Paul Verhoeven names his favourite action movies: “A lot of splendour”

If there’s one man who knows a thing or two about action movies, it’s Paul Verhoeven. The Dutch master has made some of the most enduring beat ‘em ups of all time, including RoboCop, Starship Troopers, and the original Total Recall. Even his lesser-known efforts like The Fourth Man are excellent, showcasing the director’s penchant for bloody violence, explicit gore, and uncompromising sex scenes.

As with all creative minds, fans of Verhoeven love hearing about what makes him tick. He’s expressed a love for Alfred Hitchcock’s work in the past, but what about out-and-out action? What could possibly impress the man who made some of the most unflinching, hard-hitting movies of the 20th Century?

When speaking with The Hollywood Interviewer, Verhoeven named The War of the Worlds as a film that sparked his imagination when he was younger. Given his age, he must be talking about the 1953 adaptation of HG Wells’ classic novel by Byron Haskin, starring Gene Barry and Ann Robinson. Continuing, Verhoeven also cited “Tarzan’s New York Adventure and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Also pirate movies like Captain Blood, Burt Lancaster in The Crimson Pirate. All these sort of action-oriented movies with a lot of movement and a lot of splendour.”

These are some interesting answers, as only some of them could be labelled as ‘action’ in the traditional sense. The War of the Worlds is action with a sci-fi twist, which makes sense given Verhoeven’s own forays into the genre, but Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is a comedy-horror. Tarzan’s New York Adventure (also known as Tarzan Against the World) has some action elements but is more of an adventure movie that takes Johnny Weissmuller’s ape-man out of the jungle and into the Big Apple. As for the pirate movies, well, they’re pirate movies. That doesn’t need explaining. 

The sheer variety of Verhoeven’s influences demonstrates how deep his passion for cinema runs. The ability to draw on numerous sources with numerous meanings is vital to any director and this knowledge and understanding of so many different strands of filmmaking undoubtedly helps Verhoeven’s films stand out. Violence and viscera is one thing, but his movies also have moments of great levity to them. After all, Total Recall is the movie that gave the world “See you at the party, Richter” and “Consider that a divorce”.

Verhoeven was born in the Netherlands in 1938, which meant his early childhood was dominated by Nazi Germany’s occupation of the country. His family lived in The Hague, the centre of the Nazi’s military outpost, and as a result, his neighbourhood was routinely bombed by Allied aircraft. You can see why he would be so inclined to include so much violence in his work, considering how present it was in his youth.

This period, plus the post-liberation years of the late 1940s, shaped a young Verhoeven in many ways, including his initial discovery of the medium. After the German propaganda films that were screened during the occupation, the influx of American productions opened his mind to new forms of cinematic art.

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