Try this for range: cannibalism, castration, decapitation, dismemberment, electrocution, hanging, massacres, pedophilia, slashings and lots and lots of torture.

"Blood for blood, and by the gallons," vows Mickey Rourke's vengeful character, Marv, in what proves to be no exaggeration.

The film's release by Miramax's Dimension Films, the genre label started by Bob Weinstein, comes at a time when Mr. Weinstein and his brother Harvey are ending their relationship with The Walt Disney Company and when Disney is decidedly reemphasizing movies geared for children and families in its overall portfolio.

But the family-friendly entertainment company says it is hardly turning its back on the extremely violent fare that helped make the Weinsteins and their protégés Mr. Tarantino and Mr. Rodriguez famous. Dick Cook, the Disney studio chairman who will choose a new Miramax chief sometime between now and July, said he would not handcuff the post-Weinstein Miramax from making similarly violent pictures.

The makers of "Sin City," which is based on the noir-to-the-nth-degree comics - or, more aptly, the graphic novels - of Frank Miller, say that the nonstop violence was hardly the point of the exercise.

For Mr. Rodriguez, whose earlier bloodbaths include "From Dusk Till Dawn," (!!!) "El Mariachi" (!!!!)and "Desperado" (shrug) - he is also the creator of the "Spy Kids"  (n/a) franchise - the point was to render Mr. Miller's books more faithfully than any comic has ever been on screen, using the latest digital technology to transport viewers into the comic books' world.

"If you look at the original books, it's taken right off the pages," Mr. Rodriguez said at the party after the film's premiere here Monday night. "Those books always hit me. And I didn't want to go back and rethink it too much, because it never bothered me before - they were so stylized and so abstract. I mean, when you see the white blood gushing - that's pretty straight from the book."