kill bill

Kill Bill is the fourth film by writer-director Quentin Tarantino. Originally conceived as one film, it was released in two separate "volumes" (in Fall 2003 and Spring 2004) due to its running time of approximately four hours. The movie is an ambitious, epic-length revenge drama, notable for its homages to earlier film genres, such as Hong Kong martial arts movies and Italian Westerns; for its extensive use of popular music and pop culture references; and for its deliberately over-the-top bloodletting. Its stars include Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Vivica A. Fox, Lucy Liu, Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah, Michael Parks, Sonny Chiba, and Gordon Liu.

Plot

Describing the narrative of either volume is complicated, because the sections of Kill Bill (called "chapters" in the film) are not presented in chronological order (see the Structure section below). Unlike Pulp Fiction, in which Tarantino included three separate but interrelated stories, Kill Bill is one story, but it is told with extensive use of flashbacks and flash-forwards, along with a few asides relating the backgrounds of secondary characters.

Taken as a whole, Kill Bill is the story of Beatrix Kiddo, a professional assassin in the employ of her lover, Bill. Discovering she is pregnant with Bill's child, and despairing of the life the little girl will lead if raised by her father, Beatrix arranges her own disappearance. But Bill hunts her down, and on the day before she is to be married to an El Paso record-store owner, he directs the massacre of the entire wedding party. Bill shoots Beatrix in the head, but she survives, emerging from a coma four years later, her memory of the incident intact. She travels to Okinawa where she convinces a famous swordmaker to make her what turns out to be his finest sword, and she makes a numbered "death list" of the five wedding-party assassins, ending with the name "Bill".

Beatrix manages to kill the first two assassins on her list in a staightforward, if spectacular, manner. But the third, Bill's brother Budd, bests her and buries her alive in a Barstow cemetery. He in turn is killed by Elle, the fourth name on the list, when he tries to sell her Beatrix's sword (she hides a poisonous Black Mamba snake in the suitcase containing the money). Beatrix escapes from the grave and defeats Elle, leaving her blinded in Budd's trailer along with the Black Mamba. Only Bill's name remains on the list, but when Beatrix arrives at his hacienda, she is shocked to discover that her daughter, whom she assumed had died in the wedding massacre, was actually delivered while Beatrix was comatose, and is being raised by Bill. After a family evening together that is emotional yet tense, Bill and Beatrix fight, and Bill is killed. Beatrix takes her daughter, and they begin their new life together.

Structure

Kill Bill is divided into ten chapters, five chapters per volume. As is common in Tarantino films, they are not arranged in chronological order.

Volume 1 details

A black-and-white sequence introduces us to The Bride (Thurman). She lies on a wooden floor, dressed in a wedding gown. Her face is covered in blood and bruises. A hand comes into frame, holding a handkerchief marked "Bill". Bill wipes some of the mess from her face, and he speaks to her softly, explaining, "this is me at my most masochistic." She replies, "Bill, it’s your baby," but as she says the "y" of baby, Bill shoots her in the head.

The story continues in the first chapter, "2". The Bride, alive and well, drives up to the suburban California home of Vernita Green (Fox), codenamed "Copperhead", one of the members of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. Copperhead answers the door and a vicious knifefight ensues, demolishing most of the living room. In the middle of the fight, Copperhead’s daughter, Nikki, arrives home from school and the two women conceal their knives in a truce, pretending that nothing has happened. Over coffee, The Bride and Copperhead plan a final battle later that evening, but Copperhead tries double-crossing The Bride using a gun concealed inside a box of cereal. Her shot misses, giving the Bride the opportunity to impale her with her knife. Unfortunately, Nikki witnesses the death of her mother. The Bride sheathes her blade, speaking calmly to Nikki and offering her a chance for revenge should she want it. The Bride returns to her car, a big, yellow pick-up truck named the "Pussy Wagon." Here, she looks at a notepad with the names of five people, including Copperhead’s, written under the title "Death List Five". She crosses out the name Vernita Green, and one can see that "O-ren Ishii" has already been crossed out. It is during this chapter that the audience first hears the Bride's former code-name as a member of the Deadly Vipers--"Black Mamba".

The second chapter, "The Blood-Splattered Bride", returns to a time shortly after the Bride's apparent death. A local lawman, Earl McGraw (Parks) surveys the crime scene, at which time it is revealed the Bride wasn't Bill's only victim - an entire wedding party has been massacred. McGraw discovers the body of the Bride, and it becomes obvious to him that she is still alive. Cut to a local hospital, where the Bride lies comatose. She is confronted by another member of Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, Elle Driver (Hannah), codenamed "California Mountain Snake", who, it is implied, has replaced her as Bill's lover. Elle plans to kill the comatose Bride, but at the last minute Bill phones her and orders her to abort the mission, since it would be beneath professional warriors to creep into a room "like a filthy rat" and murder a sleeping victim.

