Kill Bill Vol. 2 question [spoilers inside]

April 19, 2004 12:34 PM

Kill Bill Vol. 2 question [spoilers inside]

In the scene where the Bride gets buried alive, how much disbelief do we have to suspend in order to believe she escapes? My gut instinct is that breaking through that board (not just cracking it with your fist, but getting your whole body through) with 6 feet of dirt on top of it is absolutely impossible. How much would all of that dirt weigh? Not to mention, once she made the hole with her fist, her box started to fill up with dirt pretty fast. How would she get through the rest of the board before drowning in dirt? Finally, anyone heard of this actually happenning in real life?

posted by rorycberger to Media & Arts (20 answers total)

I haven't seen the film, but there are quite a few cases known of people being assumed dead and getting buried alive. The invariably either claw at their coffin helplessly and die of suffocation or dehydration, or get heard by some graveyard visitor. Apart from that episod of Buffy the Vampire Slayer ofcourse, but that's fictional; Then again, so is Kill Bill.
posted by fvw at 12:52 PM on April 19, 2004

That was the worst scene for me - being buried alive has been my number 1 fear since I saw an episode of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" about a female prisoner who devises a plan to escape, and makes a deal with a janitor to bury her with a dead prisoner, and then get him to dig her out later. Of course, she gets into the coffin, and after it is buried, lights a match and sees the dead janitor in the coffin with her. Terrified me as a kid.

As for if digging yourself out of the grave, I would have to say no, it would be impossible.

Loved the film though. Tarantino is genius!
posted by Quartermass at 1:08 PM on April 19, 2004

Best answer: Mythbusters tested the idea in an episode entitled "Buried Alive." They buried one of the hosts and monitored his vitals. The weight of about four feet of dirt was enough to deform the lid of the (high quality) coffin quite a bit; they weren't willing to risk the full six feet of dirt for fear of crushing the guy.

You're not getting out, and you will use up your oxygen quickly after the inevitable onset of panic.
posted by Galvatron at 1:19 PM on April 19, 2004

There was a brief scene of her running up through the earth Bugs Bunny/kung-fu style. This an homage to the kinds of super-powers you can get by studying kung-fu in the 70's.
posted by Capn at 2:07 PM on April 19, 2004

And there's the added problem of having been shotgunned from 5 feet away a few hours earlier ;-)

I'll add to the 'great film' chorus tho'.
posted by i_cola at 2:09 PM on April 19, 2004

I think Capn said it best, the whole film is a big homage to 70's kung fu flicks. Basically it doesn't make much sense in the real world, but it's a makes sense in the movie. I mean, she learnt how to make a man's heart explode, i'm sure she learnt how to fly through the dirt. There is a short of her kind of running up through the dirt.
posted by chunking express at 2:13 PM on April 19, 2004

The greatest homage to the kung fu flicks was the intense zooming up to Pai Mei's face. That was classic.

Also, I think the "explanation" for the shotgun thing is that he shot her with rock salt and not gunpowder. But I have no idea how shotguns work...
posted by swank6 at 2:15 PM on April 19, 2004

Response by poster: As for the oxygen issue, it seemed plausible to me that being as it wasn't a hermetically sealed coffin, but rather a nailed shut plywood box, lots of air could pass in and out of the box, and there would be oxygen semi-readily available in the soil, particularly the loose dirt above. The mythbusters experiment seems to suggest that that flimsy plywood she broke through with her fist would have caved in muhc sooner under the weight of the dirt. Still loved the movie, and the shot of her hand shooting up out of the dirt was awesome. Secondary question: how do you think they filmed that? Bury her with a small oxygen tank that gets left under the dirt when she's ready to climb out?
posted by rorycberger at 2:22 PM on April 19, 2004

Say that to break the wood, Uma had to exert enough force to bend it about a half inch. But because it was buried, Uma also had to exert enough force to also lift the dirt above her a half inch. So, think of it as Uma punching part of the way through a board that was six feet thick. (Well, OK, dirt is a lot more elastic than wood; think of it as Uma punching her way through a board that is two feet thick). But Uma was lying in a coffin, without much room to manuever. So think of it in terms of Uma having about three inches of space in which to accelerate her tiny, light-weight hand in order to impart that much force on the board. Not very plausible, right? I won't do the calculation, but it seems that Uma would have to be moving her hand at something approaching the speed of sound.

