The Hateful Eight Monologues

In the dead of a Wyoming winter, a bounty hunter and his prisoner find shelter in a cabin currently inhabited by a collection of nefarious characters.

Listen for a moment, lads, and hear me tell m' tale / How o'er the sea from England shore, I was condemned to sail / The jury found me guilty, sir, and said the judge, said he / For life, Jim Jones, I sentence you across the stormy sea. Take my tip before you ship to join the iron gang / Don't be too gay in Botany Bay or else you'll surely hang / Or else you'll surely hang, says he, and after that, Jim Jones / High up... high up upon... high up upon the gallows tree, the crows will pick your bones. You'll have no chance for mischief there, remember what I say / They'll flog the poaching out of you out there in Botany Bay / Waves were high upon the sea, the winds a-pproacing gales / I'd rather drowned in misery than gone to New South Wales. The waves were high upon the seas when the pirates came along / The soldiers on the convict ship were full five hundred strong / They opened fire and somehow drove that pirate ship away / I'd rather joined that pirate ship than gone to Botany Bay. And one dark night, when everything is quiet in the town...

I'll kill you bastards one and all, I'll gun the floggers down/ Give them all a little shock, remember what I say / They'll yet regret they sent Jim Jones in chains to Botany Bay.

Now day and night the irons clang and like poor galley slaves / Toil and toil and when we die must fill dishonored graves / Bye and bye, I'll break m' chains and to the bush I'll go / And you'll be dead behind me, John, when I get to Mexico.

What do I gotta say? About John Ruth's ravings? He's absolutely right. Me and one of them fellas is in cahoots. We're just waitin' for everybody to go to sleep. That when we're gonna kill y'all.

Oh, you can kill us all. But you'll never spend a cent of that bounty money. And you'll never leave this mountain alive. 'Cause when that snow melts, the rest of Jody's gang - ALL FIFTEEN OF 'EM - that were waiting in Redrock, are comin' here. Now, let's say you shoot us all. If you really want all that Domergue Gang bounty money, you still gotta get all our corpses into Redrock... and that ain't gonna be so easy. 'Cause I doubt you can drive a four-horse team. Yet that wagon out there is too heavy for a two-horse team; so that means you gonna have to lead a STRING OF HORSES into Redrock. And with that deep snow after a blizzard, you ain't gonna be able to get away with any more than say... one body per horse. So that's YOU, leadin' a string of four horses, into Redrock. And with all them horses, in that snow, and you all by your lonesome... you're gonna be a mite poky. And you're gonna run smack dab into The Domergue Gang. And when those FIFTEEN KILLERS come across YOU in possession of all our dead bodies, they ain't just gonna kill you and that nigger, they're gonna go back Redrock and kill EVERY SON OF A BITCH IN THAT TOWN. You reeally the Sheriff of Redrock? You wanna save the Town? Then SHOOT than nigger dead!

Well, you better shit another pistol out your ass! 'Cause if you don't throw one out here in the next two seconds, we gon' kill this bitch!

OHHH, you believe in Jesus now, huh, bitch? GOOD, 'CAUSE YOU 'BOUT TO MEET HIM!

Move a little strange, you're gonna get a bullet. Not a warning, not a question…

A bullet!

When the handbill says "dead or alive", the rest of us just shoot you in the back from up on top a perch somewhere and bring you in dead over a saddle.

But when John Ruth the Hangman catches you…

You hang!

Beggin' for his life, your boy told me his whole Life Story. And YOU, was in that story General. And when I knew me I had the son, of the Bloody Nigger Killer of Baton Rouge, I knew me I was gonna have some fun! It was COLD the day I killed your boy. And I don't mean snowy mountain in Wyoming cold… Colder than that. And on that cold day, with your boy at the business end of my gun barrel… I made him STRIP. Right down to his bare ass. Then I told him to start walkin'. I walked his naked ass for two hours… 'fore the cold collapsed him. Then he commits to beggin' again. But this time, he wasn't beggin' to go home. He knew he'd never see his home again. And he wasn't beggin' for his life neither, 'cause he knew that was long gone. All he wanted, was a BLANKET. Now don't judge your boy too harshly, General. You ain't never been cold as your boy was that day. You'd be surprised; what a man that cold, would-do-for-a-blanket. You wanna know what your boy did? I pulled my BIG, BLACK, PECKER outta my pants. And I made him crawl in the snow on all fours over to it. Then I grabbed a handful of that black hair at the back of his head… And I stuck my Big Black Johnson right down his goddamn throat! And it was fulla' blood… so it was warm. Oh, you bet your sweet ass it was warm. And Charles Chester Smithers sucked on that warm black dingus for as loong as he could. Hahahaahaha! Startin' to see pictures, ain't ya?