The story jumps ahead four years, as the Bride awakens with her memory of the assassination attempt intact. She bursts into tears on realizing that her unborn child is gone. At that moment, two men enter the room and the Bride fakes her unconsciousness. As it turns out, Buck, a hospital orderly, has been charging visitors to have sex with the comatose Bride for four years now. After killing Buck's customer, she then kills Buck and steals the keys to his pick-up truck - the Pussy Wagon.

From the back of Buck's truck, the Bride works to revive her atrophied legs as she narrates the story of the next chapter.

Chapter three, titled "The Origin of O-Ren", serves as the introduction of O-Ren Ishii (Liu), codenamed "Cottonmouth". This entire chapter is shown as an anime sequence. As a young child, both of O-Ren's parents were killed by members of Japanese Yakuza, led by Boss Matsumoto, right before her own eyes. She takes revenge on same Yakuza boss, slicing him open as she reveals her identity. So begins her career in crime. From this point, she earns a reputation as a very successful and ruthless assassin.

The story returns to the "present", as the Bride regains use of her legs.

In the fourth chapter, "The Man from Okinawa", the Bride boards a plane to Okinawa. There she searches for Hattori Hanzo (Chiba), a famous sword-smith. Hanzo has taken an oath to never make another sword, but is persuaded by the justice of her cause. It takes him a month to make her the best sword ever crafted, which she takes to Tokyo for her showdown with O-Ren.

In volume one's final chapter, "Showdown at House of Blue Leaves," O-Ren Ishii has become the first female leader of the Yakuza council. To kill her will require every skill and tactic the Bride possesses.

The Bride gets into O-Ren’s current hangout, a club known as the House of Blue Leaves. She follows Sophie Fatale, O-Ren’s best friend, lawyer and another former protege of Bill, into a bathroom, taking her hostage to lure out O-Ren. In the huge, main room of the club, she slices off Fatale's arm. O-Ren dispatches her body guards to deal with the Bride, who proceeds to take on O-Ren’s henchmen, including O-Ren's personal bodyguard, the seventeen year-old girl named Gogo Yubari, who wields an altered meteor hammer with retractable blades. After killing the subordinates, she is confronted by the bulk of O-Ren's army, the "Crazy 88s."

They all suffer grisly death or mutilation at the edge of her sword (with the exception of one very young "soldier", who is literally spanked with the blunt end of the Bride's sword and told to go home to his mother) in a sequence of sustained, graphic violence. The House of Blue Leaves sequence employs a variety of visual styles including color, black-and-white, a kabuki-like blue-background silhouette, and an overexposed, flashing black-and-white style which seems to suggest an old martial arts movie. The accompanying soundtrack is an eclectic collection of musical styles.

At the end of this frenetic sequence The Bride, looking for O-Ren, slides open a door which unexpectedly reveals the quiet of a snowy, Japanese garden in back of the club. After a dramatic swordfight, during which O-Ren's contempt for the Bride's skills changes to quiet respect, the Bride succeeds in scalping O-Ren with her blade, killing her. She deposits the dismembered Sophie Fatale at a hospital after extracting information from her. Sophie is patched up and later returns to Bill.

In the Volume's last line, Bill asks Sophie if the Bride knows that her daughter is alive, a fact of which the audience has thus far been kept unaware.

Volume 2 details

Note: It is revealed in Volume 2 that The Bride's real name is Beatrix Kiddo. Beatrix is the name used throughout this section.

Kill Bill: Volume 2 opens with a brief recap of Volume 1, narrated by Beatrix herself: she was betrayed and left for dead by the other members of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, and is now hunting them down one by one. She states that Bill is the only one she has left to kill, indicating that this scene is out of chronological order (at the end of Volume 1 she still had three targets left).

The first chapter of Volume 2 takes place at the now-notorious wedding chapel (like all the chapel scenes, it is in black-and-white). Beatrix and her friends are there for her wedding rehearsal when Bill shows up unexpectedly, and for the first time the audience gets to see his face. Though disappointed to see his lover marrying someone else, he is polite and mild-mannered, and even consents to being introduced to the groom as Beatrix's father. Throughout these scenes, the director exploits the creepy tension between Bill's pleasant demeanor and the violence that we know will occur next. Once Beatrix believes she has convinced Bill not to cause any trouble, she takes her place at the altar with her groom, a local record store owner. The camera then pulls back out the door of the chapel, revealing the other four Deadly Vipers waiting outside with their weapons. They walk into the chapel and we hear them firing as the scene fades to black.

Moving to the present, we see Bill paying a visit to his estranged brother Budd (aka "Sidewinder", played by Michael Madsen), another former Deadly Viper. Bill warns him that Beatrix will come for him next, but Budd, now overweight and alcoholic, his assassin days apparently behind him, seems either to not take him very seriously or blatantly not care much for his life. Bill departs, and Budd goes to his job as a bouncer at a topless bar, where his boss reprimands him for being late.

