Quentin Halloweeno at Mary & Archie

Quentin Halloweeno at Mary & Archie Chorlton, Chorlton, 2 November 2019, free entry - Visit now

Quentin Halloweeno – as you may have guessed – is a Quentin Tarantino-themed Halloween party hosted by the Chorlton branch of Mary & Archie. With a good thirty-years of screen credits to mine, this is an excellent premise for a fancy dress party.

The key to any good idea is simplicity. It doesn’t require a huge amount of effort to become Mia Wallace, Vincent Vega, Jules Winnfield, Winston Wolfe or even an entire pack of Reservoir Dogs. Just reach into the back of the wardrobe for your black and white essentials and pair them with a relevant blood-soaked accessory – I’m thinking; syringe, varying degrees of blood-splattered white shirts, jerry can and maybe even a severed ear.

You’ve got Pam Grier’s flight attendant look from the excellent Jackie Brown (or even cooler, that fresh-off-the-rack black suit with open-collared white shirt from the movie’s tense finale). Then, from Kill Bill, there’s The Bride’s Bruce Lee “inspired” yellow tracksuit, Gogo Yubari’s classic school-uniform-and-meteor-hammer ensemble as well as Daryl Hannah’s eye-patched nurse.

If you want deeper cuts, then either Patricia Arquette or Christian Slater in the Tarantino-penned True Romance are a great look, less so Gary Oldman, but it is Halloween, so why not? Maybe you could trust a friend with a magic marker to recreate George Clooney’s that-was-so-cool-in-the-nineties tattoo from Dusk Til Dawn?

With the current state of the world, I’d probably skip Inglourious Basterds, but there’s plenty of rootin’ tootin’ inspiration in both Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight.

If all else fails, whack a plaster on the back of your bald head. It’ll be easier than going all out for Brad Pitt’s dreamy 55-year old Once Upon a Time In Hollywood abs.

And remember, if you’re going to Quentin Halloweeno, everybody be cool.