"I don't think anybody is ready for how good "Kill Bill" is going to be," says its star, David Carradine. "I think it's just gonna explode."

Sat on a yacht, in harbour at an overcast Cannes (I know, poor me), we're discussing his work on Quentin Tarantino's chop-socky magnum opus - undoubtedly the year's most keenly anticipated "Rings"-free, "Matrix"-less feature.

The veteran B-movie legend is actually in town to promote "Blaxploitation", a rap actioner set to lens with French muso-directors Kader Ayd and Karim Abbou. "We're going to have a lot of actual rap stars in the movie," he drawls. "I can't say who or they'll kill me, but one of the rappers has to be a white guy. And there aren't too many of them..."

Whether or not he does end up trading rhymes and reason with Eminem, the silver-haired hero of TV classic Kung Fu should prepare for a spell in the spotlight. Since his last high(ish) profile role, in "Bird on a Wire" (1990), he's cut a cult figure in TV and straight-to-retail features, and is set for the now traditional Tarantino-championed career revival (as the motormouth managed for John Travolta and Pam Grier with "Pulp Fiction" and "Jackie Brown").

""Kill Bill" is some of my best work," says Carradine. "The other thing is, for the first time for a large audience, I'm not doing an accent or a funny walk or pretending to be somebody else. It was written, really, around me."

The 66-year-old met Tarantino at the Toronto Film Festival in 1996, and they immediately sparked, with the director insisting the movie they made together had "to be a home run". Six years later, Tarantino was taking items of clothing and artwork from the star's house because "he just wanted the character [he was creating] to be as much like me as possible".

"We wrote a little bit of it, I say just a little bit because Quentin is the author," he continues. "We'd smoke a cigar in the evening and talk and talk and talk, and a week later there's a rewrite and it has that conversation in it. I talk endlessly. Basically I'm doing the Samuel L Jackson part in this movie. I'm just talking my head off, in between killing people."

Carradine's character (at one point to be played by Warren Beatty) is pursued by Uma Thurman's vengeful 'Bride', the woman he betrayed and left for dead when leader of a gang of international assassins, now mostly retired.

Thurman is, he insists, the real star: "It's really Uma's picture. Quentin said, "I am Ernst Lubitsch [surely Josef von Sternberg? - Ed.] and she is my Marlene Dietrich, and I intend to make movies with her for my whole life." That's what he wants to do. It's very much her movie, he's showcasing her, and she's brilliant."

Not that "Bill" doesn't have his highlights, including a "kung fu swordfight" with real-life kickboxing champion Michael Jai White, and "the end of the movie. I can't tell you too much about it, but there's a long sequence between Uma and me that is like a love scene, except at the end of it we have a fight. That's probably the sweetest moment."

As for the rumour that "Kill Bill" will be split into two movies "if Quentin ever gets out of the editing room", Carradine believes it to be a "radical and wonderful idea", but not something he's heard from the director himself. A source at Miramax, meanwhile, debunks it, saying "Kill Bill" will be one movie, but presented in "three distinct segments".

Whatever that means, Carradine clearly relished the opportunity to blend kung fu, samurai and spaghetti western aspects into one picture: a mind-popping cornucopia of east meets west. "Which is my mystique, right? It was a joy. It was a gift."