t's no surprise that Quentin Tarantino likes his movies gory. Go back to 1992's Reservoir Dogs and 1994's Pulp Fiction if you need a refresher course.

  As Tarantino himself is on the record as saying: "I have no more problem with violence in movies than I do with dance or subtitles or slapstick."

   Jump to Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Tarantino's back to what he does best. Film critic Roger Ebert said of him: "Here's a director who's been let loose inside the toy store and wants to play all night." But Tarantino never plays nice. The Kill Bill series is a blood-fest in the style of the martial arts movies so dear to his heart.

  Tarantino says that he first conceived of the Kill Bill concept while talking to Thurman during the filming of Pulp Fiction. Years later he called the actor up and said: "It's time to kill Bill."

  But first Tarantino had to wait for his chosen lead's 

actors
Uma Thurman
Michael Madsen
David Carradine
Daryl Hannah
Julie Dreyfus

director
Quentin Tarantino

locations
Los Angeles
Tokyo
Beijing
Austin, Texas

outtake
Tarantino wrote the role of Sophie Fatale especially for actress Julie Dreyfus after meeting her at the Toronto International Film Festival.

pregnancy to come to term. "I've said this is my grindhouse movie," Tarantino explains. "But it's also my Josef Von Sternberg movie. If you're Josef Von Sternberg and you're about to start shooting Morocco in 1930 and Marlene Dietrich gets pregnant, what do you do? Do you go ahead and make the movie with someone else? Of course not. You wait for Dietrich. And film history will thank you."

  Kill Bill Vol. 1 featured Uma Thurman as a member of the elite Deadly Viper Assassination Squad whose wedding day is shot up by members of the squad she once belonged to. Although shot in the head and left for dead, the pregnant Bride is not terminally dispatched in the bloodbath but, instead, goes into a coma for a number of years. When she wakes up, she has only one thing on her mind � revenge.

  With two of the squad's members dispatched in various gruesome ways in Vol. 1, only three remain � Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah), Budd (Michael Madsen) and, of course, Bill (David Carradine), the father of the Bride's child.

  While the first film had Asian influences, the second has numerous "Spaghetti Western" references as the Bride encounters Budd in Texas and tracks Bill to Mexico. And Bill, who barely appeared in Vol. 1, looms large in Vol. 2 "which is really all about the confrontation between the two of them," says Tarantino.

� Steve Maryk