the protagonist’s hatreds all the way.

This picture is more ferocious than Scorsese’s volatile, allusive “Mean Streets.” “Taxi Driver” has a relentless movement: Travis has got to find relief. It’s a two-character study—Travis versus New York. As Scorsese has designed the film, the city never lets you off the hook. There’s no grace, no compassion in the artificially lighted atmosphere. The neon reds, the vapors that shoot up from the streets, the dilapidation all get to you the way they get to Travis. He is desperately sick, but he’s the only one who tries to save a twelve-and-a-half-year-old hooker, Iris (Jodie Foster); the argument he invokes is that she belongs with her family and in school—the secure values from his own past that are of no help to him now. Some mechanism of adaptation is missing in Travis; the details aren’t filled in—just the indications of a strict religious background, and a scar on his back, suggesting a combat wound. The city world presses in on him, yet it’s also remote, because Travis is so disaffected that he isn’t always quite there. We perceive the city as he does, and it’s so scummy and malign we get the feel of his alienation.

Scorsese may just naturally be an Expressionist; his asthmatic bedridden childhood in a Sicilian-American home in Little Italy propelled him toward a fix on the violently exciting movies he saw. Physically and intellectually, he’s a speed demon, a dervish. Even in “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” he found a rationale for restless, whirlwind movement. But Scorsese is also the most carnal of directors—movement is ecstatic for him—and that side of him didn’t come out in “Alice.” This new movie gives him a chance for the full Expressionist use of the city which he was denied in “Mean Streets,” because it was set in New York but was made on a minuscule budget in southern California, with only seven shooting days in New York itself. Scorsese’s Expressionism isn’t anything like the exaggerated sets of the German directors; he uses documentary locations, but he pushes discordant elements to their limits, and the cinematographer, Michael Chapman, gives the street life a seamy, rich pulpiness. When Travis is taunted by a pimp, Sport (Harvey Keitel), the pimp is so eager for action that he can’t stand still; the hipster, with his rhythmic jiggling, makes an eerily hostile contrast to the paralyzed, dumbfounded Travis. Scorsese gets the quality of trance in a scene like this; the whole movie has a sense of vertigo. Scorsese’s New York is the big city of the thrillers he feasted his imagination on—but at a later stage of decay. This New York is a voluptuous enemy. The street vapors become ghostly; Sport the pimp romancing his baby whore leads her in a hypnotic dance; the porno theatres are like mortuaries; the congested traffic is macabre. And this Hell is always in movement.

No other film has ever dramatized urban indifference so powerfully; at first, here, it’s horrifyingly funny, and then just horrifying. When Travis attempts to date Betsy, he’s very seductive; we can see why she’s tantalized. They’re talking across a huge gap, and still they’re connecting (though the wires are all crossed). It’s a zinger of a scene: an educated, socially conscious woman dating a lumpen lost soul who uses one of the oldest pitches in the book—he tells her that he knows she is a lonely person. Travis means it; the gruesome comedy in the scene is how intensely he means it—because his own life is utterly empty. Throughout the movie, Travis talks to people on a different level from the level they take him on. He’s so closed off he’s other-worldly; he engages in so few conversations that slang words like “moonlighting” pass right over him—the spoken language is foreign to him. His responses are sometimes so blocked that he seems wiped out; at other times he’s animal fast. This man is burning in misery, and his inflamed, brimming eyes are the focal point of the compositions. Robert De Niro is in almost every frame: thin-faced, as handsome as Robert Taylor one moment and cagey, ferrety, like Cagney, the next—and not just looking at the people he’s talking to but spying on them. As Travis, De Niro has none of the peasant courtliness of his Vito Corleone in “The Godfather, Part II.” Vito held himself in proudly, in control of his violence; he was a leader. Travis is dangerous in a different, cumulative way. His tense face folds in a yokel’s grin and he looks almost an idiot. Or he sits in his room vacantly watching the bright-eyed young faces on the TV and with his foot he slowly rocks the set back and then over. The exacerbation of his desire for vengeance shows in his numbness, yet part of the horror implicit in this movie is how easily he passes. The anonymity of the city soaks up one more invisible man; he could be legion.

Scorsese handles the cast immaculately. Harvey Keitel’s pimp is slimy, all right, yet his malicious, mischievous eyes and his jumpiness are oddly winning, and Keitel has more resources for building tension than just about any other actor on the screen. Jodie Foster, who was exactly Iris’s age when she played the part, is an unusually physical child actress and seems to have felt out her line readings—her words are convincingly hers. Cybill Shepherd has never been better: you don’t see her trying to act. She may actually be doing her least acting here, yet she doesn’t have that schoolgirl model’s blankness; her face is expressive and womanly. There’s a suggestion that Betsy’s life hasn’t gone according to her expectations—a faint air of defeat. The comedian Albert Brooks brings a note of quibbling, plump pomposity to the role of her political co-worker, and Leonard Harris, formerly the WCBS-TV arts critic, has a professionally earnest manner as Palantine, their candidate. Peter Boyle’s role is small, but he was right to want to be in this film, and he does slobby wonders with his scenes as the gently thick Wizard, adjusted to the filth that Travis is coiled up to fight; Boyle gives the film a special New York-hack ambience, and, as the cabby Doughboy, Harry Northrup has a bland face and Southern drawl that suggest another kind of rootlessness. Scorsese himself is sitting on the sidewalk when Travis first sees Betsy, and then he returns to play a glitteringly morbid role as one of Travis’s fares—a man who wants Travis to share his rancid glee in what the Magnum he intends to shoot his faithless wife with will do to her. As an actor, he sizzles; he has such concentrated energy that this sequence burns a small hole in the screen.

As a director, Scorsese has the occasional arbitrariness and preening of a runaway talent; sometimes a shot calls attention to itself, because it serves no visible purpose. One can pass over a lingering closeup of a street musician, but when Travis is talking to Betsy on a pay phone in an office building and the camera moves away from him to the blank hallway. It’s an Antonioni pirouette. The Bernard Herrmann score is a much bigger problem; the composer finished recording it on December 23rd, the day before he died, and so it’s a double pity that it isn’t better. It’s clear why Scorsese wanted Herrmann: his specialty was expressing psychological disorder through dissonant, wrought-up music. But this movie, with its suppressed sex and suppressed violence, is already pitched so high that it doesn’t need ominous percussion, snake rattles, and rippling scales These musical nudges belong back with the rampaging thrillers that “Taxi Driver” transcends. Scorsese got something out of his asthma: he knows how to make us experience the terror of suffocation.

