Kill Bill Volume 1 Influences

By Ronnie Dhaliwal and Lisa Fick

In Tarnatino’s Kill Bill Volume 1, there are many references to and influences from the genres of Spaghetti Western, Exploitation, Mainstream films, and even from his own movies. In an article describing the similarities between Kill Bill and films of some of the above genres entitled Found: Where Tarantino Gets His Ideas, Steve Rose describes the great influence that these genres had on Kill Bill. He mentions some of these genres when he writes, “The film is made almost entirely from elements of other films, mainly what Tarantino refers to as “grindhouse cinema”: a catch-all term for movies that played in cheap US cinemas in the 1970s – Hong Kong martial arts flicks, Japanese samurai movies, blaxploitation films and spaghetti westerns.” (Rose)

From the Spaghetti Western genre, the influence of the film The Good, The Bad and the Ugly (1967), directed by Sergio Leone, is evident in the opening shot of Kill Bill Volume 1 when the camera is looking down on a beaten Bride before she gets shot in the head by Bill, as shown below. (Haselbeck) This shot is similar to one of Clint Eastwood in The Good, The Bad and the Ugly where he is also in a near-death state, with a gun being pointed at him by Eli Wallach. (Haselbeck) The wedding chapel where this takes place in Kill Bill is also in a desert setting reminiscent of the Spaghetti Western genre, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. (Haselbeck)

Similarities can also be seen between the relationship that The Bride and Bill share in Kill Bill and the relationship between Tuco and Blondie, in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. In both movies, there is a lot of mistrust, violence, death, surprise, and shifting alliances. The way that Bill surprises the Bride during her wedding rehearsal, hiding his true intentions of killing everyone, is similar to the events in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly when Blondie turns an enraged Tuco into the authorities for reward money, and proceeds to rescue him, split the reward money with him, and later, out of annoyance, abandons him in the desert. (Wikipedia: western) These themes of violence, death, surprise, shifting alliances between people, and hiding true intentions are popular in the Western genre (wikipedia: western). Not only can one see the influence of Sergio Leone in Tarantino’s Kill Bill, Tarantino also states his love of Sergio Leone’s work when he calls The Good, The Bad and the Ugly the “best-directed film of all time.” (Downey)

Although Kill Bill draws influences from many Exploitation and Mainstream films, one in particular is specifically cited by Tarantino, and includes aspects of both genres. That film is Black Sunday (1977), directed by John Frankenheimer, about which Tarantino says, “There’s another movie that I kind of got the idea a little bit more from. And that’s John Frankenheimer’s Black Sunday (1977, US). There’s a scene where Martha Keller goes into the hospital and disguises herself as a nurse and she’s going to kill Robert Shaw with a poisoned syringe.” (Machiyama) This scene can be seen here:
YouTube - Black Sunday . The Mainstream aspect of this film is obvious by its popularity when it first came out, “the film was a commercial hit when it was released in 1977.” (wikipedia: black sunday). The Exploitation aspect of it can be seen in subject and the promotion of its sensationalist “destruction, rebellion, and mayhem.” (Wikipedia: exploitation film) This promotion can be seen in an advertisement poster for the film shown below. This poster gives the audience a preview of the film’s exploitation of fear and mayhem. Another way in which this film includes aspects of the exploitation genre is in its use of real current or past events. This film is said to be “loosely inspired by the events of the 1972 Munich Olympics. The film concerns a group of Arab terrorists, calling themselves Black September, who plan to create havoc at the Super Bowl by sailing the Goodyear blimp into the huge crowd and raining 200,000 steel darts on the spectators” (rottentomatoes.com). The reason Exploitation films often use real life events and subjects whereas Mainstream might not is that “exploitation films often exploited events that occurred in the news and were in the short term public consciousness that a major film studio may avoid due to length of time of producing a major film.” (Wikipedia: exploitation film) Tarantino’s almost exact use of a scene from this movie, that includes both exploitation and mainstream themes, is a way for him to pay homage to the genres, as well as to Frankenheimer’s blending different genres in one movie, which Tarantino seems to take much inspiration from.

Tarantino not only usurps from other directors’ movies, he also takes from his own films. In Kill Bill, Tarantino uses scenes from both Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. For example, Tarantino uses his trunk shot camera angle in Reservoir Dogs and Kill Bill, which can be seen below.
Tarantino also uses ideas from Pulp Fiction. He has confirmed in interviews that the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad was inspired from Fox Force Five, which is the Pilot Mia was in Pulp Fiction. He even uses similar scenes from Pulp Fiction. For example, he has close ups of Uma

Thurman’s lips in both movies.

These are just a few examples of how Tarantino uses scenes and ideas from his previous movies to make Kill Bill.

In conclusion, it is easy to see that Tarantino steals, or pays homage to many movies to make Kill Bill. It is visible in Spaghetti Westerns, like The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, to mainstream films, like Black Sunday, and even his own films, Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs. These are a few movies that Tarantino borrows from to make Kill Bill. Even though he has taken from many movies to create Kill Bill, he was still able to turn it into his own unique masterpiece.




Works Cited

Downey, Ryan J. What Made ‘Bill’ Kill: Quentin’ Blood-Spattered Rundown: Spaghetti Westerns, Blaxploitation and Kung-Fu flicks. Mtv.com, June 2004. http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1488333/06102004/story.jhtml

Haselbeck, Sebastian. Roberts, Pete. Kill Bill References Guide. The Quentin Tarantino Archives, May 2008. http://www.tarantino.info/wiki/index.php/Kill_Bill_References_Guide

Machiyama, Tomohiro. Quentin Tarantino Reveals Almost Everything that Inspired Kill Bill. Quentin Tarantino: The Film Geek Files. 2005, Plexus, London. (172-178).

Rose, Steve. Guardian Unlimited. Found: Where Tarantino Gets His Ideas. Guardian Unlimited, April 2004. http://film.guardian.co.uk/

Rotten Tomatoes, Black Sunday (1976)
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1002526-%09black_sunday/

Wikipedia, Black Sunday (1977 film) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sunday_%281977_film%29

Wikipedia, Exploitation film. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploitation_film

Wikipedia, Western (genre) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_film