After Budd returns to his secluded trailer home that evening, we see that Beatrix has indeed come for him. But as soon as she opens the door, Budd blasts her in the chest with a shotgun shell filled with rock salt, incapacitating her. He then phones Elle Driver, tells her he's captured Beatrix, and offers to sell her Beatrix's Hanzo sword for one million dollars. Elle agrees, on the condition that Beatrix "must suffer to her last breath." In a horrific scene, filmed from The Bride's point of view, Budd ties Beatrix up, puts her in a wooden coffin, and buries her alive at the local graveyard.

The movie leaves Beatrix, cliff-hanger style, in the coffin and moves to what proves to be a flashback set in China, many years before. Bill is taking Beatrix to the temple of legendary martial arts master Pai Mei (a classic example of the Elderly martial arts master stock character). After warning Beatrix to be humble and obedient, Bill convinces Pai Mei to accept her for training. The training is extremely rigorous, with many hardships, but she becomes a formidable warrior under his tutelage.

Back in the coffin, we see Beatrix call on this training, as she uses one of Pai Mei's techniques to smash her way out of the coffin and claw her way up to freedom. She hikes back to Budd's isolated desert trailer in time to see Elle pulling up in her Trans Am, and Budd standing in his doorway.

Inside the trailer, the eyepatch-wearing Elle makes small talk with Budd, and presents him with a suitcase full of cash in payment for the sword. As Budd counts the money, a highly venomous black mamba that Elle had hidden in the suitcase attacks, biting him several times in the face (Black Mamba is Beatrix's codename). Elle lights a cigarette and takes great pleasure in lecturing Budd on the black mamba as he dies, noting that Black Mamba also means Death Incarnate, lamenting that "maybe the greatest warrior I have ever met, met her end at the hands of a bushwhackin', scrub, alkie piece of shit like you". Bill calls her cell phone, and she feigns sympathy and tells him that his brother Budd was killed by a black mamba left in his camper by Beatrix, but that Beatrix herself is now dead and buried.

Elle takes both sword and money and prepares to leave, but as she opens the door, Beatrix attacks her, kicking her back inside. The two fight ferociously in the enclosed space, clobbering each other with various items within the trailer; among them a lamp, a radio antenna, and a strategically placed spittoon. The brutal fight progresses with neither gaining a clear advantage until Elle manages to unsheathe Beatrix's Hanzo sword. Beatrix, however, serendipitously discovers Budd's Hanzo sword hidden in a golf bag, despite Budd's claim to have pawned it years ago.

Elle and Beatrix have a brief conversation, in which we learn that it was Pai Mei who snatched out Elle's right eye as punishment for her insolence. Elle maliciously tells Beatrix that she got her revenge by poisoning Pai Mei's food, killing him. The two continue to stare each other down in a scene reminiscent of showdowns in western cinema until they simultaneously attack one another with their Hanzo swords, hampered somewhat by the extremely close quarters. With their swords locked together, Beatrix's hand suddenly darts out and snatches out Elle's remaining eye, then proceeds to squish it flat with her bare foot. Elle falls to the ground and thrashes about wildly, cursing and threatening Beatrix. Beatrix calmly collects her Hanzo sword and departs, limping, leaving Elle blind and alone (except for the still-hissing mamba) in the secluded trailer.

The last chapter, which runs nearly an hour, is set in Mexico, where Beatrix first visits an old pimp named Esteban Vihaio (Michael Parks again, in a second role), who turns out to have raised Bill from childhood. He forthrightly tells her Bill's whereabouts, despite knowing her intentions, explaining to an incredulous Beatrix that Bill would have wanted him to.

Beatrix drives to Bill's home, prepared to kill him. She finds that Bill is not alone, however: B.B., their four-year-old daughter, who she had thought was murdered during the wedding chapel attack, is alive and well, apparently delivered while Beatrix was comatose. Met with a family scene rather than aggression, Beatrix is overcome with emotion, creating a tension which envelopes the remainder of the movie: Will Beatrix complete her mission? The family spends the evening together peacefully, and B.B. falls asleep watching the chambara film Shogun Assassin in her mother's arms.

With B.B. safely in bed, Beatrix returns to the living room and verbally confronts Bill, who explains he has some unanswered questions for her and shoots her with a dart filled with truth serum. He then makes her tell him why she ran away. In a somewhat humorous flashback, we learn that she realized upon becoming pregnant that she must put her daughter's future above Bill, and leave behind the assassin's life. Bill deprecates her attempts to find a "normal" life, and compares her with Clark Kent (Superman), saying that she was trying to hide her true identity behind a ridiculous facade. He explains his own actions toward her by saying "There are consequences to breaking the heart of a murdering bastard… You experienced some of them…."

