David Carradine gone

Only his voice was used in the first Kill Bill movie, but his slow, precise and softly sinister tone matched with Tarantino's unique signature dialogue and visual powers of suggestion allowed David Carradine to be a bigger villain than he had been in all of his previous films combined. I would say that no movie in the history of cinema has an un-seen villain that hangs over a film so successfully as Kill Bill Vol. 1. You didn't need to see his face in the first chapter to know it was David Carradine, and the weight of his filmography in the Kung Fu/Martial Arts genre filled in the blank for us. It was a role several decades in the making, but truth be told we hadn't really seen anything till Vol. 2. In Kill Bill Vol. 2, the film is totally his. He owns it, just like Grier in Jackie Brown. Go back and watch it, he's only really in four scenes but the movie is ALL HIM. At 72, Carradine had a good number of roles still left in him before fate took him from this Earth today. Though his upcoming CV dangerously showed an actor who had tumbled back down to the fringes of the Hollywood ladder, just like fellow former Tarantino resurrections such as Robert Forster and Pam Grier. Would anyone really have seen Carradine's upcoming movie Stretch, where he was the only English speaking actor? I can't even find an IMDB listing for the movie right now. How many of his over 200 performance listings on said site have I actually seen? Not too many - but Caradine starred in so many STV, even STV erotic thrillers in the 9o's, even the most die hard fan would have found it hard to stay loyal. I know that I loved the original Death Race 2000, his creation of Frankenstein is outrageous. Obviously Kung Fu, Boxcar Bertha and of course the magnificent Western The Long Riders where the Carradine's played the Youngers and Keach's played the James Gang. I will miss Carradine, even if I haven't seen him act post-Kill Bill. He also has the credit of not only having one of my favourite screen exits in film but also my hands-down favourite use of the word "cunt" in a major Hollywood picture...