Twenty years ago today, Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill was released. Technically, it was a tale so nice they had to break it in half and release it twice.

Kill Bill: Volume 1 is a 2003 American martial arts film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. It stars Uma Thurman as the Bride, a former assassin who swears revenge on a group of assassins (Lucy Liu, Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah, and Vivica A. Fox) and their leader, Bill (David Carradine), who tried to kill her and her unborn child. Her journey takes her to Tokyo, where she battles the yakuza.

Tarantino conceived Kill Bill as an homage to the 1973 film Lady Snowblood, grindhouse cinema, martial arts films, samurai cinema, blaxploitation and spaghetti Westerns. It features an anime sequence by Production I.G. Volume 1 is the first of two Kill Bill films made in a single production. They were planned as a single release, which Tarantino split into two films to avoid having to cut scenes. Volume 2 was released six months later.