The tension between their lingering feelings for one another and their desire to kill one another finally comes to a head when Bill draws his sword and attacks Beatrix. Although he appears to gain the advantage by disarming her, she disables Bill using the fatal Five-Point-Palm Exploding-Heart Technique, taught to her without Bill's knowledge by Pai Mei. Bill realizes he is beaten, and says a tender goodbye. He then walks unsteadily away, collapses, and dies in silence. Beatrix sheds a few tears for the death of her lover, and returns to the house to collect her daughter. The final scene shows Beatrix on the floor of a hotel bathroom, overcome with conflicting emotions, alternately laughing, crying, and repeatedly saying "Thank you." Regaining her composure, she runs to her daughter to start their new life together.

Budget & box office

The production budget for Kill Bill (volumes I and II combined) was US$60 million.[4][5] This does not include marketing and distribution costs.

Kill Bill: Volume I was released in the United States on October 10, 2003. Its US gross box office receipts were US$70,099,000; its box office receipts for the rest of the world came to US$110,850,000, for a total of US$180,949,000.^[1]

Kill Bill: Volume II was released in the United States on April 16, 2004. Its US gross box office receipts were US$66,208,000; its box office receipts for the rest of the world came to US$85,951,000, for a total of US$152,159,000.^[2]

Since box-office rentals (the percentage the distributor receives for a movie, normally negotiated individually for each movie and normally highly confidential) for a film made by a brand-name talent such as Tarantino were probably in the 45% to 50% range, Miramax probably received somewhere in the US$160 million range.^{citation needed]} Factoring in production costs, and allowing for US$70 million in world-wide distribution and marketing expenses (roughly twice the norm, considering there were two releases), Miramax in all likelihood cleared a net profit of at least US$30 million on the theatrical release alone.^{citation needed]}

Acclaim and criticism

Much-anticipated by fans and critics (it appeared after a six-year hiatus of Tarantino movies), Kill Bill generated a tremendous amount of discussion. Reaction by film critics was largely positive, though by no means unanimous. Both volumes did well at the box office.

A movie in two volumes

Though released as two movies, the film differs from multi-part "franchise" series like Star Wars. The short duration between the releases of the two volumes, and the film’s history and internal structure, strongly recommend that it be regarded as one movie. The dual-release strategy, ostensibly due to the film’s length, has been criticized as an attempt by Miramax to sell two tickets to one movie.^[3]

The two-volume format produced another result: the partitioning ended up putting most of the action in the first volume and most of the dialogue in the second, creating a subtle but noticeable difference in tone. Of Volume 2, Sean O’Connell of Filmcritic.com writes, "The drop-off in energy, style, and coherence from…Volume 1 to its bloated, disinteresting counterpart is so drastic and extreme that you can hardly believe they come from the same director, let alone conclude the same storyline." ^[4] Other critics preferred Volume 2. "...Characters actually talk to one another here rather than the stilted samurai movie-speak of the first film," wrote Jeffery M. Anderson of Combustible Celluloid. [6]

Violence

Much criticism concerned the amount and presentation of bloodshed and general mayhem (the film’s R rating also derives from profanity, depicted drug use, and a couple of non-explicit sex scenes). “A cocktail party in an abattoir,” complained one critic.^[5] The violence is not just incidental to the film’s narrative, it is a conscious part of the telling of the story—an aesthetic element, for better or worse. An example is the decapitation prior to the House of Blue Leaves battle, in which an amount of blood seemingly greater than what a body could hold sprays upward from the headless trunk, like a dancing fountain.

Style and substance

Much of the controversy over the film reflects the differing expectations of those who admire a movie for its style and craftsmanship against those who look primarily at story and substance; as a tribute film and revenge saga, the movie is at a disadvantage with the latter group. “You never forget that ‘Kill Bill’ is an exercise in genre-sampling,” writes the Chicago Tribune’s Mark Caro.^[6] However, the opinion that the movie appeals mainly to film buffs looking to spot obscure pop culture references is a minority view.^{[7] [8]} Most critics found it well-constructed, with tightly-edited action scenes, strong performances, often-clever dialogue, and an effectively exciting soundtrack which draws on an astonishing selection of (mostly post-1960) music.^[9]

Technical objections

There has also been criticism^{citation needed]} of the lack of realism in the fighting and martial arts sequences (even by the cast of real martial artists), such as The Bride's battling dozens of people at once and somehow killing them by swinging her sword like a baseball bat. Also, O-Ren Ishii uses her blade in a shirasaya, which is a resting case for a katana; the case allows the sword to breathe during storage or display, but is not suited for combat. There is also a scene with Pai Mei which is obviously done with wire work.

Defenders of the film point out that this lack of realism is a fitting tribute to older Japanese and Chinese martial arts films.^{citation needed]}

Releases

DVD release

In the United States Kill Bill: Volume 1 was released as a DVD on April 13, 2004 while Volume 2 was released August 10, 2004. As of August 2006, only the basic DVDs have been released, with almost no special features. No further DVD releases have been announced.