Some actors are said to be empty vessels who are filled by the roles they play, but that’s not what appears to be happening here with De Niro. He’s gone the other way. He’s used his emptiness—he’s reached down into his own anomie. Only Brando has done this kind of plunging, and De Niro’s performance has something of the undistanced intensity that Brando’s had in “Last Tango.” In its own way, this movie, too, has an erotic aura. There is practically no sex in it, but no sex can be as disturbing as sex. And that’s what it’s about: the absence of sex—bottled-up, impacted energy and emotion, with a blood-splattering release. The fact that we experience Travis’s need for an explosion viscerally, and that the explosion itself has the quality of consummation, makes “Taxi Driver” one of the few truly modern horror films.

Anyone who goes to the movie houses that loners frequent knows that they identify with the perpetrators of crimes, even the most horrible crimes, and that they aren’t satisfied unless there’s a whopping climax. In his essay “The White Negro,” Norman Mailer suggested that when a killer takes his revenge on the institutions that he feels are oppressing him his eruption of violence can have a positive effect on him. The most shocking aspect of “Taxi Driver” is that it takes this very element, which has generally been exploited for popular appeal, and puts it in the center of the viewer’s consciousness. Violence is Travis’s only means of expressing himself. He has not been able to hurdle the barriers to being seen and felt. When he blasts through, it’s his only way of telling the city that he’s there. And, given his ascetic loneliness, it’s the only real orgasm he can have.

The violence in this movie is so threatening precisely because it’s cathartic for Travis. I imagine that some people who are angered by the film will say that it advocates violence as a cure for frustration. But to acknowledge that when a psychopath’s blood boils over he may cool down is not the same as justifying the eruption. This film doesn’t operate on the level of moral judgment of what Travis does. Rather, by drawing us into his vortex it makes us understand the psychic discharge of the quiet boys who go berserk. And it’s a real slap in the face for us when we see Travis at the end looking pacified. He’s got the rage out of his system—for the moment, at least—and he’s back at work, picking up passengers in front of the St. Regis. It’s not that he’s cured but that the city is crazier than he is. ♦

New Yorker Favorites

They thought that they’d found the perfect apartment. They weren’t alone .

After high-school football stars were accused of rape, online vigilantes demanded that justice be served .

The world’s oldest temple and the dawn of civilization .

What happened to the whale from “Free Willy.”

It was one of the oldest buildings left downtown. Why not try to save it ?

The religious right’s leading ghostwriter .

A comic strip by Alison Bechdel: the seven-minute semi-sadistic workout .

Sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from The New Yorker .

By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

By Terrence Rafferty

By Anthony Lane

"We waste our money so you don't have to."

"We waste our money, so you don't have to."

Movie Review

Taxi driver.

US Release Date: 02-08-1976

Directed by: Martin Scorsese

Starring ▸ ▾

• Robert De Niro ,  as
• Travis Bickle
• Jodie Foster ,  as
• Albert Brooks ,  as
• Leonard Harris ,  as
• Charles Palantine
• Peter Boyle ,  as
• Cybill Shepherd ,  as
• Harvey Keitel as

Robert De Niro is Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver .

This is one of those famously iconic movies that people are aware of even without having seen it. De Niro's, "You talkin' to me?" scene is familiar to every movie buff.  It was named #10 by the AFI on their 100 Years...100 Quotes list. As a whole though, how does the movie hold up 35 years after it was released? Despite being a bit rough around the edges, surprisingly well.

De Niro plays Travis Bickle, an unstable Vietnam vet in 1970s New York City.  An insomniac on medication, he takes a job as a Taxi Driver, working nights, from 6PM to 6AM.  Nightly he drives across the city, seeing only the ugliness and brutality that the city has to offer. Through the voiceover narration, we learn exactly what Bickle thinks of it all, "All the animals come out at night - whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal. Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets."

It has little to do with the plot, apart from showing the setting and introducing the characters, but these early scenes of Bickle prowling the city, mowing down the steam rising from the sewer grates, with the neon light reflected surreally in the windshield, are some of the most interesting and memorable. It's a dark and twisted world that he inhabits and we're taken along for the ride.

For a short while Bickle becomes smitten with Betsy, a political volunteer working for a presidential candidate. Their "relationship" doesn't last long though, ending before it begins when he takes her to a adult movie theater on their first date. It's her rejection that pushes the already deranged Bickle even further off the deep end.

Clearly Bickle's biggest problem is his isolation.  As he says, "Loneliness has followed me my whole life. Everywhere. In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere. There's no escape. I'm God's lonely man." He longs to make a connection, but he doesn't have a clue how to relate to another human being.  After purchasing some guns, he suddenly thinks he sees a way to make that connection, or at least a way to make an impact on the world.

The only person that Bickle does manage to form a connection with, is Iris, a very young prostitute played by Jodi Foster. As she puts it, "I don't know who's weirder.  You or me?"  In one of his few acts of humanity, Bickle offers to help Iris escape her troubled life.

Scorsese generates plenty of atmosphere. There's a gritty look and feel to the story that perfectly captures 1970s New York City. There's nothing glossy or pretty here, apart from Shepherd as Betsy. And except from the obtrusively dramatic soundtrack and the hyper-violence of the film's climax, there's a very realistic feel to the story.

De Niro's contribution is that with Bickle he creates an unstable killer that you sympathize with. He is crazy but vulnerable. Innocent and psychotic.  He is, as Betsy describes him, "A walking contradiction."

My only real complaint with the story is the epilogue, which seems a little too neat.  Too Hollywood. Roger Ebert, among others, has conjectured that this ending takes place inside Bickle's mind rather than in reality, but Scorsese has contradicted this theory. It doesn't really mar the the movie as a whole, but it does mean that it ends on a weaker note than if it had ended without it.

If you only know this movie because of that one famous scene with that most famous of lines, than you definitely owe it to yourself to watch it. Particularly now that Scorsese and De Niro have actually been talking about making a sequel all these years later. Perhaps they should talk to Coppola about the wisdom of reviving a beloved film from the 70s, but either way, if they make it, I'm sure I'll see it.

