Lady Snowblood

From The Deuce

Available DVDs Press Kit

Also Known As

• Original Title: Shurayuki-hime

Main Details

• Released in 1973
• Colour / B&W
• 97 min
• Production Co: Toho

Cast and Crew

• Directed by Toshiya Fujita
• Music by Masaaki Hirao
• Cinematography by Masaki Tamura
• Based on Manga by Kazuo Koike
• Starring Meiko Kaji, Toshio Kurosawa, Masaaki Daimon, Miyoko Akaza, Ko Nishimura, Noboru Nakaya.

Film Review

Yuki's (Meiko Kaji) father gets killed by four cold-blooded assassins, but her mother survives. In pain and because she is so full of anger, she sleeps with one bad and stinky guy after another and gets raped a hundred times till she gets pregnent. She wants to get pregnant, because she wants to have a child to get revenge on the four bastards who killed her husband. After Yuki is born, her mother dies. Yuki gets trained by a Samurai teacher and has to fight from her early childhood. Instead of playing like other kids, she gets tortured by her master. After years of practicing and only thinking of revenge, she gets her way. She searches for the four assassins and wants to kill them all. Some of them are no big deal. A quick fight, Yuki wins, and she gets her bloody revenge. Some of them are also very hard to kill and strange things happen when Yuki sees one of her targets hanging on a rope. Finally, the last target on her list has to die. But instead of being happy, we can see how Yuki was psychologically tortured by these deaths. She is not a normal woman.

Lady Snowblood was one of the biggest influences for Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse epic Kill Bill (2003-2004), its also a masterpiece itself. Lady Snowblood features some bloody fights and they are really bloody. You get big blood fountains spraying into the faces of the protagonists. You see sliced off arms and legs and many more brutal things. These are some of the greatest fight sequences in Japanese samurai cinema. Yuki is an awesome fighter and how she slices the villains with her sword is really brilliant to see. Not because its brutal and gory, more because its artisticly shown. The spraying blood and the contrast of the white clothes and the face of Yuki makes it very beautiful. The music is great too. Perhaps some of you know the track "The Flower of Carnage" from Tarantino's Kill Bill, because originally its from this film! Meiko Kaji sung this very slow paced and bluesy theme for Lady Snowblood. It really fits perfectly into the whole scenario of the movie.

The acting here is brilliant. I never could imagine that a Japanese underground movie could have been so well played. Meiko Kaji is absolutely awesome. The contrast of Yuki's sweet face and the carnage in the movie is really the clue in Fujita's movie. Showing how that kind of blood bath can be done by such a pretty girl. I especially enjoyed the last assassin on Yuki's list. His acting was a bit strange and he also looks weird, but casting this actor was perfect.

If you enjoy bloody samurai movies with a non-linear storyline, great acting and slow paced music, this one's for you! Lady Snowblood is perhaps the most beautiful, unique and artistic Samurai movie ever made.

Reviewed by Ezekial - 8/21/07