What films should I watch to better appreciate Kill Bill?

January 30, 2007 7:31 AM

What films should I watch to better appreciate Kill Bill?

My girlfriend loves Kill Bill. I think it's good enough, but overlong. I think I would like it a lot better if I had seen the films that inspired Tarantino and Thurman, as I gather a lot of it is shot as a homage to earlier films.

So, what should we watch to get more into (or out of) Kill Bill?

posted by Grinder to sports, hobbies, & recreation (31 comments total)

Game of Death, with Bruce Lee in yellow tracksuit and Pumas. Superficial visual link to KB, but probably the most obvious of references to past movies.
posted by shortfuse at 7:35 AM on January 30, 2007

I would recommend the Kung Fu TV show starring David Carradine and also reading Carradine's book The Kill Bill Diary.
posted by mattbucher at 7:48 AM on January 30, 2007 [1 favorite]

Lady Snowblood. You'll be amazed at the similarities!
posted by kenchie at 7:55 AM on January 30, 2007

I just watched Enter The Dragon at the weekend. I recognised some of the music from Kill Bill, plus it's a classic Bruce Lee kung fu film so I'm sure there were other inspirations for Kill Bill in there somewhere. (Also, if you're a geek like my friends and I you can spend the whole film comparing the fighters to Tekken characters ;)
posted by EndsOfInvention at 7:57 AM on January 30, 2007

If you live in Toronto, tonight you can go see Shogun Assassin (the movie BB watches before bedtime) at U of T for free.
posted by SassHat at 7:59 AM on January 30, 2007

Lone Wolf and Cub
posted by milarepa at 8:02 AM on January 30, 2007

The Samurai Trilogy is directly quoted here and there in Kill Bill's action sequences.
posted by Prospero at 8:04 AM on January 30, 2007

blaxploitation films, especially those with pam grier like foxy brown or coffy, show up a lot in tarantino films.

but i think in kill bill the two strongest influences were classic martial arts cinema, and spaghetti westerns.

sergio leone's westerns, notably the clint eastwood "man with no name" trilogy fistful of dollars, for a few dollars more, and especially the good, the bad and the ugly. also death rides a horse, which stars "angel eyes" lee van cleef, is appropriate too.

the biggest influences come from classic martial arts like bruce lee's enter the dragon or game of death, hong kong action such as john woo's the killer or hard boiled, classic kung-fu along the lines of five fingers of death, and sonny chiba's the street fighter.

see also classic samurai films like the seven samurai or yojimbo.

tarantino's had a lot of influences that pop up in different films, but i think these are the dominant ones here.

oh, on further googling, this page might help guide you further.
posted by sergeant sandwich at 8:05 AM on January 30, 2007 [1 favorite]

That page should keep me busy for months...thanks.
posted by Grinder at 8:08 AM on January 30, 2007

sasshat - where and when!?! innis? i want to go! help!
posted by sergeant sandwich at 8:12 AM on January 30, 2007

I'm a bit amazed that nobody's mentioned the Japanese tv series Kage no Gundan. That's probably the most directly referenced influence in the movie-- Sonny Chiba, the character who plays Hattori Hanzo, is, in Kill Bill, "reprising" a role he played in the television show years before, in the early '80's.

It's a really good show. I've only seen a very crappy, probably illegal, badly-subtitled version, although I've heard that they were going to bring it out over here.
posted by koeselitz at 8:35 AM on January 30, 2007

Seconding The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Visually, a lot of the second film strikes me as a retelling of that movie.
posted by GilloD at 9:04 AM on January 30, 2007

Lee wore Asics trainers, not Puma.
posted by the cuban at 9:13 AM on January 30, 2007

You could also get off psychoanalyzing Tarantino.
posted by glibhamdreck at 9:13 AM on January 30, 2007

Sergeant: here
posted by SassHat at 9:26 AM on January 30, 2007

Watch the "making of " DVD and watch the films with the audio comments turned on.
posted by bkiddo at 9:34 AM on January 30, 2007

There's no commentary track on the R1 DVDs at least, and God knows when we're actually going to get the special edition we've been promised. Not to piggyback on your question, Grinder, but does anyone have new news about that?
posted by Horace Rumpole at 9:58 AM on January 30, 2007

This is one of those rare times that IMDB is actually useful.
posted by roll truck roll at 9:59 AM on January 30, 2007

I've got to second Lone Wolf and Cub.