Jodie Foster as Iris has breakfast with De Niro's Travis in Taxi Driver .

The story holds up well, as does De Niro’s riveting performance. Travis Bickle is deservedly regarded as one of the great characters in screen history. Scott, you hit the nail right on the head when you called him innocent and psychotic. Travis is definitely a psycho, but he is also a lost little boy struggling to fit in to a world he didn’t create and doesn’t understand. His clumsy attempts to woo Betsy are poignant and awkwardly funny, but like everything else Travis does, they are also a bit disturbing.

The supporting cast is memorable. Besides Cybill Shepherd as Betsy there is a baby-faced Albert Brooks as her fellow political campaigner and the man Travis sees as his competition. Peter Boyle has a few good scenes as an advice-spouting veteran cabbie known as Wizard and Harvey Keitel is (perfectly) disgusting as Iris’ long haired pimp. Steven Prince makes the most of his one scene as Andy, the gun salesman, “Isn’t that a little honey?” His sales technique is as eager as any late-night infomercial pitchman.

A twelve year old Jodie Foster gives the second most indelible performance as the underage hooker Iris. Like Travis she is a walking dichotomy, an innocent lamb that is also wise beyond her years. The 1970s was definitely the era for young actresses playing age inappropriate roles. Foster’s Iris is up there with Linda Blair in The Exorcist and Brooke Shields in Pretty Baby in the “uncomfortable to watch” category. The scene where her pimp sweet talks her while slow dancing with her, remains one of the creepiest moments from any movie.

I agree that for the most part Taxi Driver tells a believable story. There are a few scenes however, including the ultra violent climax, where Scorsese tries too hard to shock. The hold-up of the corner bodega that Travis witnesses is one. Did the store owner really have to start beating the would-be robber’s lifeless body? And the scene where Scorsese appears as the jealous husband talking about shooting his cheating wife in her pussy is a blatant attempt to be controversial.

I really enjoyed the Bernard Herrmann score with its brassy horns and dramatic crescendos. It evokes a noir like atmosphere and adds a layer of cinematic timelessness to the movie. Taxi Driver isn’t a perfect movie but, as Scott already mentioned, it is so damn iconic that I cannot in good conscious give it less than four stars. De Niro sporting that mohawk haircut and wearing that green army jacket is a movie image for the ages.

An introvert chose a job that involves meeting many people?

I agree with Roger Ebert.  The ending is a complete and utter fantasy of Bickle's, even if Martin Scorsese may suggest otherwise to open the possibility of a sequel.  If that is the actual ending, then this is far less of a film.   Only in Bickle's mind could he be a hero praised endlessly in the papers, and thanked by Iris's parents for her complete recovery from drugs and prostitution.  Only in his mind would Betsy look longingly at him as he drives away from her.  This movie is grounded in harsh reality.  The ending, if not imagined, contradicts everything that came before it.

We are never given details on Bickle's background, but we are given hints.  He was a veteran and has two parents whom he never sees.  In one early scene, we find Bickle lying in bed while his night stand is covered with prescription bottles of medications.  We are never told what they are all for.   When doing pushups without his shirt on, we see a huge scar on his back.  Was he wounded in the war?  Was he a POW who got tortured?  We never know how Bickle became the wounded soul that he is, we just know that something has happened to him.

He has very little ability to relate to other people.  He genuinely thought it was appropriate to take Betsy to a porn movie on their first date.  He did not mean anything by it, he is just far too removed from reality.  As they leave the porn house you can see a theater across the street that is showing Clint Eastwood's The Eiger Sanction .   Bickle had other options, but not the sense to employ them. 

The true genius of Taxi Driver is that we can all relate to Travis Bickle on some level.   As disturbing as that may actually sound, it is the truth.  Have we not all been in situations where we did not feel comfortable?  Have we not at one time or more thought just how disgusting parts of our world has become?  Mostly we can relate to Bickle because he just wants to not be lonely.  Who has not felt that way at some point in their life.  As crazy as Travis may be, he is a very relatable character. 

It is a fine line Deniro walks in his portrayal of a man looking for something to give his life meaning.  This is one of the greatest pieces of acting ever put on screen.   Deniro could have gone bigger and made him nuts.  He could have gone smaller and made him even more nuts.   Deniro found the right tone and keeps it consistent the entire movie.   Travis Bickle reminds me of that one guy in the break room at work who out of the blue, makes an off the wall comment or joke that no one else seems to get.   I am sure you never met anyone like that.

Photos © Copyright Columbia Pictures (1976)

Related Review

© 2000 - 2017 Three Movie Buffs. All Rights Reserved.

God’s Lonely Man: Taxi Driver and the Onslaught of Modernity

Has there ever been a film as influential and provocative as Taxi Driver ? It may seem a strange choice at first. Even among director Martin Scorcese’s filmography, it is hardly the most acclaimed ( Raging Bull , GoodFellas ), nor the most controversial ( The Last Temptation of Christ , The Wolf of Wall Street ). And yet it is Taxi Driver , above all the others, that has struck a nerve in the American consciousness that refuses to heal even forty years on. It is, more than any other work of art in the past half-century, a testament to the crippling power of modernity, and the alienation of the individual in a world without God.

A taxi emerges from a cloud of white steam, billowing from a sewer grate . The opening shot of the film has been imprinted indelibly within the mind of every viewer. Its driver, as we soon learn, is Travis Bickle, but who is that exactly? We learn that he is a former Marine and a Vietnam veteran to boot, but for all intents and purposes, he is a blank slate, one of us. There is not a soul living in the modern world that has not at some point felt like Travis Bickle; the loneliness, the existential angst, the dread of not knowing what comes next after this life. Most are just better at hiding it than Travis.

In the first scene of the film, Travis visits a taxi station looking for a job. His interview is short and to the point:

PERSONNEL OFFICER: So why do you want to be a taxi driver?  TRAVIS: I can’t sleep nights.  PERSONNEL OFFICER: There’s porno theatres for that.  TRAVIS: I know. I tried that. 

