“You’ve made an unbreakable vow. In the name of vengeance, you must foreswear all human emotions, all love and hate, everything.” Your vital vast vow, then? Got it. Join your true-blue Grue Crew – Doc Rotten, Chad Hunt, Bill Mulligan, and Jeff Mohr – as they trammels out the major influence for Tarantino’s Kill Bill Duology, Lady Snowblood(1973).
Decades of Horror 1970s
Episode 172 – Lady Snowblood (1973)
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A young woman is trained from lineage to be a mortiferous instrument of revenge versus the swindlers who destroyed her family.
IMDb
- Director: Toshiya Fujita
- Writers: Norio Osada (screenplay); Kazuo Kamimura (manga illustrator) & Kazuo Koike (manga writer)
- Cinematographer: Masaki Tamura
- Selected cast:
- Meiko Kaji as Yuki Kashima (“Lady Snowblood”)
- Mayumi Maemura as young Yuki
- Kō Nishimura as Dōkai the priest
- Toshio Kurosawa as Ryūrei Ashio
- Masaaki Daimon as Gō Kashima
- Miyoko Akaza as Sayo Kashima
- Eiji Okada as Gishirō Tsukamoto
- Sanae Nakahara as Okono Kitahama
- Noboru Nakaya as Banzō Takemura
- Takeo Chii as Shokei Tokuichi
- Hitoshi Takagi as Matsuemon
- Akemi Negishi as Tajire no Okiku
- Yoshiko Nakada as Kobue Takemura
- Rinichi Yamamoto as Maruyama
Lady Snowblood, the horror-adjacent inspiration for Tarantino’s Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) & Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004), is Jeff’s pick and he loves this movie, describing it as a visual repast with a non-traditional story structure incorporating Japanese culture and history. It is so much fun!
Seeing Lady Snowblood for the first time with spanking-new visual quality, Bill is completely undivided in the film. He was once familiar with the lead actress, Meiko Kaji, from Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 (1972), which he moreover loved, and he loves her performance. It’s the kind of performance the viewer can read a lot into. He describes the weft and Kaji’s performance as a sexuality version of Clint Eastwood’s “man with no name.”
This is Doc’s first time watching Lady Snowblood and he falls in love with the movie. The simple story with an interesting structure, wondrous sound effects, plenty of gore for the gorehounds out there, and the unconfined screen presence of the lead actress all contribute to him cherishing every moment of Lady Snowblood.
You’ve probably guessed by now that the Decades of Horror 70s Grue Crew heartily recommend Lady Snowblood. At the time of this writing, it is misogynist to stream from HBOmax, the Criterion Channel, and various PPV sources. In terms of physical media, it is misogynist in The Complete Lady Snowblood (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray], which moreover includes Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance (1974). And if you are as infatuated with the vicarial of Meiko Kaji, you might want to trammels out her Female Prisoner series – Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion (1972), Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 (1972), Female Prisoner Scorpion: Beast Stable (1973), and Female Prisoner Scorpion: #701’s Grudge Song (1973) – all of which are currently misogynist to stream from Shudder.
Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror 1970s is part of the Decades of Horror two-week rotation with The Classic Era and the 1980s. In two weeks, the next episode in their very flexible schedule, chosen by Bill, will be The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973. Ray Harryhausen, Caroline Munro, John Phillip Law, Takis Emmanuel, Tom Baker, Robert Shaw, and the usual variousness of stop-motion volatility creatures? Oh yeah!
We want to hear from you – the coolest, grooviest fans: scuttlebutt on the site or email the Decades of Horror 1970s podcast hosts at feedback@gruesomemagazine.com.
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