Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
An assassin is shot by her ruthless employer, Bill, and other members of their assassination circle – but she lives to plot her vengeance.
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30 films that influenced Kill Bill: Vol. 1
What critics say influenced Kill Bill: Vol. 1
Of the world cinema mixed-bag of references Q.T. manipulates, it's the yellow tracksuit from Bruce Lee's last movie "Game of Death" that makes the most broadly sweeping statement.
Armed with her samurai sword and dressed in the yellow jumpsuit that is a re-creation of Bruce Lee's in "Game of Death," the 6-foot actress slices and dices her way through a legion of limbs.
It's the cereals, the Pussy Wagon, the yellow and black motorcycle suit Bruce Lee wore in "Game of Death", the Japanese goons in Kato masks, the killer schoolgirl...
In the middle of a loooong, gruesome sword battle near the end, in which The Bride, dressed in Bruce Lee's "Game of Death" track suit, takes on Ishii's hordes of Kato-masked minions, there's a break: The fight is shown in silhouette against a deep blue background.
In the movie's climatic fight scene, for example, Uma's Bride wears a yellow track suit like the one Lee wore in "Game of Death.''
And when the Hannah character whistles the theme from "Twisted Nerve" (1968), it's not meant to suggest she is a Hayley Mills fan but that leakage can occur between parallel universes in the movies.
Best known in the U.S. as the primary inspiration for Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill films, particularly Vol. 1 (2003), Toshiya Fujita’s Lady Snowblood (Shurayukihime) is a pulpy blend of traditional Japanese chanbara antics and grindhouse provocation.
Criterion’s The Complete Lady Snowblood collects two of Japanese director Toshiya Fujita’s revenge films, Lady Snowblood (1973) and Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance (1974), which are must-sees for fans of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill movies.
* Lady Snowblood (1973): Besides borrowing Meiko Kaji's theme song (you can hear it when the Bride flies into Tokyo), Tarantino owes much of Kill Bill's storyline and sexual politics to Toshiya Fujita's samurai movie about a steely female avenger.
With references to Hong Kong's Shaw Brothers' films (see "Fists of Fury"), Spaghetti Westerns, Anime, and Japanese director Kinji Fukasaku (see "Battle Royale"), Tarantino creates a fresh hybrid of cinematic spectacle.
Liu 's overshadowed by Cottonmouth's henchwoman Go Go Yubari, played with steely intensity by Chiaki Kuriyama of Battle Royale infamy.
If some are utterly repulsed by such indulgence, others will glory in its pedigree, instantly spotting bits and pieces pillaged from the movies of legendary Japanese filmmakers like Hideo Gosha, Seijun Suzuki and the late, great Kinji Fukasaku--whose scandalous 2000 film "Battle Royale" (still unreleased in the U.S.) Tarantino honors by casting its star, Chiaki Kuriyama, in a rerun of her part as a lethal Japanese schoolgirl.
* Battle Royale (2000): Tarantino wrote the role of O-Ren's bodyguard Go Go Yubari for Chiaki Kuriyama, who played a similarly murderous schoolgirl in Kinji Fukasaku's bloody satire.
It’s easier said than done, and by the time she finally does arrive on O-Ren’s doorstep, The Bride is forced to fight through wave after wave of her subordinates, including Johnny Mo (Gordon Liu) and the Crazy 88s, as well as O-Ren’s personal bodyguard, Go Go Yubari (Chiaki Kuriyama of “Battle Royale” fame).
One really great character is Mitsuko (Kou Shibaski), one of my favorites, a sexy elitist who manages to become the deadliest player in the game, and boy does she put up a fight, there is also Takako Chigusa, another very deadly female character, she’s played by Chiaki Kuriyami whom many Tarantino fans will remember from “Kill Bill” as the lethal Gogo Yubari.
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Rather like Jeanne Moreau's avenging newlywed in Truffaut's The Bride Wore Black (her husband was shot on the church steps following the ceremony), The Bride seeks to exact a suitable revenge.
Taking a cue from Francois Truffaut's 1968 film The Bride Wore Black, the simple plot has The Bride (Uma Thurman) taking revenge on five dangerous killers.
Just as RZA's score samples Morricone, Herrmann and Quincy Jones, cameraman Robert Richardson 's dazzling visual iconography comes from The Bride Wore Black, Nikita and Modesty Blaise, Takashi Miike and Seijun Suzuki, Akira Kurosawa and Sergio Leone, Kinji Fukasaku and Brian De Palma, Shaw Brothers' chop socky, Jack Hill blaxploitation and '70s TV schlock - and there's even a cool animé section.
You can bet QT has), some Asian standards there, mixed in with Truffaut (whose The Bride Wore Black informs Kill Bill more than a little, though Tarantino has denied seeing it; I doubt this) and nasty X-rated Swedish exploitation (They Call Her One-Eye, an influence on the heroine and one of her betrayers).
The Bride Wore Black meets Charlie’s Angels when Uma Thurman’s nameless protagonista (referred to as The Bride) wakes up from a four-year coma and decides to eliminate the titular mob boss’s motley crew of assassins who put her there.
By the time the story—inspired by Truffaut's The Bride Wore Black—begins, we've sat through another "teaser trailer" for the film.
* Master of the Flying Guillotine (1975): The titular weapon inspired the mace-like contraption that Go Go uses to get medieval on Uma's ass.
"Kill Bill -- Vol. 1" (the second half will be released Feb. 20) is a tribute to the Hong Kong "grindhouse" films, Japanese samurai flicks and spaghetti westerns that Tarantino adored during his formative years -- just as "Raiders of the Lost Ark" was to the Saturday morning serials of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg's youth.
The Bride fends off an army of black-suited baddies -- their faces are hidden by sleek, molded Cato masks, a nod to Bruce Lee's character on "The Green Hornet" -- until they're lying scattered around the club floor in a mini indoor re-creation of the famous train-station scene in "Gone With the Wind," moaning and waving what's left of their arms and legs.
Abandoning the ambivalence of Charlie's Angels' catfights, Tarantino isn't happy until his Bride has decimated a roomful of men and women, suggesting a parody of Gone With the Wind's wide shot of a blood-soaked, body-ridden street.
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Frank Henenlotter's Basket Case and Jimmy Wang Yu's The Master of the Flying Guillotine come to mind as good examples.
With the aid of choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping (best known in America for his work on "The Matrix") and the astonishing physical grace and presence of Uma Thurman (imagine Marlene Dietrich starring in "Enter the Dragon"), his fight scenes are as ferocious and freaky as those that inspired him in the first place.