Like many young men of the world today– including many who call themselves Muslims– Travis is both repelled and titillated by illicit sexuality, simultaneously repulsed and attracted by the dark allure of pornography. While damning the debauchery of the prostitutes, pimps, and johns he encounters on his nighttime journeys, he at the same time finds himself helplessly drawn to softcore pornography theaters, despite displaying no signs of pleasure at the acts depicted. In one of the film’s many famed shots, Travis crosses and uncrosses his fingers over his eyes while the empty moans of the cinema echo around him, attempting to shield himself from the on-screen depravity. Like Travis, many of those who attempt to rebel against the soulless, materialistic bonds of modernity find themselves mired in sins they internally recognize are wrong by virtue of the fitrah  [1].  Far from releasing us from the guilt-ridden bonds of faith as promised, secular materialism has merely trapped us in a pit of guilt with no means to repent.

As the West lurches more and more towards the complete abandonment of Allah ﷻ, the question of where our ethics must now originate from grows more pressing every minute it sits unanswered. Even the most admired leaders and authors of the atheistic movement find themselves unable to offer a convincing explanation for the continued existence of purpose in a world without Him. Like many others among the great masses of the godless, Travis structures his life around a series of meaningless aphorisms, which he constantly repeats to himself as though attempting self-hypnosis.

“I don’t believe that one should devote his life to morbid self-attention. I believe that someone should become a person, like other people” “You’re only as healthy, you’re only as healthy as you feel. You’re only as…healthy…as…you…feel”

While Travis’s musings may seem off-putting and bizarre by our standards, in reality, they are no more bland or meaningless than the regurgitated instructions by contemporary, secular society to “treat others the way you want to be treated”, or to merely “do the right thing” (whatever that might be). Later on in the film, as Travis’ thoughts turn increasingly towards violence, he asks for advice from a fellow cab-driver, Wizard:

WIZARD: … I envy you your youth. Go out and get laid. Get drunk, you know, do anything. Cause you got no choice anyway. I mean we’re all f*****, more or less, you know. TRAVIS: That’s just about the dumbest thing I ever heard. WIZARD: It’s not Bertrand Russell, but what do you want?

Ironically, not even Bertrand Russell, the famed atheist and humanist philosopher, could answer Travis’s problems. Already in our societies we are experiencing a mass wave of disillusionment towards the hedonistic lifestyle propounded by Wizard, particularly in the more materially developed sections of the world. Depression, chronic loneliness, suicide, alcoholism, and drug abuse are rampant throughout the West, and all our political leaders and intellectual thinkers are clueless as to what to do. It is not a physical issue. It’s a spiritual disease. 

Travis’s adrift sense of purpose soon finds an anchor in Betsy, a campaign volunteer with whom he develops an obsession.

“I first saw her at Palantine Campaign headquarters at 63rd and Broadway. She was wearing a white dress. She appeared like an angel. Out of this filthy mess, she is alone. They…cannot…touch…her”

Lacking a true anchor or purpose to build his life around, Travis develops his own idol around a fictitious ideal of a perfect, angelic woman. After successfully asking her out, he takes her to a pornographic theater for their first date. Disgusted, she leaves at once. Travis is baffled by her response. We are of an age in which the moral principles and standards that underpin society are fluid and subject to change at any moment. If a society accepts the existence of pornographic theaters and their patrons, and accepts the institution of premarital relations, why wouldn’t it accept “dates” being conducted within such premises? The fault is not with Travis, nor with any of the alienated youth of today who feel isolated from the current social expectations of interacting with the opposite sex, but rather with a society that has shifted its moral standards so far from the commands of Allah ﷻ that there is no longer any shared consensus on how to behave. The late film critic Roger Ebert wrote that Taxi Driver could be viewed as a series of failed attempts to connect with others, but the problem reaches far deeper than this. Without an understanding of who we are and what we are doing on this planet, connecting with others becomes a near impossibility.

After his abortive date, Travis rapidly spirals downwards into nihilism and self-destruction as he prepares for a final vengeance-fuelled act of violence: the assasination of Charles Palantine, the presidential candidate for whom Betsy had worked.

“The idea had been growing in my brain for some time. True force. All the king’s men cannot put it back together again”

After purchasing several guns illegally from a “travelling salesman”, he undergoes a form of ritual purification to ready himself for his upcoming act, a perverted form of spiritual absolution.

“I gotta get in shape now. Too much sitting is ruining my body. Too much abuse has gone on for too long. From now on, it will be fifty push-ups each morning, fifty pull-ups. There’ll be no more pills, there’ll be no more bad food, no more destroyers of my body. From now on, it will be total organization. Every muscle must be tight”

The idea of physical transformation as a catalyst for spiritual renewal ( taharah ) is an important one, one that is upheld by Muslims with every wudu  [2]  or ghusl  [3], or even in the shaving of the heads of pilgrims after hajj . But for Travis, there is no spiritual renewal, nor light at the end of the tunnel. We see him mortify the flesh of his wrist over an open gas flame, but for what purpose? Like many others of the world today, he has the drive and desire to improve himself, but no theology to give it shape and guide him on the Straight Path. Even his supposedly revolutionary act of violence is ultimately meaningless. As he previously confessed to Betsy, he knows nothing of Palantine or even politics. Palantine is merely a focal point for the inexpressible, nihilistic anger he feels towards the world in general. In a scene that has been mocked, parodied, and satirized for the last forty years without losing any of its original impact, Travis rambles in front of his bedroom mirror, trying to form some kind of reason or motivation for his planned act.

“ Listen you f******, you screwheads, here is a man who would not take it anymore. Who would not… let– Listen you f******, you screwheads, here is a man who would not take it anymore. A man who stood up against the scum, the c****, the dogs, the filth, the s***. Here is someone who stood up! Here is— you’re dead”

The archetypal rebel-without-a-cause, Travis is fated to wander endlessly through the night with only his anger to guide him, eternally tilting at windmills in a ceaseless quest for some sort of solace. Without Islam to sublimate these desires in a righteous jihad , intended solely for the cause of Allah ﷻ, the nihilistic violence glimsped in Taxi Driver is inevitable.

It is at this point in the film where Travis meets his second obsession, a child prostitute named Iris who earlier tried to escape in his cab before being pulled away by her pimp. After securing a “meeting” with her through her pimp, Sport, he refuses sex and tries to get her to leave prostitution, but Iris shows no interest.

TRAVIS: But you’re the one that came into my cab. You’re the one that wanted to get out of here. IRIS: Well, I must have been stoned. TRAVIS: Why, what do you mean? Do they drug you? IRIS: Oh come off it, man. TRAVIS: What are you doing? IRIS: Don’t you want to make it?