In a December 2005 interview, Tarantino addressed the lack of a special edition DVD for Kill Bill by stating "I've been holding off because I've been working on it for so long that I just wanted a year off from Kill Bill and then I'll do the big supplementary DVD package."^[10]

Though the United States does not have a DVD boxed set of Kill Bill, other countries, such as France and Japan, boxed sets marketing the two parts together.

Sequels

Tarantino told Entertainment Weekly in April 2004 that he is planning a sequel:

It is also worth noting that in the credits at the end of the film, each actor portraying a now-deceased DiVAS member has their name crossed out — but Elle Driver's name has, instead, a question mark over it. This could be because she never officially died. The Bride just plucked out her remaining eye and walked away, leaving Elle scrambling on the bathroom floor of Budd's trailer with the angry black mamba that killed Budd.

Prequels

Quentin Tarantino said at the 2006 Comic Con that, after the completion of Grind House, he wants to make two anime Kill Bill films. One will be an origin film about Bill and his mentors, and the other will be an original tale with The Bride. The latter may be a prequel, or may follow the rumored (sequel) plot reported in Entertainment Weekly in April 2004.^[11][12]

Influences

General

The plot to Kill Bill is in some ways an elaborate extrapolation of "Fox Force Five", the fictional television pilot described by Uma Thurman's character to John Travolta's character in Pulp Fiction. Kill Bill also relies heavily on film influences that Tarantino wished to pay tribute to. These include the spaghetti western, blaxploitation and kung fu movies of the 1960s and 1970s, Chinese "wuxia" and Japanese martial arts films, revenge-themed movies such as Lady Snowblood. There are also several references to other films either written and/or directed by Tarantino. Some elements of the story and the character Elle Driver in particular are inspired by the Swedish movie Thriller - en grym film. Tarantino also used the Japanese Lone Wolf and Cub series of Manga and films as an influence on the Bride and her daughter.

Lady Snowblood

Out of all the works Tarantino drew upon, the links to Lady Snowblood (Japan, 1973) are perhaps the easiest to see, with The Guardian commenting that it was "practically a template for the whole of Kill Bill Vol. 1".^[13] The premise of Uma Thurman's character in Kill Bill having a "list" of five enemies to kill is exactly the same as in Lady Snowblood, while both films utilse chapters to structure the film. The scene where Sofie Fatale writhes on the floor after her arm is sliced off is similar to one in Lady Snowblood, including the blood that splashes on the camera lens.

Specific allusions to other works

Tarantino also features direct nods to many of his influences in his movies. Here are some examples of this in Kill Bill:

