“I was acting like a mad bitch in heat”, and those were her words not mine.  This is how Sayo (Miyoko Akaza) describes her behavior while behind bars in the 1973 Toho classic ‘Lady Snowblood’.  This film recently came to some light as Quentin Tarantino mentioned it as one of his many influences in his career, particularly with ‘Kill Bill’.  Ah but where does homage become ripping off?  One must question QT on this as he did lift quite a few elements from this classic and infuse it into his own works, despite the fact proper credit was given.

The film opens with Yuki Kashima, aka Lady Snowblood (Meiko Kaji), demurely walking in the snow dressed sweetly in a white kimono with her umbrella in hand.   She stops at a heavily guarded rickshaw housing an important diplomat and despite their urgent request for her to step aside, she does not.  She simply unsheathes her blade from her wagasa and proceeds to slice everyone into bloody, arterial spraying bits.  She saves the worst of her carnage for the diplomat in the Rickshaw who for the life of him can’t imagine why this pretty young thing is killing his ass.

You see what had happened was this cat was part of vicious crew five from back in the day who murdered her father, older brother, and brutally gang raped her mother, Sayo.  The deal about it though is that all of this all happened before Yuki was even born.  One of the vicious gang members keeps Sayo around as a sex slave, which is probably a bad idea after you’ve gang raped somebody and murdered her whole family.  As it would stand to reason, first chance she gets Sayo slices dude to death, but is caught before she can finish her revenge on the rest of the crew and is sent to prison.  So what’s a girl, with revenge on her mind, but locked away for the rest of

natural life gonna do?  Why she’s going to screw every single guard in the joint until one of them manages to knock her up so she can birth a son to finish the job she started. Duh.

Sayo gave explicit instructions to the women in the jail tending to the birth of what ended up being a daughter.  She is here for one reason and one reason only and this is for revenge.  Yuki is born of the netherworlds and known as Lady Snowblood because, now dig this, because the snow that cleanses the netherworlds in not white but fiery red.  Okay.  Baby Yuki is then sent off to a brutal martial arts instructor who raises this child, who we are told ain’t even human because she’s from, well, a demon of the netherworlds.  The training is ridiculous, tough, brutal but effective and by the time Yuki turns twenty-something she has some serious killin’ to do and the skills to get it done.

Soon word gets out that some crazy fool is slicing up people and it catches the attention of a local author Ryurei Asio (Toshio Kurasawa) who has begun writing novels on the Legend of Snowblood.  It seems that these two may have a little love thing brewing, but it cannot be because Snowblood is not allowed to feel, not allowed to love, not allowed to hate, and not allowed to care.  She is only allowed to execute her plan of revenge.  I guess you can tell there is a theme here.

‘Lady Snowblood’ is truly a classic in every sense of the word.  The vibrant color palette used by the late director Toshia Fujita would indicate to me a happy joyful time, but it’s simply meant to offset the brutality of pretty much everyone involved.  Rest assured if you see bright white snow it will soon be saturated with even brighter red blood.  The action sequences were well shot and staged with the classic use of slow motion that most of us are familiar with in these kinds of films.  Meiko Kaji is simply phenomenal as Lady Snowblood, considering that she has pretty much one overriding emotion.  Despite that, Kaji manages to infuse Snowblood with a real sense of tragedy.  Sure she’s passionate about finishing her task, and practically robotic in her task, but behind her constant scowl there is sense that she would have something more for her life if it was possible.  But from her vantage point, it can never be. 

‘Lady Snowblood’ served as a launching point for the modern Japanese ‘badass bitch’ films such as Love and Fury, (the awful) Lady Ninja and even more recent fare such as ‘The Princess Blade’.  But none of those films, including Tarantino’s ‘Kill Bill’ have yet to rise to brutality and poignancy of this all-time classic.