How lonely is the condition of the believer today. He is surrounded on all sides by debauchery and moral chaos, in a world that shows no signs of evolving or even understanding that what it is engaging in is wrong. While Travis is not a believer, he too is faced with a situation he knows deeply within him to be wrong, yet is unable to prove its evil through the secular ethics of his time. When Travis takes Iris out for breakfast, he is again confronted by this rhetoric.

IRIS: Why do you want me to go back to my parents? I mean, they hate me. Why do you think I split in the first place? There ain’t nothing there. TRAVIS: Yeah, but you can’t live like this. It’s a hell. A girl should live at home. IRIS: Didn’t you ever hear of women’s lib?

The modernist focus on “liberation” has been a disaster for humanity. At every step, the so-called “humanist” project seeks to free us from the natural obligations and relationships that in fact make us human, from our servitude to God to our familial bonds. The result is endless atomisation: each man is an island unto himself, unable to call out for help from the One we need most. Travis himself, while forced into the role of a traditionalist during his interactions with the especially wayward Iris, suffers from this anomie most of all, drifting ceaselessly through the nighttime hellscape of a decaying metropolis, at once surrounded by people and yet totally alone. In the one hint we receive as to his background other than his military service, Travis drafts an anniversary card for his distant parents.

“Dear Father and Mother: July is the month I remember which brings not only your wedding anniversary but also Father’s Day and Mother’s birthday. I’m sorry I can’t remember the exact dates, but I hope this card will take care of them all. I’m sorry again I cannot send you my address like I promised to last year. But the sensitive nature of my work for the government demands utmost secrecy. I know you will understand. I am healthy and well and making lots of money. I have been going with a girl for several months and I know you would be proud if you could see her. Her name is Betsy but I can tell you no more than that…I hope this card finds you all well as it does me. I hope no one has died. Don’t worry about me. One day, they’ll be a knock on the door and it’ll be me. Love, Travis”

More painful than anything else is Travis’s lack of honesty, his inability to communicate openly with even his own family. We have become so separated from even those who should be closest to us, that the slightest appearance of imperfection appears as a weakness. Instead, he is forced to craft a series of vaguely disquieting untruths about his job, his romantic life, and even about him ever seeing them again (if his assasination plans are successful). His isolation is total.

At last the moment arrives. In one final pre-assasination ritual, Travis polishes his boots, sets fire to the rejected flowers originally meant for Betsy, shaves his head into a mohawk, and leaves some money for Iris. As the camera pans over a large and bustling rally for Palantine, Travis delivers the most ominous line of the film:

“Now, I see it clearly. My whole life is pointed in one direction. I see that now. There never has been any choice for me”

Far from freeing us from the deterministic constraints of religion, the tired secular humanism espoused by modernity has actually made our lives more fatalistic than ever. We must follow our desires, we must do everything that gives us pleasure in the moment, with no regard for the future. If we ignore the Book of Deeds, we are instead still bound by our genetic code. It’s no accident that many of the leading atheist philosophers of today openly disbelieve in free will.

Travis’s assassination plans are quickly foiled when a Secret Service agent spots him reaching into his Marine jacket. Fleeing the scene, he drives back to Iris’s block. In a finale so controversial that Scorcese was forced to mute the colors in order to pass through censorship, Travis massacres Sport, his accomplice, and a visiting john all in front of a horrified Iris. Badly injured, he turns the gun onto himself and attempts suicide, only to find it out of bullets. As the police burst in upon the bloody scene, Travis presses his fingers to his head and fires an imaginary gun. One final act of madness.

The film picks up an indeterminate amount of time later. Travis is now out of the hospital and physically recovered. Far from being prosecuted for his killings, society has hailed him as a hero for ridding the world of filth and degeneracy. Newspaper clippings that decorate his apartment walls praise him as a savior to the city, Iris’s parents thank him effusively in a letter, and even his former obsession, Betsy, enters his cab and treats him with respect and admiration. As western civilisation has drifted towards more allegedly “humane”, non-corporal forms of punishment in the last century, there has evolved a widespread belief in the immorality of classical penal systems such as the hudud  [4] , and the prescription of physical punishments such as lashings and amputations for certain offensives. However, it is evident from our modern world that society bridles under the injustice of such lenient sentencing for the wicked and depraved. If justice is not meted out through the judiciary, societies will necessarily invent persons such as Travis to accomplish it through murder and immorality. The vigilantism exhibited by Travis and its enthusiastic reception is merely a reaction to a society-wide failure of justice.

Dropping off Betsy at her home, Travis refuses to let her pay the fare, merely giving her a mysterious smile before driving off into the night. In the final seconds of the film, just before the credits roll, Travis becomes agitated over something he sees in his rear-view mirror, and his eyes flash as he does a sinister double take. Nothing has changed. His empty violence has redeemed nothing. The anger, the fear, the angst, the existential dread is still there, simmering, waiting for a chance to rise to the surface once more. In our modern age, how many others resemble Travis, having slipped through the cracks of an uncaring and unfeeling society? In a world that has abandoned any trace of the spiritual in favor of the material, there can be no true life, only a soulless imitation. Our bodies stir, yet our hearts lie dormant. We are, all of us, a lonely race, whom only the One who brought us forth from this Earth can guide. 

“ Loneliness has followed me my whole life. Everywhere. In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere. There’s no escape. I’m God’s lonely man” [Travis Bickle, Taxi Driver]

“Those who believe, and whose hearts find satisfaction in the remembrance of Allah: for without doubt in the remembrance of Allah do hearts find satisfaction” (Qur’an 13 28).

Notes: 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitra 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wudu 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghusl 4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudud

About the Author: Luqman Quilliam is a guest contributor. He aspires to one day become a student of shariah. His interests include indigenous British Islamic heritage, statecraft, Islamic economics, and film. You can follow him on Twitter here .

Disclaimer: Material published by  Traversing Tradition  is meant to foster scholarly inquiry and rich discussion. The views, opinions, beliefs, or strategies represented in published articles and subsequent comments do not necessarily represent the views of  Traversing Tradition  or any employee thereof.

Share this:

• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Create a website or blog at WordPress.com

Discover more from Traversing Tradition

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Type your email…

Continue reading

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

Taxi Driver, The Man Who Would Be King, Hester Street, Manson, The Story of Adele H.