• The Bride describes her vendetta as "what the movie advertisements call 'a roaring rampage of revenge'." This was the tagline to the 1972 B-movie "biker-chick-flick" Bury Me an Angel, about an angry, sexy blonde who sets out to kill the bikers that murdered her brother. The full alliteration-heavy tagline was "A howling hell-cat humping a hot steel hog on a roaring rampage of revenge!"
• As in the 2003 film Lost In Translation, a Japanese character is dubbed Charlie Brown for his resemblance to the cartoon character.
• During the Origin of O-ren sequence, a young O-ren, from under a bed, shoots one of Boss Matsumoto's bodyguards in the ankle and then in the head, almost identically to a scene in the Coen Brothers film Miller's Crossing
• During the scene where the Texas Ranger is driving to the chapel, the view from the car with the pilot glasses on the dashboard is taken from the 1974 film Gone in 60 Seconds by H.B. Halicki.
• "Revenge is a dish best served cold.- Old Klingon Proverb" – This proverb as it is referenced is from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, as well as Star Trek VI. It is also used in the spaghetti western Death Rides a Horse (1968) (Kill Bill used music from Death Rides a Horse). Lee Van Cleef's character paraphrases the quote saying, "Somebody once wrote that revenge is a dish that has to be eaten cold. Hot as you are, you're liable to end up with indigestion." In fact, the earliest known literary occurrence of this proverb is in the novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos in 1782, basis for the popular 1988 film Dangerous Liaisons, although clearly this reference did not suit Kill Bill's particular aesthetic.
• The character Gogo Yubari's name comes from the japanese animation series: Mach Go Go Go (Speed Racer)as well as the japanese town of Yubari famous for its Melons. The actress jokes that she will return as the character: Mach Melon
• Bill's eventual reason for stopping the Bride's wedding is very similar to those of Cary Grant in His Girl Friday, one of Tarantino's favorite films.
• The siren-like music (actually the theme from the television program Ironside) is an homage to Five Fingers of Death, in which the siren-like music is played during fights.
• The use of music and stylish flashbacks when the Bride is about to deal out vengeance recalls John Phillip Law's flashbacks in Death Rides a Horse.
• Death Rides a Horse is also referenced in the animated sequence in which a young O-Ren witnesses her parents' murder, where the last man to leave the room shoots a bottle of alcohol and kicks a cigar butt, causing the house to set on fire. In Death Rides a Horse, a young boy named Bill hides as he watches the death of his parents, and the last attacker shoots a lantern, setting the house ablaze as he leaves.
• The Bride goes without a name for most of the two movies. This recalls iconic Segio Leone characters (Clint Eastwood played the "man with no name," and Charles Bronson played "Harmonica") as well as Kurosawa's Yojimbo character.
• Chapter 2 is entitled "The Blood Splattered Bride," a reference to the movie La Novia Ensangrentada (1972) (released in the US as The Blood Spattered Bride).
• The speech given to Copperhead's daughter after her mother's assassination is identical to the speech given in the Takashi Miike film, Rainy Dog, after the murder of a young boy's assassin father.
• The Bride's yellow jumpsuit is based on one worn by Bruce Lee in Game of Death.
• The masks worn by the members of the Crazy 88 are the same style that Bruce Lee's character Kato wore in the TV series The Green Hornet. The music played during the Yakuza and Bride's heading for the teahouse before the en-masse swordfight is also a nod to the series, which used Al Hirt's jazzy trumpet rendition of Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee" as its theme. These two homages to Bruce Lee's work combine in the Crazy 88 fight to pit Bruce Lee's first screen incarnation (Kato) against his last (Game of Death). Bruce Lee was snubbed for the lead role in the Kung Fu TV series in favor of David Carradine (Bill). Kato usually had to wear his black mask and did not get many lines or close-ups with his mask off. Tarantino, paying homage to the success of Asian cinema with Kill Bill, has the vindicated "Game of Death" incarnation of Lee defeating the "Black Mask" version of Lee. And, of course, the film ends with the defeat of David Carradine's character.
• Several songs from Italian composer Ennio Morricone appear throughout the two films. These include tracks from A Fistful of Dollars, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Navajo Joe, The Mercenary, and Death Rides a Horse.
• Navajo Joe, a film Tarantino repurposed music from, featured an actress named Nicoletta Machiavelli. Since Tarantino was familiar with Navajo Joe, giving the Bride "Machiavelli" as an alias may have been a nod to the film.
• The use of the rock song "Battle Without Honor or Humanity" is both an allusion to the Yakuza film Battles Without Honour and Humanity (directed by Kinji Fukasaku) and Samurai Fiction. The song's composer/performer, Tomoyasu Hotei, both acted in and contributed music to Samurai Fiction, which in its own way refers back to Tarantino's Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs.
• The kung-fu film Master of the Flying Guillotine is paid homage to by the brief use of the film's droning theme music, an excerpt of the song "Super 16" by Neu!, during the House of Blue Leaves sequence. Many kung-fu sound effects are taken from this movie as well.
• The move the Bride uses with two katanas (when she is surrounded by Crazy 88 members in the House of Blue Leaves) is a reference from Bruce Lee's The Chinese Connection. The way she attacks low and disables her opponents is a mirror reference to the way the surrounded Bruce Lee used nunchaku against his opponents. There is even the same air of suspense before each fight scene.
• The finale between The Bride and O-Ren Ishii bears a stylistic resemblance to the finale of Bruce Lee's The Chinese Connection, in that both take place outside of a Japanese building with fusuma sliding wood and paper doors, in a small, enclosed garden area. More obvious is that both scenes begin quietly, the silence permeated only by the rhythmic sound of a Shishi_odoshi (Japanese water feature).
• The scene in which O-Ren Ishii walks down a hall followed by some of the Crazy 88 is similar to a scene in A Clockwork Orange in which Alex is walking with his "droogs".
• The phrase "My name is Buck, and I'm here to fuck..." has a striking resemblance to the phrase "My name is Buck and I'm ready to fuck!" from Tobe Hooper's Eaten Alive.
• The scene in the House of Blue Leaves in which the three bodyguards fall simultaneously after the Bride strikes the hilt of her sword with her fist is almost identical to a scene in Shogun Assassin when the titular character and his son confront a female ninja.
• The end of the duel between Beatrix and O-Ren is very similar to the duel between Musashi and Kojiro in the third picture of Samurai Trilogy starring Toshiro Mifune. Both have the two enemies running parallel to each other, a simulataneous strike, a blood spatter without showing who was cut, and then the loser falling. This same scene has been replicated and imitated countless times in various other Japanese forms of media, especially anime.
• The blue lit silhouettes during the House of Blue Leaves fight are very similar to scenes using colored light and contrast in Samurai Fiction, as well as the climactic scene from Highlander.
• After Beatrix rips out the eye of Elle Driver, she is completely covered in blood and dirt, quite reminicent of Carrie after the buckets of blood are spilled over her. In the hospital scene in Volume 1, Tarantino uses a split-screen technique, also reminiscent of Carrie director Brian De Palma.
• The film has a very similar plot to Five Deadly Venoms.
• The character Elle Driver is influenced by the character Patch from Switchblade Sisters which Tarantino has released under his Rolling Thunder imprint.
• After being blinded, Elle Driver shrieks and thrashes about on the floor of the trailer. This is an homage to Blade Runner, in which Darryl Hannah's character, the replicant Pris, exhibits identical behavior after being shot by Deckard.
• The character of Pai Mei, priest of the White Lotus Clan, has appeared in other movies. Actor Lieh Lo played him in Executioners from Shao Lin (Hung Hsi-Kuan), Abbot of Shaolin (Shao Lin ying xiong bang), and Clan of the White Lotus (Hung wen tin san po pai lien chiao), which also featured Gordon Liu. The character is based on Bak Mei, a historical martial artist from China.
• The character of Hattori Hanzō (服部半蔵, Hattori Hanzō^?) is based on a historical figure who has been depicted in film many times. Actor Sonny Chiba played the role in the television series Kage no Gundan (影の軍団, ; 'Shadow Army'^?). Actor Kenji Oba (aka. Kenji Ohba) also played the role in the television series Kage no Gundan; the character of bald guy (Sushi shop) is based on Gamahachi (がま八, Gamahachi^?) who appears in that work. Sonny Chiba and Kenji Ohba are actually teacher and student's relations. They played together also in Uchuu Keiji Gavan and affected Paul Verhoeven's Robocop. {clarification needed}
• The scene in Kill Bill Volume 2 where David Carradine plays his flute, while sitting near the fire and talks to Beatrix is almost identical to a similar scene in Circle Of Iron, which Carradine also starred in. The flute that Bill plays is actually one of the prop flutes from the original "Kung Fu" TV show, which Carradine always kept as a memento.
• Issac Hayes' score from the films Three Tough Guys and Truck Turner were used in both volumes (the Truck Turner theme where The Bride is seen driving Buck's Pussy Wagon, and the title to Three Tough Guys during a flashback with Pai Mei in Vol. 2).
• The theme music that plays when the Bride looks down on Sophie is the theme to The Yagyu Conspiracy, a popular TV series starring Sonny Chiba in one of his most memorable roles as Yagyu Jubei. The Battle of the House of Blue Leaves is similar to Jubei's fight against dozens of soldiers in the final episode of that series. Interestingly, Sonny Chiba choreographed the majority of the HoBL fight scene. ^{citation needed]}
• Chapter 6 "The Massacre at Two Pines" is an allusion to the film "Meatballs", a seventies comedy starring Bill Murray, in which he scares a group of camp counsellors with a fictional tale about an escaped lunatic murdering a group of kids at camp Two Pines.

