Fails the Bechdel test

Kill Bill: Vol. 1

Name: Kill Bill: Vol. 1
Released: 2003

2003. Directed by Quentin Tarantino, written by Quentin Tarantino and Uma Thurman.

The Bechdel test

Bechdel score

2 / 3

Fails

Yes 1. At least two women
12 women characters. 7 of them speak.
Yes 2. Who talk to each other
Women do talk to each other.
No 3. About something besides a man
Every conversation between women that our parser found mentions a man.

Second opinion

Disagree bechdeltest.com readers give it 3 out of 3.

The film

Four years after taking a bullet in the head at her own wedding, The Bride emerges from a coma and decides it's time for payback... with a vengeance. Having been gunned down by her former boss Bill and his deadly squad of international assassins, it's a kill-or-be-killed fight she didn't start, but is determined to finish.

Released: 10 Oct 2003
Genres: Action, Crime, Thriller
Rated: R
IMDb: 8.2 / 10
Metascore: 69 / 100
Awards: Nominated for 5 BAFTA Awards. 30 wins & 103 nominations total
Elsewhere: View on IMDb

Starring, by lines spoken

Women
Men
Not in the cast list
Bigger name, more lines

The Bride 161 lines, woman
Sushi Chef 29 lines, man
Yuki 24 lines, woman
0-Ren 21 lines, woman
Hanzo 18 lines, man
Nurse Owens 18 lines, woman
Sofie 18 lines, woman
Mr. Barrel 13 lines, man
O-Ren 13 lines, woman
Vernita 13 lines, woman

Full cast, 38 people

Uma Thurman as The Bride
Lucy Liu as O-Ren Ishii
Vivica A. Fox as Vernita Green
Daryl Hannah as Elle Driver
David Carradine as Bill
Michael Madsen as Budd
Julie Dreyfus as Sofie Fatale
Chiaki Kuriyama as Gogo Yubari
Sonny Chiba as Hattori Hanzo
Gordon Liu Chia-hui as Johnny Mo
Michael Parks as Earl McGraw
Michael Bowen as Buck
Jun Kunimura as Boss Tanaka
Kenji Ohba as Bald Guy (Sushi Shop)
Yuki Kazamatsuri as Proprietor
James Parks as Edgar McGraw
Sakichi Sato as Charlie Brown
Jonathan Loughran as Trucker
Yoshiyuki Morishita as Tokyo Business Man
Tetsuro Shimaguchi as Crazy 88 #1 (Miki)
Kazuki Kitamura as Crazy 88 #2
Yoji Tanaka as Crazy 88 #3
Issey Takahashi as Crazy 88 #4
So Yamanaka as Crazy 88 #5
Juri Manase as Crazy 88 #6 (Girl)
Akaji Maro as Boss Ozawah
Goro Daimon as Boss Honda
Shun Sugata as Boss Benta
Zhang Jinzhan as Boss Orgami
Hu Xiaohui as Young 88 (Spanked Boy)
Ambrosia Kelley as Nikki Bell
Sachiko Fujii as The 5, 6, 7, 8's
Yoshiko Yamaguchi as The 5, 6, 7, 8's
Ronnie Yoshiko Fujiyama as The 5, 6, 7, 8's
Shu Lan Tuan as Okinawa Airline Ticket Agent
Ai Maeda as O-Ren (anime sequence) (voice)
Naomi Kusumi as Boss Matsumoto (anime sequence) (voice)
Hikaru Midorikawa as Pretty Riki (anime sequence) (voice)

Who talks, scene by scene

Lines of dialogue in every 1 scene, start to finish. Women above the line, men below. 10% of lines come from characters we couldn't match to the cast list and aren't shown.

Women

Men

Scene 1 Scene 36

Hover, tap or tab to a bar to see those scenes: where they happen and who's talking.

Show the numbers

Scenes	Women's lines	Men's lines
1 to 1	13	4
2 to 2	1	0
3 to 3	49	0
4 to 4	1	0
5 to 5	1	0
6 to 6	0	0
7 to 7	8	0
8 to 8	1	0
9 to 9	2	0
10 to 10	1	7
11 to 11	0	0
12 to 12	0	0
13 to 13	6	1
14 to 14	0	0
15 to 15	9	0
16 to 16	5	0
17 to 17	0	0
18 to 18	0	0
19 to 19	0	0
20 to 20	0	0
21 to 21	0	0
22 to 22	0	0
23 to 23	0	0
24 to 24	0	0
25 to 25	26	29
26 to 26	9	18
27 to 27	14	4
28 to 28	0	0
29 to 29	1	0
30 to 30	3	0
31 to 31	37	13
32 to 32	40	2
33 to 33	44	5
34 to 34	27	0
35 to 35	4	0
36 to 36	5	0

The evidence

Straight from the script
Counted from the script and the credits

Tap an exhibit to open it.

Exhibit A: every 100 lines

Out of every 100 lines with a known speaker, 79 are women's.

307 lines from women, 83 from men.

Women
Men

Exhibit B: who's in it

12 women and 23 men in the cast. 7 women and 6 men from it get lines.

Characters

With lines

Women
Men

Exhibit C: who gets heard

A woman speaks the first line. The longest stretch with no woman speaking runs 20 lines.

Every line of dialogue, first to last

First line by a woman
Longest stretch with no woman speaking

Words spoken

Women speak 79% of the words (3,628), men 21% (949).

Exhibit D: the test the other way

Run the other way, for men, the film scores 1 out of 3.

Conversations between two named characters

Two women

Two men

Exhibit E: behind the camera

5 of the 15 people in these jobs are women. Across the whole crew, 26% of the people whose gender is listed are women.

Directed by: Quentin Tarantino (man)
Written by: Quentin Tarantino (man)
Produced by: Lawrence Bender (man), Katsuji Morishita (man)
Shot by: Robert Richardson (man)
Edited by: Sally Menke (woman)
Music by: RZA (man)
Production design by: David Wasco (man), Yohei Taneda (man)
Costumes by: Catherine Marie Thomas (woman), Kumiko Ogawa (woman), Alexander AD (gender not listed), Mark Zunino (gender not listed)
Cast by: Koko Maeda (woman), Johanna Ray (woman)