• Episode aired Apr 7, 1976

Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel review Taxi Driver (1976), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), Hester Street (1975) and The Story of Adele H (1975). They pick their Dogs of the Month and discuss t... Read all Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel review Taxi Driver (1976), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), Hester Street (1975) and The Story of Adele H (1975). They pick their Dogs of the Month and discuss the Oscar nominations. Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel review Taxi Driver (1976), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), Hester Street (1975) and The Story of Adele H (1975). They pick their Dogs of the Month and discuss the Oscar nominations.

• Chuck Tyler
• Roger Ebert
• Gene Siskel
• 1 User review

• Self - Host

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

Did you know

• Connections Features Hester Street (1975)

User reviews 1

• Dec 27, 2022
• April 7, 1976 (United States)
• Taxi Driver, The Man Who Would Be King, Hester Street, The Story of Adele H.
• Chicago, Illinois, USA
• WTTW National Productions
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

Technical specs

• Black and White

Related news

Contribute to this page.

• See more gaps
• Learn more about contributing

More to explore

Recently viewed

Letterboxd — Your life in film

Forgotten username or password ?

• Start a new list…
• Add all films to a list…
• Add all films to watchlist

Add to your films…

Press Tab to complete, Enter to create

A moderator has locked this field.

Add to lists

Review by Jack Caulfield Pro

Taxi driver 1976 ★★★★★.

Rewatched Apr 02 , 2015

Jack Caulfield’s review published on Letterboxd:

In his excellent review of Taxi Driver , the late, great Roger Ebert said that the film's overarching weight of loneliness is perhaps why so many people can associate with such a bizarre anti-hero as Travis Bickle. Ebert says, "We have all felt as alone as Travis. Most of us are better at dealing with it." The scene for me that summed this up perfectly was the one in which Bickle watches television and absentmindedly puts his foot up on the unit holding his tv, slowly beginning to push. At first tentatively, but then he reaches tipping point, literally, and sends his television crashing to the floor. It's an elegant and simple way of showing that Bickle has crossed that point that so many people never cross. His story is uncomfortable but vital, and Scorsese never looks away, he only pushes in closer. Finally, I just thought I'd highlight Harvey Keitel's line-reading about his horse. "I once had a horse, on Coney Island. She got hit by a car." A moment of brilliance in a film packed to the rafters with them.

• Moderator dashboard
• Block this member This member is blocked
• Report this review

Jack liked these reviews

Select your preferred poster

Upgrade to remove ads.

Letterboxd is an independent service created by a small team, and we rely mostly on the support of our members to maintain our site and apps. Please consider upgrading to a Pro account —for less than a couple bucks a month, you’ll get cool additional features like all-time and annual stats pages ( example ), the ability to select (and filter by) your favorite streaming services, and no ads!

Siskel and Ebert Movie Reviews

Original movie reviews untainted by time!

Taxi Driver

Rumble in the bronx, before and after, mary reilly, unforgettable, mr. wong, 1996.

Video Pick of the Week – Taxi Driver

Taxi Driver, The Man Who Would Be King, Hester Street, The Story of Adele H, Sharon’s Baby, 1976

10 best films of 1976.

The Shootist, The Man Who Would Be King, Small Change, Taxi Driver, The Magic Flute, The Clockmaker, Network, Swept Away,

George Lucas: Critics Didn’t Get ‘Phantom Menace'

T he first three Star Wars films are often cited as some of the best Hollywood movies of all time, while The Phantom Menace received far less glowing reviews.  George Lucas reacted to the critical trashing, saying the reviews for The Phantom Menace were identical to those for the previous Star Wars films . Fans should not take him at his word.

George Lucas defended a controversial character from ‘The Phantom Menace’

During a 1999 interview with Empire Magazine , Lucas shrugged off the negative reviews of The Phantom Menace . “The critics pretty much hated the first three movies; they said the dialogue is bad, the acting’s wooden, no story, too many special effects, it’s a children’s film,” he said.

“That same review got moved to  Empire Strikes Back , that same review got moved to  Return of the Jedi , and that is the review that is getting reprinted now. You’d think that after a while, they’d figure out that’s what these things are. It’s always gonna be like that because I see it as one movie, not six.”

Lucas defended the most controversial and widely panned aspect of the movie. “The irony was that it was written about Star Wars that in C-3PO , I had created the most irritating character ever created on film,” he said. “Now one of the reviews for  The Phantom Menace  says in Jar Jar, I have created the most irritating character ever created on film. It’s exactly the same sentence. It was like, ‘Hey, haven’t I been here? I already did that once.'”

George Lucas’ claims are not accurate

It goes without saying that salespeople aren’t always trustworthy, especially when they are selling their products. Lucas is the ultimate salesman for Star Wars , so fans and film historians should not take him at his word. The reviews for the original Star Wars were, by and large, glowing. 

In the Chicago Sun-Times , Roger Ebert, one of the most famous film critics in the United States, gave Star Wars a perfect four-star rating. He felt watching the movie was an out-of-body experience, where he wasn’t in a movie theater anymore but actually in the world of the movie. He said other critically acclaimed films such as Bonnie and Clyde , Jaws , Taxi Driver , and Cries and Whispers gave him the same feeling. 

Ebert was not alone. Vincent Canby of The New York Times said Star Wars was the most beautiful movie serial ever made. In addition, Star Wars was nominated for several Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Lucas. Of course, every movie receives negative reviews, but the critics generally praised  Star Wars .

How George Lucas Reacted to the ‘Star Wars’ Parody ‘Spaceballs’

George Lucas Once Named the 1 Movie That He Designed for a Mass Audience, And It Wasn’t ‘Star Wars’

Why the director might’ve framed ‘The Phantom Menace’ a certain way

So why did Lucas say that the original trilogy was critically reviled? Well, no one can know what’s going on in his head. Perhaps the bad reviews he received had a greater impact on him.

On the other hand, Lucas may have wanted to do some damage control. Rather than really engage with the criticisms of The Phantom Menace , he could say that reviewers would pan his work no matter what. That sort of fatalism can be perversely comforting.

Whether you love or hate The Phantom Menace , it wasn’t as lauded as its predecessors.

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, roger corman's greatest legacy was giving so many people their big break.