Specific allusions to other Tarantino films

Quentin Tarantino also includes many references to his own previous works.

• Vivica A. Fox's resentment towards her alias "Copperhead" is a reference to Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, in which Steve Buscemi's character dislikes his own alias, "Mr. Pink."
• Uma Thurman's character "The Bride" explains revenge as getting "square" and then traces a square in the air with her index fingers references Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, in which Thurman's character Mia Wallace tells John Travolta's character not to be a "square", punctuated by her similarly tracing the shape.
• Another reference to Mia Wallace is the manner is which The Bride gasps and suddenly wakes from her coma, all shot from overhead. The exact same angle is used to film the same actress performing the same actions in Pulp Fiction when Mia wakes from her drug induced stupor.
• Texas Ranger Earl McGraw, played by Michael Parks (who also plays Esteban Vihaio), appeared in the opening of From Dusk Till Dawn, which was written by Tarantino and directed by Robert Rodriguez. One could infer that the Texas Ranger's scenes in Kill Bill take place before the events of Dusk, since his character dies in that movie. Parks is rumored to be playing the character again in the Tarantino / Rodriguez collaboration, Grind House.
• During the scene where The Bride discovers she is pregnant, a shot of her bent foot is a reference to Pulp Fiction, as a similar shot is taken when Mia Wallace (also played by Uma Thurman) prepares to dance at the Jack Rabbit Slim's.
• In Volume 2, Bill tells the Bride that she is a 'Natural Born Killer'. Tarantino wrote the screenplay for 'Natural Born Killers'.

Music

The following are the tracks from the released Kill Bill Soundtrack CDs. Some tracks are not music, but are lines of dialogue from the films. Also, this is only a list of music on the soundtrack CDs, not a list of all music appearing in the film; for example, "I'm Blue" by the 5.6.7.8's is not included.

Trivia

• When Vernita Green shoots at the Bride, the gun is in a box of cereal named "Kaboom!" Tarantino is known for his love of discontinued cereal brands, as seen in his use of Fruit Brute cereal in previous films.

• In the Showdown at House of Blue Leaves, before the fight scene when Beatrix Kiddo walks over a clear glass tiled floor, the phrase "FUCK U" forms the tread pattern on the soles of her sneakers.

