Time in the West. He is an admirer of the 1981 film Blow Out, directed by Brian De Palma, which led to his casting of John Travolta in Pulp Fiction. Similarly, Tarantino was captivated with Jim McBride's 1983 remake of Breathless and with Richard Gere's unlikable but charismatic protagonist. The film's popular culture references, in particular the comic book Silver Surfer, inspired him to have the character's poster on Mr. Orange’s apartment wall in Reservoir Dogs. Tarantino has also labeled Rio Bravo as one of his influences. He listed the Australian suspense film Roadgames (1981) as another favorite film. Other films he cited as formative influences include Hong Kong martial arts films (such as Five Fingers of Death and Enter the Dragon), John Woo action films (A Better Tomorrow II and The Killer), John Carpenter films (Assault on Precinct 13 and The Thing), blaxploitation films (including The Mack and Foxy Brown), Jean-Luc Godard films (Bande à Part and the 1960 version of Breathless), and Sonny Chiba's work (The Street Fighter and Shadow Warriors). In August 2007, while teaching in a four-hour film course during the 9th Cinemanila International Film Festival in Manila, Tarantino cited Filipino directors Cirio H. Santiago, Eddie Romero and Gerardo de León as personal icons from the 1970s. He referred to De Leon's "soul-shattering, life-extinguishing" movies on vampires and female bondage, citing in particular Women in Cages; "It is just harsh, harsh, harsh", he said, and described the final shot as one of "devastating despair". Upon his arrival in the Philippines, Tarantino was quoted in the local newspaper as saying, "I'm a big fan of RP [Republic of the Philippines] cinema." Style Tarantino's films often feature graphic violence, a tendency which has sometimes been criticized. Reservoir Dogs was initially denied United Kingdom certification because of his use of torture as entertainment. Tarantino has frequently defended his use of violence, saying that "violence is so good. It affects audiences in a big way". The number of expletives and deaths in Tarantino's films were measured by analytics website FiveThirtyEight. In the examples given by the site, "Reservoir Dogs features 'just' 10 on-screen deaths, but 421 profanities. Django Unchained, on the other hand, has 'just' 262 profanities but 47 deaths." He often blends aesthetic elements, in tribute to his favorite films and filmmakers. In Kill Bill, he melds comic strip formulas and visuals within a live action film sequence, in