Roger Corman , who died last week at 98, was so important and influential that a thorough account of his impact would require a book (there have already been many – and documentaries, too). But the most impressive achievement of all is his mentorship of young actors, writers, and filmmakers, many of whom would go on to become giants in their own right—and his championing of talent that, for whatever reason, had fallen out of favor or never been properly appreciated. There are hundreds of examples of this. There were periods when it seemed as if Corman couldn't walk down the street without starting somebody else's career.

Corman headed several distribution companies over the decades, including The Filmgroup, Palo Alto Productions, New World Pictures and New Concorde (‘80s and beyond). But the one constant from one iteration to the next (after keeping budgets low) was the reliance on finding and training new talent and letting veteran actors who’d basically aged out of the business get a few more meaty roles while they were still able to work. If you go through his extended filmography you see a chain of causal connections between different, important people whose only binding characteristic is that, at some point, probably when they needed it most, Roger Corman took a chance on them.

Just for fun, go to the IMDb page of almost any Corman production from any decade, click on the first somewhat famous name you see in the cast or crew, and go over to their page. You will find yourself appreciating multiple significant movie careers that intersected with and often amplified other significant movie careers, all of which are also connected, somehow, to Corman. Spend enough time making connections between graduates of Corman's unofficial film school and you come around to the idea that Corman was the defining force in American filmmaking in the second half of the 20th century, and into the 21st, and will continue to be, because his students have students, and those students have students. 

Francis Coppola ’s first film as a director was for Corman, “Dementia 13” (1959). He gave Corman a supporting role as a senator in " The Godfather, Part II " to express his appreciation. The last major public event Corman appeared at was the first public screening of Coppola's self-financed (i.e., independent) science fiction film "Megalopolis," which Coppola had been trying to make for three decades. The great Jonathan Demme got started in the business working for Corman by writing and producing "Angels as Hard as They Come" (1971) and "The Hot Box" (1975) for New World, then directed three films for Corman, "Caged Heat," "Crazy Mama" and "Fighting Mad" before moving on to major studio releases.

Coppola's colleague  Martin Scorsese got his first real budget (albeit tiny by Hollywood standards) to make Corman’s gangster drama “ Boxcar Bertha ,” starring Barbara Hershey . Hershey had been in other films (including the rape drama “ Last Summer ” and “ The Baby Maker ,” about surrogate motherhood) but it was her performance as the title character in Scorsese's movie that established her as a serious actress with a Method edge. It was a sexually frank and often bloody exploitation picture with an art film veneer. Hershey described the filming as “the most fun I ever had making a movie.” She bonded with Scorsese and would go on to play Mary Magdalene for him 16 years later in “ The Last Temptation of Christ .” 

Scorsese said that in making “Boxcar Bertha,” “I finally figured out where I belonged, in terms of how to make pictures.” Because of the low budget ethos of the distributor, Scorsese had to learn “total preparation” before shooting to avoid schedule problems and cost overruns due to indecision or lack of foresight. “On the first day of shooting,” Scorsese remembered , “he came down, and I was told ‘You’re gonna shoot all the scenes with the train in the first four days,’ which was like a baptism of fire, because when you’re shooting a train, and you do one take, the train’s gotta back up.” Corman told Scorsese, “Backing up takes time. We don’t have time!” Scorsese said the producer was great at figuring out how to solve problems quickly and get a project back on course. When he was supervising editor on “The Unholy Rollers,” a roller derby movie, the first cut only ran an hour and seven minutes, which was too short for theaters. Corman helped the crew devise two more scenes that could be shot quickly and get the running time up to 88 minutes, sufficient for release. 

Scorsese, of course, became a talent factory of his own, like many of the major artists mentioned in this piece, and there was a fascinating instance where one of his mentees found their way into Corman’s orbit, a decade after Scorsese left it. Scorsese’s assistant on “ Taxi Driver " was a young writer and filmmaker named Amy Holden Jones . She met and married the film’s cinematographer Michael Chapman on the production, and went on to become a film editor. One of her first editing gigs was “Hollywood Boulevard,” co-directed by Joe Dante (“ The Howling ,” “ Gremlins ”). Dante's first solo outing as a director was the Roger Corman production “Piranha” (1978). “Piranha” had special creature effects by Phil Tippett (who did the holographic chess scene in the first “ Star Wars ,” later known as “A New Hope” and went on to work for George Lucas , Steven Spielberg and Paul Vehoeven) and Chris Walas (future Oscar-winner for “The Fly”). 

Anyway, back to Amy Holden Jones: Spielberg wanted her to edit “E.T. the Extraterrestrial” but when production was delayed by Spielberg producing “Poltergeist” first, she turned it down and went to Corman and asked what she needed to do to become a director. Corman said it was difficult to tell from her only existing work as a filmmaker, a nonfiction short she’d done in grad school, that she could handle scripted features, but he let her go through his library of un-produced screenplays to find something she could use to make a proof-of-concept test piece. She chose a horror script by Rita Mae Brown and shot the first eight pages with her husband Chapman serving as cinematographer, edited it on Joe Dante’s Moviola, and showed it to Corman, who was so impressed that he hired her to expand it into a feature, 1982’s “The Slumber Party Massacre.” Jones has said that turning down the chance to edit what became the most successful movie of all time was the best decision she ever made. 

One of Scorsese’s go-to actors, Robert DeNiro , had his first major lead role in a Corman picture, the gangster movie “Bloody Mama,” opposite Angie Dickinson . Jack Nicholson got his first substantive role as a screen performer in Corman’s “The Cry Baby Killer” (1958) and established himself as a reliable supporting player in 1963’s “ The Raven ,” one of a string of Corman films released by American International Pictures (to whom Corman loaned himself out as a director) that were inspired by Edgar Allan Poe ’s stories and poems. The latter series of movies also gave juicy lead roles to veteran genre film stars, including Vincent Price , Boris Karloff , Edward G. Robinson , and Ray Milland, who were having trouble finding work in the ‘60s because of age discrimination and changing audience tastes. 