Now, John Ruth was one mighty, mighty bastard. But the last thang that bastard did before he died was save your life. We gonna die, white boy. We ain't got no say in that. There is one thang left we have to say here; and that's how we kill this bitch. I say shootin's too good for her. John Ruth could'a shot her any where, any time along the way, but John Ruth was "The Hangman," and when "The Hangman" catches you, you don't die by no bullet.

You see, my mama used to make stew and it always tasted the same, no matter to me. There was another fella on the plantation, Uncle Charley, he made stew, too. And like my mama, I ate his stew from the time I was a whipper 'till I was a full-grown man. And no matter to me, it always tasted like Uncle Charley's stew.

Now I ain't had Minnie's stew in like six months, so I ain't no expert…

But that damn sure is Minnie's stew. So if Minnie is on the northside just visiting her mama for a week, how'd she make the stew this morning? And this...

This is Sweet Dave's chair. When I sat in it earlier, I couldn't believe it. Nobody sits in Sweet Dave's chair. This may be Minnie's place, but this is damn sure Sweet Dave's chair. And if he went to the northside, I'm pretty goddamned sure this chair'd be going with him.

Just what I thought. Sweet Dave's goddamn blood!

The way I see it, Senior Bob, is whoever is working with her…

... ain't who they say they is, and if it's you, then Minnie and her man ain't at her mama's. They laying out back there dead somewhere.

Or if it's you, little British man, the real Oswaldo Mobray's laying in a ditch somewhere and you're just an English fella passin' off his papers.

The only time black folks are safe, is when white folks is disarmed. And this letter, had the desired effect of disarming white folks.

There was a rookie regiment there spending the overnight in the camp! 47 men, BURNT TO A CRISP! Southern youth, farmer's sons, cream of the crop…

And I say let 'em burn!

I'm supposed to apologize for killin' Johnny Reb? You joined the war to keep niggers in chains. I joined the war to kill white Southern crackers. And that means killing 'em in any way I can! Shoot 'em, stab 'em, drown 'em, burn 'em, throw a big 'ol rock on their heads! Whatever it took to keep white Southern crackers in the ground, that's what I joined the war to do and that's what I did!

Hmm. See, if you would have been here two and a half years ago, you'd know about that sign that used to hang up over the bar. Minnie ever mention that to you?

You wanna know what that sign said, Senior Bob? "No Dogs or Mexicans Allowed." Minnie hung that sign up the day she opened this haberdashery, and it hung over that bar every day until she took it down a little over two years ago. Know why she took it down? She started letting in dogs. Now Minnie like just about everybody, but she sure don't like Mexicans. So when you tell me Minnie went to the northside to visit her mama, well, I find that highly unlikely. But okay, maybe...

But when you tell me Minnie Mink took the haberdashery, the most precious thing to her in the whole world, and left it in the hands of a goddamn Mexican? Well, that's what I meant in the barn when I said that sure don't sound like Minnie. Now I am calling you a liar, Senor Bob...

And if you're lying, which you are, then you killed Minnie...

Considering Minnie's "no hats indoors policy", which if I remember correctly was one of them bar "iron rules". The kind of rule she'd want kept up in her absence. You seem to have a laissez-faire attitude when it comes to the hats.

But you expect me to believe that Minnie Mink left her Haberdashery, the single most precious thing in the world to her, in the hands of a goddamn Mexican? Well, that what I meant when I said that that sure don't sound like Minnie.

My theory is you're working with the man who poisoned the coffee. And both'a y'all murdered Minnie, Sweet Dave, and whoever else picked this bad-luck day to visit Minnie's Haberdashery this morning. And at some point, y'all intended to bushwhack John Ruth and free Daisy. But you didn't count on the blizzard, and you didn't count on the two of us.