Movies like Kill Bill: Vol. 1

Why it's similar — Tarantino's own four-hour re-cut combines Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 into the single Eastwood-length spaghetti-western the original screenplay was always built to be. The Whole Bloody Affair restores the House of Blue Leaves sequence to colour, fixes the chapter rhythm across both volumes, and gives the franchise's withheld reveal its intended single-film payoff. The defining viewing for anyone who liked Vol. 1.

Why it's similar — Robert Houston's English-dub re-cut of the Lone Wolf and Cub franchise is the specific seventies grindhouse object Vol. 1 most directly imitates: a Japanese chambara revenge story with a mother-and-child centre, a synth score, and a willingness to stage feudal-era choreography as pop-art tableau. Tarantino cites it inside the franchise — Vol. 2's bedtime-story scene uses Shogun Assassin's actual audio — and the influence runs deep through Vol. 1's tonal grammar.

Why it's similar — Sam Firstenberg's Cannon Films chambara — Sho Kosugi as a ninja master crossing the Pacific to a smashed family — is the eighties American B-movie strand Tarantino is also working from, less elegant than the seventies samurai canon but louder, gorier, and more willing to stage one duel after another. Vol. 1 borrows the Cannon-era pacing for its hospital-corridor scenes and its garden duel.

Why it's similar — Daniel Zirilli's Luke Goss vehicle is a contemporary lower-budget descendant of Vol. 1's structural argument: a competent person works a list of targets in the wake of a loss the genre has refused to put off-screen. The pleasure is recognising the bones of the Kill Bill grammar inside a much smaller production, and seeing what the form survives at one-tenth the budget.

Why it's similar — Mark L. Lester's Dolph Lundgren / Brandon Lee buddy-yakuza picture is the early-nineties LA crime-and-katana register Vol. 1 quietly draws on for its O-Ren chapters. Both films treat a Tokyo organised-crime world as the source of a particular kind of stylised choreography that Hollywood action cinema does not, by default, have its own grammar for.