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A young woman (Meiko Kaji), trained from childhood as an assassin and hell-bent on revenge for her father's murder and her mother's rape, hacks and slashes her way to gory satisfaction. Rampant with inventive violence and spectacularly choreographed swordplay, Toshiya Fujita's pair of influential cult classics Lady Snowblood and Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance, set in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Japan, respectively, are bloody, beautiful extravaganzas composed of one elegant widescreen composition after another. The first Lady Snowblood was a major inspiration for Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill saga, and both of Fujita's films remain cornerstones of Asian action cinema.
Lady Snowblood
Gory revenge is raised to the level of visual poetry in Toshiya Fujita's stunning Lady Snowblood. A major inspiration for Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill saga, this endlessly inventive film, set in late nineteenth-century Japan, charts the single-minded path of vengeance taken by a young woman (Meiko Kaji) whose parents were the unfortunate victims of a gang of brutal criminals. Fujita creates a wildly entertaining action film of remarkable craft, an effortless balancing act between beauty and violence.
Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance
Meiko Kaji returns in Toshiya Fujita's invigorating sequel to his own cult hit Lady Snowblood. Our furious heroine is captured by the authorities and sentenced to death for the various killings she has committed; however, she is offered a chance of escape—if she carries out dangerous orders for the government. More politically minded than the original, Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance is full of exciting plot turns and ingenious action sequences.
SPECIAL FEATURES
• New 2K digital restorations of both films, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks on the Blu-rays
• New interviews with Kazuo Koike, the writer of the manga on which the films are based, and screenwriter Norio Osada
• Trailers
• New English subtitle translations
• PLUS: An essay by critic Howard Hampton