Kill Bill: Vol. 1
Kill Bill: Vol. 1 Theatrical Poster
Directed by	Quentin Tarantino
Produced by	Lawrence Bender
Written by	Character of The Bride:   Quentin Tarantino   Uma Thurman Screenplay:   Quentin Tarantino
Starring	Uma Thurman Lucy Liu
Music by	RZA
Cinematography	Robert Richardson
Editing by	Sally Menke
Distributed by	Miramax Films
Released	October 10, 2003
Running time	111 minutes
Language	English Japanese French
Budget	$55 million USD
IMDb profile

 

Details

• 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.

• During this first half of Kill Bill, 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.

• While the America 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 fanatical US Kill Bill fans, but is still currently unavailable outside Japan.

• The Crazy 88: in China the number "88" is an auspicious number, much like 7 in the west. In Japan, it is most often associated with the 88-temple Shikoku pilgrimage; While some critics have tried to argue that there are not actually eighty-eight members of the group, this has been contradicted by an interview given by Quentin Tarantino to Eiga HIHO magazine, "because O-Ren is half-Chinese and half-Japanese, so is her army. So there's 44 Chinese people and 44 Japanese people! But that's part of the mythology I would only go into if I wrote a book." This is significant in that 4 in Japanese (shi) is a homophone for death, and is considered a very unlucky number. However, 44 and 44 make 88, a lucky number. In Volume Two Bill muses that the Crazy 88 simply "thought it [the name] sounded cool."

• David Carradine has confirmed at several conventions and special screenings that the killer of O-Ren's father in the anime sequence is Bill. This decision was made at a late stage and as a result, the scene had to be reanimated.

Volume 2:

Kill Bill: Vol. 2
Directed by	Quentin Tarantino
Produced by	Lawrence Bender
Written by	Character of The Bride:   Quentin Tarantino   Uma Thurman Screenplay:   Quentin Tarantino
Starring	Uma Thurman David Carradine
Music by	Robert Rodriguez
Cinematography	Robert Richardson
Editing by	Sally Menke
Distributed by	Miramax Films
Released	April 16, 2004
Running time	136 minutes
Language	English Manderan
Budget	$30 million USD
IMDb profile

Details

• Samuel L. Jackson has a short appearance in the movie as Rufus, an organist in the El Paso Chapel. Jackson's character was also rumored to be Jules from Pulp Fiction, because of that character's desire to "walk the earth."

• Budd, Michael Madson, falsely claims to have pawned his Hattori Hanzō sword in El Paso, Texas. In Pulp Fiction, Butch Coolidge, Bruce Willis, finds a katana in a Los Angeles pawn shop.

• The prop used as the Bride's Hattori Hanzō sword in Kill Bill was later reused as Miho's nameless sword in the screen adaptation of Sin City.

• During Bill's interrogation of Beatrix, he says that she is a "natural born killer," a reference to the movie Natural Born Killers, for which Tarantino wrote the initial screenplay.

• The flute which Bill is seen playing both outside the chapel and prior to the Bride's training is the same flute carried by another of David Carradine's characters, Caine, of Kung Fu fame.

• When facing the shotgun-wielding assassin Karen, the Bride calls herself "the deadliest woman in the world." In Pulp Fiction, Mia Wallace, also played by Uma Thurman, describes her character in the failed television pilot "Fox Force Five" as "the deadliest woman in the world with a knife."

• When the Bride is buried alive in "Chapter Seven: The lonely grave of Paula Schultz", the razor she pulls from her boot to escape is a reference to Michael Madsen's character in "Reservoir Dogs", Mr. Blonde, whom used a same exact razor to cut a police officer's ear off.

Releases

NECA action figure released 2004.

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.

Before the release of Volume 1, Rick Sands, chief operating officer at Miramax, commented on future multiple releases of the Kill Bill DVDs: "This is the beauty of having two volumes—Vol. 1 goes out, Vol. 2 goes out, then Vol. 1 Special Edition, Vol. 2 Special Edition, the two-pack, then the Tarantino collection as a boxed set out for Christmas. It's called multiple bites at the apple. And you multiply this internationally."

These comments were heavily criticized by the online DVD community, and may have influenced DVD sales, which were lower than expected. As of October 2005, only the basic DVDs have been released, with almost no special features. No further DVD releases have been announced.

