TNT’s TV Premiere of Kill Bill
Vol. 1 Premieres Friday, Sept. 15, at 8 p.m. (ET/PT);
Vol. 2 Premieres Saturday, Sept. 16, at 8 p.m. (ET/PT)

Part kung-fu revenge drama, part spaghetti western, part samurai film, part exploitation pic: Quentin Tarantino’s stylistic, no-holds-barred, genre-blending pastiche – Kill Bill – will make its network television premiere on TNT this September. The two-part dramatic thriller stars Uma Thurman and features Viveca A. Fox, Lucy Liu, Michael Madsen and Daryl Hannah, with David Carradine giving a critically acclaimed performance in the title role. The action-packed story of revenge will kick off Friday, Sept. 15, at 8 p.m. (ET/PT) with 2003’s Kill Bill Vol. 1, followed Saturday, Sept. 16, at 8 p.m. (ET/PT) by 2004’s Kill Bill Vol. 2.

Kill Bill tells the story of The Bride, (Thurman) a woman whose fiancé and wedding party are brutally murdered by her former associates, members of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (Fox, Liu, Madsen and Hannah). Seeking revenge, she hunts them down, one by one, before finally confronting their notorious leader, Bill (Carradine), who also happens to be her former lover.

In Kill Bill, Tarantino (seen in image right with Thurman) pays homage to “grindhouse cinema,” a variety of genres made popular when they played in rundown movie houses in the 1960s and ‘70s. The genres generally associated with grindhouse cinema include poorly dubbed kung-fu films from Hong Kong, samurai films and anime from Japan, spaghetti westerns and splatter horror films from Italy and blaxploitation films from the United States, to name a few. Tarantino honors each of these genres and references or borrows from well over 100 movies, including such disparate titles as Once Upon a Time in the West, Citizen Kane, Black Sunday, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Yojimbo. His main story, however, is based primarily on the Japanese Lady Snowblood movies and Francois Truffaut’s French thriller The Bride Wore Black.

Kill Bill was originally intended to be one epic film, but Tarantino and the executives at Miramax, which produced and released the film, decided to break it up into two separate volumes, which was more in keeping with the brevity and multi-part stories inherent in many grindhouse films. Also, as with other Tarantino films, the Kill Bill movies are broken down into separate chapters, some of which are shown out of order.

The Kill Bill movies are packed with actors who have made names for themselves in the genres Tarantino is celebrating: kung-fu film star Gordon Liu Chia-hui, who plays dual roles as Johnny Mo, a bloodthirsty henchman, and Pai-Mei, an extremely demanding kung-fu teacher; Japanese legend Sonny Chiba, who plays Hattori Hanzo, a famous swordsman who has vowed to never make another instrument of death (Chiba also provided Kill Bill’s kenjitsu swordplay choreography; Michael Parks, who plays dual roles as the Texas sheriff investigating the crime against The Bride and as an old acquaintance of Bill’s who helps The Bride track him down; and Bo Svenson as a hapless minister. Other notable roles in the movie include Julie Dreyfus as a trilingual aid; Chiaki Kuriyama as a teenage girl with a vicious mean-streak; James Parks (Michael Parks’ son) as the sheriff’s not-too-bright son; Jun Kunimura as a hot-headed member of the yakuza; and, in an unbilled role, Samuel L. Jackson as a church organist.

In addition to the phenomenal talent appearing on-screen, Tarantino has also collected an impressive roster behind the camera, including kung-fu fight choreographer Yuen Wo Ping, whose work on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and the Matrix films has catapulted him to the top of his field; cinematographer Robert Richardson, who won Oscars® for his work on JFK and The Aviator; music by film director Robert Rodriguez and the Wu-Tang Clan’s the RZA; and an astonishing animated sequence by Production I.G., Japan’s leading anime studio.

TNT will present an encore of Kill Bill Vol. 1 Friday, Sept. 15, at 10:10 p.m. and an encore of Kill Bill Vol. 2 Saturday, Sept. 16, at 10:40 p.m. The two volumes will be shown back-to-back Sunday, Sept. 17, at 7 and 9:10 p.m., respectively; Thursday, Sept. 21, at 9 and 11:10 p.m.; and Sunday, Sept. 24, at 5 and 7:15 p.m. Both volumes will carry a TV-14 content rating for suggestive dialogue, language and violence.