• Upon arriving in Japan in Volume 1, Beatrix walks past a large sign advertising Red Apple cigarettes. In the opening scene of Jackie Brown, the title character walks past a similar sign, again in an airport. In Pulp Fiction, Butch Coolidge asks a bartender for a pack of Red Apple cigarettes after speaking with Marcellus Wallace. Also in Pulp Fiction, Uma Thurman produces a pack of Red Apples at Jack Rabbit Slim's.

• In Volume 2, Beatrix meets Bill and her Daughter for the first time in a hotel suite numbered 101, a reference to Room 101 in Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the book, 101 contains only one thing; the entrant's concept of the worst thing in the world.

• The flute which Bill is seen playing in the film same as carried by another of David Carradine's characters, Caine, of Kung Fu fame. He also carries the flute in his role as the "The Blind Man" in the 1978 film "Circle of Iron"

• Quentin Tarantino has confirmed that the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (DiVAS) was based on the unnamed characters of "Fox Force Five" in Pulp Fiction.

• When Beatrix is buried alive in Vol. 2, the razor she pulls from her boot to escape is a reference to Michael Madsen's character in Reservoir Dogs, Mr. Blonde, who used an identical razor to cut off a police officer's ear.

• The Japanese release of Volume 1 begins with a dedication to Japanese director Kinji Fukasaku, director of Battles Without Honour and Humanity.

• The film also features an anime sequence explaining O-Ren's tragic backstory. It is directed by Kazuto Nakazawa, who also directed the Linkin Park video for "Breaking The Habit", with the animation studio Production I.G, producers of Ghost in the Shell among other works.

• The Bride's boarding pass (click for a larger view).
  During Volume 1, The Bride's real name is bleeped out when characters say it. However, The Bride's real name is present on her boarding pass for her flights to Okinawa and Tokyo.

• In the ending credits, Beatrix Kiddo is stated to have been "based on the character 'The Bride' by Q & U". Q & U represents the first initials of Quentin Tarantino and Uma Thurman, crediting their close collaboration on the character.

• In Volume 1, before The Bride's real name is revealed, she and O-ren have a short conversation that hints at it. The words they exchange are "Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids," a well-known phrase from the television commercials for an American breakfast cereal. "Kids" hints at "Kiddo" while "...bit, Trix..." hints at "Beatrix", hence the name "Beatrix Kiddo".

• While the American cut of the movie shows the violent battle at the House of Blue Leaves in black-and-white, the Japanese cut shows it in color. The "Color Cut" of this film segment is highly sought after by fans, but has not been officially distributed outside Japan.

• The Crazy 88: in China, "88" is an auspicious number, much like 7 in the west. See 8 (number) for more on the luck factor associated with it. In Japan, it is most often associated with the 88-temple Shikoku pilgrimage. In China and Japan, 4 is a very unlucky number and represents death. But 44 and 44 equals 88, a lucky number. Also note that there are four 4's in that equation, and four people of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad are killed, one 4 for each death. Bill is not included because he is the leader and not really one of the assasians BUT Beatrix really only kills four people INCLUDING Bill anyway, because Budd is killed by Elle. So it really depends on if you want to see it as that four of the assisins die and that Bill is not included, or that Beatrix Kiddo gets true revenge on four people. Therefore, The Crazy 88 is a hidden allusion to the main plot events in the film.

• In contrast to her murderous rampage in Volume 1, The Bride kills only one person in Volume 2, and not with her sword.

• The alias she used on her marriage certificate is 'Arlene Machiavelli'. Niccolò Machiavelli advocated faking one's own death as a strategy to fool enemies.

• At the beginning of Volume 1, the Shaw Brothers logo and music is played after the Miramax logo. Tarantino explained that he wanted to pay tribute to the studio, which produced many kung fu movies in the 60's and 70's.

• Several of the movie's swords were purchased from Valley Martial Arts Supply in North Hollywood California. The sword used by Uma Thurman was purchased there. It is an old series Practical Plus Katana.

• On September 15, 2006, the film made its United States commercial television debut on the TNT network. A TV-14 rating was achieved by deleting certain language and violence elements, including renaming the "Pussy Wagon" as the "Party Wagon" on the pickup's tailgate and even on Buck's keychain ("party" was also used to replace "fuck" in Buck's most memorable line). These edits required some computer-assisted trickery, both with the "party" changes and smoothing out lipsync to match the altered dialogue.

Cast

References

External links

• Official web site — no longer operational
• Kill Bill: Vol. 1 at the Internet Movie Database
• Kill Bill: Vol. 2 at the Internet Movie Database
• Kill Bill: Vol. 1 at Rotten Tomatoes
• Kill Bill: Vol. 2 at Rotten Tomatoes
• Everything Tarantino unofficial fan site
• The Quentin Tarantino Archives international fansite and community
• Production I.G on the Kill Bill Anime Sequences Article from CGSociety.org