Deadly Viper Assassination Squad
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The Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (or DVAS) is a fictional band of highly trained assassins in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill Volume 1 and Volume 2.
[edit] History
Bill and Budd are brothers who grew up without a father (although Esteban Vihaio, a pimp, acted as a father figure for a time). O-Ren Ishii was left an orphan after her parents were killed by Japanese crime boss Matsumoto for unknown reasons.[1] The origins of the other three assassins are not known.
They were, as their name suggests, an assassin squad, run and managed by Bill. He is known to have had romances, or at the least sexual relations, with Kiddo (who was his girlfriend and protégée at the time and whom he impregnated) and Elle Driver. It is implied (though not stated) that they were one of the most deadly teams on the planet, which would fit in both with the style of film, and the training regime and skills demonstrated. Although their name suggests that the members of the team are codenamed with viper's names, the black mamba and the California mountain snake do not belong to the viper-family; the black mamba is an elapid and the California mountain snake belongs to the colubrids.
At the time of The Bride's revenge, the group had largely disbanded. Vernita lives as a housewife with a daughter, O-Ren is running crime in Tokyo, Budd is a bar bouncer, Bill is shown mostly as a retired killer to whom Elle remains fanatically devoted (though probably as portrayed, self-interest comes first for her). The Bride has just recovered from a 4 year coma, which started when the others gate crashed her wedding rehearsal and killed the wedding party, but mistakenly left her alive. Bill delivered the coup de grâce in return for walking out on him. Their daughter is delivered whilst she is in coma, and is being looked after by Bill without her knowledge.
Although never explicitly said, it was widely held that Black Mamba was the most lethal and skilled of the DVAS after Bill himself, making her probably the deadliest woman on the planet. Many of them wielded katanas, and in the case of Bill and Budd, forged by Hattori Hanzō, an Okinawan sword maker of legendary standing, who came out of retirement to make his final masterpiece, The Bride's sword. Bill, The Bride and Elle Driver were trained by Pai Mei, a Chinese martial arts master later claimed to have been poisoned out of spite and revenge by Elle Driver. It is not stated whether the others received training from him as well. Besides their training in the martial arts, they were also fluent in several languages, well-versed in the use of firearms, and skilled in various assassination, espionage, surveillance and weapon combat techniques.
Green, Ishii and Bill are killed by Kiddo in her quest for revenge. Budd is killed, ironically, by a black mamba which Driver puts in a bag of money. It is unknown whether Driver survives; she is left blinded and locked up with the black mamba that killed Budd, ranting and screaming in an isolated desert trailer. At the end of the film, all the characters who have been killed have their names crossed out on Kiddo's list, but Elle's name instead has a question mark over the top of it, suggesting that she could still be alive.
[edit] Cultural references
The five assassins of the Deadly Viper Assassin Squad reference the Five Deadly Venoms, a group of five Hong Kong action actors employed by Run Run Shaw in many old Shaw Brothers martial arts films that were part of the inspiration for Kill Bill. The actors first worked together in a movie called The Five Deadly Venoms, and were referred to as such when seen in later movies together. In another Tarantino movie, Pulp Fiction, Mia Wallace (also played by Uma Thurman) states that she worked on a pilot episode of "Fox Force Five", which included five very different women with special talents that are similar to the talents of the DVAS. It was also mentioned in Pulp Fiction that her character was "the deadliest woman in the world with a knife", whereas in Kill Bill Vernita Green is described by The Bride as such. It is also of note that the list of names that Thurman's character makes in Kill Bill is titled "Death List Five".
[edit] Other
- While Sofie Fatale was not an official member of the DVAS, she was at least involved in their operations and was in personal contact with Bill (who is mentioned to have previously been her mentor).
- The DVAS are referenced in the science-fiction novel Glasshouse by Charles Stross. They are a business front for the revolutionary group known as the Linebarger Cats.
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