WHILE it is predictable that Quentin Tarantino’s latest film is in the running for awards in this year’s Baftas, it does seem surprising that this is only the eighth solo film from the controversial director.

Since Reservoir Dogs exploded on to cinema screens in 1992, Tarantino has had a profound influence on modern film-making which belies his relatively meagre output.

Not many in today’s movie industry have had a comparative impact or created so many controversies with so few films, and his most recent film, The Hateful Eight, is already being hit with accusations of misogyny.

Single White Female actress Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Daisy, the only woman of the Eight, but the violence directed at her has been defended by Tarantino.

“The violence is meant to send shockwaves through the audience, to create sympathy with Daisy, but also I have trapped all my characters in a cabin during a blizzard,” said Tarantino.

“It’s a pressure cooker in terms of storyline and you know the way I go; that any piece of outrageous violence can happen. So you’re telling me I can cross all the lines with seven characters, but the eighth I have to protect? It goes against the entire plot.”

IS IT AS VIOLENT AS THE REST?

Compared with his previous films, this western seems fairly restrained. Tarantino has actually made more headlines by campaigning against American police brutality over the last year than this movie has.

The Hateful Eight is his second take on the western genre – his first Django Unchained, also created controversy.

Quickly becoming the highest grossing film in the United States on its release in 2012, Tarantino said his aim was “to breathe life into obsolete or dormant genres and make them my own, or even remake them”.

However the box office hit was criticised by some who felt it took an insensitive and glib approach to the subject of slavery.

“American slavery was not a Sergio Leone spaghetti western,” objected director Spike Lee. “It was a holocaust. My ancestors are slaves, stolen from Africa.”

IT’S NOT JUST THE VIOLENCE THOUGH, IS IT?

Django Unchained was also criticised for its use of racial epithets. This wasn’t the first time that Tarantino had been rebuked for his use of the n-word. Jackie Brown, his third film, released in 1997, also deploys it regularly but this was considered slightly more acceptable than in Django Unchained.

Comparing the films, the Los Angeles Times said: “It [slavery] is an institution whose horrors need no exaggerating, yet Django does exactly that, either to enlighten or entertain. A white director slinging around the n-word in a homage to ‘70s blaxploitation à la Jackie Brown is one thing, but the same director turning the savageness of slavery into pulp fiction is quite another.”

While Spike Lee also hit out at Tarantino, Samuel L Jackson who starred in Jackie Brown defended the use of the n-word in the film.

“I don’t think the word is offensive in the context of this film,” he said. “Black artists think they are the only ones allowed to use the word. Well, that’s bull. Jackie Brown is a wonderful homage to black exploitation films. This is a good film, and Spike hasn’t made one of those in a few years.”

WHAT MAKES HIM STAND OUT?

Born in 1963, Tarantino reputedly has an IQ of 160 but, heavily dyslexic, dropped out of school and began working in a video shop where he soaked up technique by watching all kinds of films rather than studying movie-making at college.

His influences are eclectic and his movies are hard to categorise yet strike a chord with mainstream movie audiences as well as arthouse cinema lovers. Twisting dialogue, as well as over-the-top and often blackly comic violence, makes them distinctive.

His first screenplay was True Romance which he sold to director Tony Scott after failing to get financial backing to make the film. Likewise he was forced to sell the screenplay for Natural Born Killers but gained financial backing for neo-noir crime thriller Reservoir Dogs after Harvey Keitel agreed to star in the movie based on a failed heist.

On its release in 1992, it sparked 1,000 letters of protest to the Daily Mail and became a cult hit although detractors claimed he had ripped off a little known Hong Kong movie, City on Fire.

The movie gained him a reputation for outrageous violence but the tension is ramped up through the expectation of brutality and it is actually the aftermath that is seen most. It was still considered too violent for video release at first and wasn’t passed by censors until 1995.

ARE HIS FILMS REALLY SO SHOCKING?

Tarantino’s next film, Pulp Fiction, made on a budget of £5.5m in 1994, raised him from a cult figure to a celebrity and earned £150 million at the box office as well as seven Oscar nominations. The black comedy has been hailed as one of the most significant of modern cinema but like Reservoir Dogs it was harshly criticised by some for its violence and gore.

Originally planned as a single release, his fourth film, Kill Bill, was eventually split into two with the first featuring such a bloody sequence it had to be shown in black and white to pass US censors. The second concluded the tale of the revenge of a former assassin known as The Bride (Uma Thurman).

His next film, Death Proof, bombed but his seventh, Inglourious Basterds (2009), about a bunch of Jewish-American guerilla soldiers wreaking revenge on the Nazis, was his highest grossing film until Django Unveiled.

He has continually denied there is any link between people enjoying movie violence and going on to commit real-life violence, saying after the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting: “I think it’s disrespectful to [the] memory of those who died to talk about movies ... obviously the issue is gun control and mental health.”