Nicholson’s experiences working for Corman emboldened him to want to write and produce as well as act, and generally be more proactive and personal in his work. Corman and his colleague and sorta-rival/occasional employer, producer Samuel Z. Arkoff of American International Pictures (AIP), both put out biker films for a period in the ‘60s. These became sort of a talent factory-within-a talent factory. Corman’s 1966 biker film “The Wild Angels” was a modest hit that emboldened one of its stars, Peter Fonda , to star in and co-write 1969’s “ Easy Rider ,” which combined established biker movie elements with counterculture philosophizing and aspects of the psychedelic-infused drug drama “ The Trip ” (1967), another Corman movie that starred Fonda. Nicholson wrote the screenplay for “The Trip” and got his first Oscar nomination, as Best Supporting Actor, for playing alcoholic lawyer and counterculture sympathizer George Hanson in “Easy Rider,” which launched him on the path to stardom. Another costar of “The Trip” was the director and cowriter of "Easy Rider,"  Dennis Hopper . Yet another major 1970s actor, Bruce Dern , was in both “The Wild Angels” and “The Trip,” arguably the first roles that let him display qualities that would be considered hallmarks of The Bruce Dern Character as displayed in " The King of Marvin Gardens ," "Black Sunday" and "Coming Home."

Boris Karloff’s last film role was in the debut movie by film programmer and industry gadfly  Peter Bogdanovich , “ Targets ,” about an assassin on the rampage at a drive-in movie theater where an elderly horror star named Byron Orlok (Karloff) is making a personal appearance; the film being shown on the drive-in screen is actually Corman’s “The Terror,” featuring none other than Boris Karloff. Bogdanovich got Karloff to star because Karloff still owed Corman two more days’ work as per their contract, and Corman had promised Bogdanovich he could do whatever he wanted as long as he brought the project in on time and on budget. 

That Bogdanovich was able to reuse older Corman in “Targets” material placed him squarely in a proud tradition. Corman was one of the most ferociously dedicated recyclers in movie history.  He often used sets, props, costumes and other items over and over throughout multiple productions, and took great pride in extracting every penny’s worth of value from things he’d paid for. 

He shot one of his most famous and successful films, " Little Shop of Horrors " (remade as a Broadway musical, a musical film, and an animated TV series) on the same sets he'd used to shoot "Bucket of Blood." Production lasted two days and one night, because that's how long he had before the tear-down began. The first movie appearance by actor  Dick Miller , a regular in Corman's films as well as many films by Corman University alumni, was "Apache Woman." He he told  NPR  that he was playing “an Indian” and midway through filming, "Corman asked him, “Would you like to play a cowboy?” Miller asked, “‘Doing another movie already?’ He says, ‘No, in the same movie.’ So I ended up playing a cowboy  and  an Indian in my first movie.” The only movie Corman ever did that got close to being called big-budget was the 1980 “Star Wars” cash-in “Battle Beyond the Stars,” which boasted miniature spaceship and blue-screen FX of such quality that Corman reused them in more Corman productions, including “Space Raiders,” “Starquest II,” “Vampirella,” “The Fantastic Four,” “Dead Space” and “Forbidden World.”

“Battle” is a wonderful film to zero in on as an example of Corman turning every project into a film school and making the result resonate beyond the boundaries of one movie. For starters, “Battle” gave an unknown artist and film crew grunt named James Cameron what he later called his “big break,” doing production design, art direction, prop fabrication, and anything else that was needed. He had been recommended by his then-girlfriend and future wife and coproducer Gale Anne Hurd (later the executive producer on multiple iterations of “The Walking Dead”), who was employed by Corman at the time. Cameron went on to direct his first feature for Corman, “Piranha II: The Spawning." Actor Bill Paxton , who went to act for Cameron in four features, was a carpenter on  "Piranha II." Paxton also went on to star in one of the most highly regarded crime films of the 1990s, "One False Move," which was directed by Carl Franklin . Franklin was Corman's assistant for a time at Concord Pictures, and ended up directing three films for Corman. His debut feature, "Nowhere to Run," starred David Carradine , a name that pops up often in Corman's '70s and '80s credits.

“Battle Beyond the Stars” was scored by James Horner , his third-ever composing job. Acclaim for his work got Horner much higher-profile gigs on major studio films and made him one of the top film composers of that era (he did “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” and “48 HRS” soon after). Parts of Horner’s score were reused in 2001’s “Raptor,” a Corman production directed by Jim Wynorski , a B-movie veteran who started out as a publicist and screenwriter for Corman (his first produced script was Corman’s “Forbidden World’). 

See what I mean? Corman's influence was everywhere, and still is.

That's why there are so many cameos and supporting roles filled by Corman, who never considered himself an actor. Every time you saw him onscreen, tribute was being paid by someone he'd previously helped. Demme cast him in " Swing Shift ," " The Silence of the Lambs ," " Philadelphia ," the 2004 remake of "The Manchurian Candidate" and " Rachel Getting Married ." Howard put him in " Apollo 13 " as another senator. Dante cast him in "The Howling" (getting killed by a werewolf while stuck in a phone booth!) as well as in the HBO film "The Second Civil War" and "Looney Tunes: Back in Action." Writer-director Paul Bartel cast him in " Cannonball !" partly as a thank you for helping him get the film distributed; he'd made his directorial debut for Corman with 1975's " Death Race 2000 ," which costarred a barely known actor named Sylvester Stallone and was shot by Tak Fujimoto , who'd also filmed Corman's "Caged Heat" for Demme and would work with him many more times.  Wim Wenders , who hadn't worked with Corman previously, put him in "The State of Things" as a tribute, alongside another filmmaker who'd meant a great deal to him, Samuel Fuller (" The Big Red One ," "The Naked Kiss" et al).

There doesn't appear to be any common thread linking all the people that Corman helped make successful and famous, aside from the fact that he saw something in them. 

One of the most often-quoted lines from Corman is what he told a young TV actor named Ron Howard who came to him wanting to become a filmmaker and ended up debuting with “ Grand Theft Auto ,” which he also starred in. Corman told him, “If you do a good job, you won’t have to work for me for very long.” He probably told that to a lot of people who had the skills and ambition to break into the business and only needed a hand up.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

Latest blog posts

Cannes 2024: My Sunshine, Rumours, The Balconettes

Cannes 2024: On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, The Village Next to Paradise, Viet and Nam

Reclamation Through Restoration: Thelma Schoonmaker Talks Michael Powell, Martin Scorsese and Peeping Tom

They Are the Best of the Best: Glen Powell on The Blue Angels

Latest reviews.

Tomris Laffly

The Beach Boys

Brian tallerico.

Monica Castillo

Peyton Robinson