There's another problem. Assuming Uma could impart that much force with her hand, it seems that there is a real risk that she would be breaking the bones in her hand when she does it. Normally, karatekas can break boards without also breaking their hands because bone is much tougher to break than wood (and because they generally are chopping with the grain, where it's easier to split the wood). But Uma, imparting superhuman force to move the board that far, would probably have broken her hand as well. Or, at least, she would have been bruised.
posted by profwhat at 3:09 PM on April 19, 2004

Not to derail or anything, but my boyfriend and I were also wondering about the shotgun. His father told us he was once shot with rocksalt from a distance of 30 or 40 feet and it burned for weeks. He said yeah, she would be a goner at such a close range. Still, it's great to watch a movie that gets me thinking rather than cringing for once.
posted by dual_action at 3:14 PM on April 19, 2004

Profwhat, your comment gives me a visual of what would have been a great moment in the movie: a cutscene of the surface of the gravesite with dirt exploding loosely upward with each of her punches. Somebody call Quentin.

In regards to Uma breaking her hand, I'm sure that's what all those months of training on that foot-thick punching board were for. In the mythology of the movie, the old master was able to punch through that slab of wood quite impressively.

I love kung fu movies.
posted by Jonasio at 4:31 PM on April 19, 2004

I rationalized my temporary disbelief - partially - by telling myself that they didn't bury her the full six feet under...they got sloppy/lazy/buzzed and only dropped her into a 2 or 3 foot hole.
posted by davidmsc at 6:48 PM on April 19, 2004

Would getting a chest full of rock salt from six feet away kill you? It depends entirely on the size of the charge in the shell. If he loaded those himself specifically to injure but not kill at short range then it's marginally plausible that she'd just be knocked down, bloodied, and breathless. (Not so much that she'd immediately afterward be punching her way out of her coffin, scampering out of her grave, and whupping Daryl Hannah, though. Hey, did anyone else think that Daryl's crazed flailing around after the eye-pluck was an homage to Pris' death-frenzy in Blade Runner?)
posted by nicwolff at 6:59 PM on April 19, 2004

Has anyone seen a complete list of what genre each chapter references.
posted by drezdn at 7:13 PM on April 19, 2004

I rationalized my temporary disbelief - partially - by telling myself that they didn't bury her the full six feet under...they got sloppy/lazy/buzzed and only dropped her into a 2 or 3 foot hole.

i rationalized it similarly. i figured they buried her coffin on top of Paula Shultz's, not in place of, therefore she wasn't buried that deep and maybe it was then possible she was able to get out.
posted by jerseygirl at 7:58 PM on April 19, 2004

I think Paula Shultz's coffin was laying off to the side of the grave as they were digging it out in the beginning of the scene....although that doesn't make much sense b/c the guy was still in the grave digging. If they had pulled the coffin out already you would think they would be deep enough.
posted by Wallzatcha at 8:33 PM on April 19, 2004

If they buried her on top of Paula Shultz, why would they have taken that coffin out of the ground?
posted by Gortuk at 8:34 PM on April 19, 2004

Eye-plucking?!

Right. Scratch that movie off my list.

[shudders]
posted by five fresh fish at 9:15 PM on April 19, 2004

I think they buried her deep. Don't forget that Budd pulled a short stepladder out of the grave and threw it in the back of his truck. Budd's gravedigging buddy wasn't visible until he was pulled out, too, and presumably he was standing on the stepladder waiting for the assist. Sounds like the full two yards to me.
posted by tss at 9:28 PM on April 19, 2004

Response by poster: I definitely remember seeing the coffin on the side, which makes me wonder, how the hell did they get that out? They would certainly both have to be in the hole, and lifting a coffin designed to be carried by six men up over their heads and out of the grave would have been no easy task. Oh well, this is what happens when you start questioning things too much.
posted by rorycberger at 6:16 PM on April 20, 2004