Rumors of a deluxe edition DVD entitled Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair claim that there will be some slightly extended scenes, with the possible addition of the unfilmed scene "Yuki's Revenge", in which Gogo Yubari's death is avenged by her younger sister, Yuki. This scene takes place right after The Bride kills Vernita Green. Yuki was using an ice-cream truck to track The Bride (the truck's music can be heard faintly when The Bride arrives at Vernita's house), and this battle resulted in The Bride's stolen pick-up truck, the Pussy Wagon, being destroyed, which relates to The Bride later telling Bill's surrogate father "My Pussy Wagon died on me."

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."

Though the United States doesn't have a DVD BOXED SET of Kill Bill, other countries carry four disc boxed sets of both of these movies combined. Japan, for example, has boxed sets of Vol.1 and Vol.2, Uncut, with not only tons of special features, but also, the Vol.1 boxed set has a t-shirt, a model of a Hattori Hanzō Sword, and a collectors Booklet. However, the Japanese Deluxe Editions are very limited and maybe a little difficult to find. There's also a French DVD set which has four discs and includes both volumes of the film.

Plans for a theatrical re-release

Tarantino has also aired plans of a late 2006 re-release of Kill Bill in theaters, as one complete film with an intermission in the middle. The full Kill Bill would only screen in select theatres.

"Looks like it might be a while for those of us waiting for the big Kill Bill special edition DVD because QT is going to re-release the film in 1 piece in late 2006 first. Once thats done, then he'll get to the process of putting the special edition DVD together. He says, 'I want to cut the whole movie together like one big epic with an intermission in the middle like a 60s film. It'll be coming out in theatres.'

So for about another year, you'll just have to put up with the separate Volume 1 and Volume 2 DVDs."

Planned sequel

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

Nikki is the daughter of character Vernita Green, whom The Bride kills at the beginning of Volume 1. Should a sequel show Nikki grow up to kill Beatrix, the same film or another sequel could have Beatrix and Bill's daughter B.B. taking Nikki on to complete the story.

Soundtracks

Soundtrack albums have been released for each volume. The Volume 1 soundtrack was organised (and to a certain extent, produced and orchestrated) by the RZA from the Wu-Tang Clan. The Volume 2 soundtrack was orchestrated by fellow filmmaker and personal friend Robert Rodriguez. Volume 1 reached #45 on the Billboard 200 album chart and #1 on the soundtracks chart in August 2003. Volume 2 reached #58 on the Billboard 200 and #2 on the Billboard soundtracks chart in the US. It has also reached the ARIA Top 50 album charts in Australia.

Influences

General

Kill Bill 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, Francois Truffaut's The Bride Wore Black and films like The Seven Samurai. 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. (This movie is also known as "They Call Her One Eye.")

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:

• During the scene where the sheriff 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.- A 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." However the origin of the proverb is difficult to determine, possibly Sicilian, Spanish, or Pashtun. The earliest known use of the proverb in print is from the novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1782) by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos: "La vengeance est un plat qui se mange froid"
• Near the end of the opening credits, a silhouette evokes Citizen Kane.
• The siren-like musical sequence denoting The Bride's encounters with her nemeses is from the theme of police drama Ironside, starring Raymond Burr as a detective who is confined to a wheelchair after a sniper attack. The "Ironside" theme music was written by Quincy Jones.
• The siren-like music is actually an homage to "The Five Fingers of Death," one of the first Kung Fu movies released in the United States (1973) The hero is attacked and left crippled, his hands smashed. Through sheer will and intense training the hero retrains himself and his hands as lethal weapons. When any battle turns deadly his hands turn red and the siren-like music is played.
• The scene of The Bride standing in the middle of fifty-plus people and still winning the fight is similar to the chambara scenes of countless old Japanese samurai movies.
• The Bride's yellow tracksuit is from Bruce Lee's 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 accompanying music during 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 (in Game of Death), in which he died during the filming. Game of Death was never properly finished, though it was released with a stand-in actor.
• Music from Ennio Morricone's score for A Fistful of Dollars plays in a scene in Volume 2 in which Budd shoots the Bride with rock salt.
• When the Bride appears with Budd's sword in the fight with Elle Driver, another Ennio Morricone track is heard, one that is featured in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

External links

• Official web site
• Kill Bill: Vol. 1 at the Internet Movie Database
• Kill Bill: Vol. 2 at the Internet Movie Database
• Everything Tarantino unofficial fan site
• The Quentin Tarantino Archives international fansite and community
• Kill Bill: Vol. 1 screenshots
• Hanzo's Bar Kill Bill info and discussion forum
• Blooming Lotus: Redemption and Spiritual Transformation in Kill Bill essay at 24 Lies A Second