Others touched on this but...
In volume 2, when Uma watches a movie with her daughter after being reuinited, they watch "Shogun Assassin" which is in fact, a re-edit of 2 (or maybe 3?) of the Lone Wolf and Cub series.

Lone Wolf and Cub (AKA Baby Cart) is 6 films long and are my favorite samurai movies to date. For me, they even rank above Kurosawa (Seven Samurai) and the Zotoichi movies (though check out the 2003 Zatoichi with Takeshi Kitano who you may recognize from Most Xtreme Elimination Challenge).

Also, if you liked the anime sequence, check out Ninja Scroll or, more recently the Samurai Seven series.
posted by utsutsu at 10:12 AM on January 30, 2007

The stylistic almost cartoonish violence of Kill Bill owes an awful lot to Sonny Chiba's 1970s Street Fighter movies.
posted by MegoSteve at 10:42 AM on January 30, 2007

Enter the Dragon, The Man With No Name Trilogy, aaaaand....

...if you can find it, Road to Salina. It's a kooky, trippy mod noir to which much of the second part owes its music and look.
posted by Sticherbeast at 11:28 AM on January 30, 2007

Actually, the more you watch the movies suggested above, the less you will appreciate Tarantino. You're right, right now— it is an OK movie, but overlong and totally masturbatory. If you want to enjoy the movie more, I suggest lots of marijuana, cheap beer, and a cinematic diet of Jean Claude Van Damme movies.
posted by klangklangston at 12:16 PM on January 30, 2007 [3 favorites]

I'd say watch any other movie that David Carradine has ever been in, just so you can see the contrast in his performance in Kill Bill. In every other movie or TV show I've seen, Carradine acts as if the director has told him his character's motivation is cardboard, mud, and a week's worth of unseasoned oatmeal. But somehow, and this is what blew me away about Kill Bill more than anything, Tarantino got David Carrading to fucking act, and act well.
posted by lekvar at 12:18 PM on January 30, 2007 [1 favorite]

I would check out The Searchers as another western reference from the second film.
posted by pombe at 12:46 PM on January 30, 2007

Yakuza movies by Seijun Suzuki, such as Tokyo Drifter or Kanto Wanderer appear to have been an influence. The use of silhouette in a number of the fight scenes is lifted directly from Suzuki.

A more recent (and crazier) example would be Pistol Opera.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 12:50 PM on January 30, 2007

Low-budget 70's chixploitation movie "They Call Her One Eye" was the inspiration for Darryl Hannah's character's eyepatch, but also somewhat inspired Uma Thurman's character's "abused-woman-seeks-revenge" arc.
posted by Asparagirl at 3:09 PM on January 30, 2007

Don't forget 60's female yakuza - Panik House's Pinky Violence.
posted by xod at 3:35 PM on January 30, 2007

I absolutely love Kill Bill as well and I have no experience with any kung-fu or Japanese movies at all (except Battle Royale!). I guess it is useful to have seen the films referenced and paid homage to to understand the references, but I don't think this would necessarily make it any more fun or enjoyable to watch. Either you like cartoonesque, edge of the seat fighting sequences and Tarantino's quirkiness.. or you don't.
posted by wackybrit at 4:41 PM on January 30, 2007

thanks for the tip, sass - it was bloody and gory and excellent - and now i know where all the samples on the gza's liquid swords come from!
posted by sergeant sandwich at 7:01 PM on January 30, 2007

Ah, here's the shit thing: if you don't already get the refrerences in any kind of referential work, it's too little too late. Even if you go back and understand them all, watching, admiring, listening, to the work you're trying to footnote will seem boring. As will the footnoting itself.

It'd be like trying to understand, from a Freudian angle, midget porn shown on a basement television at a party. Or undergraduate English.
posted by converge at 6:12 AM on January 31, 2007

if you don't already get the refrerences in any kind of referential work, it's too little too late.

Au contraire, converge. Very often when I rewatch one of my Mystery Science Theater 3000s (and I taped every episode off the air the hard way, not like you damn kids and your downloading), my base of knowledge has increased such that I get a reference I hadn't gotten before, and it's always greatly satisfying.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 7:28 AM on January 31, 2007