Adapted from the cult manga by Kazuo Koike and Kazuo Kamimura, Lady Snowblood is one of the great revenge films of 1970s Japanese cinema. Starring the iconic Meiko Kaji—who had already established herself as a major figure in Japanese exploitation cinema thanks to her role as Sasori in the early films of the Female Prisoner Scorpion series—the film blends tragedy, stylized violence, melodrama, and graphic bursts of violence into a work that is as elegant as it is bloody. Behind its now-legendary imagery, Lady Snowblood tells, above all, the story of a body shaped for a single mission: to avenge a family destroyed even before she was born. Its influence has spanned decades, eventually becoming one of the major inspirations for Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill.
