Snow Red

Lady Snowblood (1973) is a classic revenge movie. I don’t think it was the first one, but it looks really modern.

It starts in a Tokyo women’s prison. A prisoner is giving birth and dying. As she dies, she asks her baby to get revenge for her. She and her husband and young son come to a town to teach school, and the crooks in town kill them and rape her. She goes to a monk for martial arts training and he declares that she must be no longer a woman, but a demon of revenge. However, she is arrested after she kills the first of her tormentors. So now her daughter must take over.

The style includes some over-the-top lighting and stylized violence - sprays of blood in the snow. There are other tricks, like introducing the list of Lady Snowblood’s targets in wanted poster style. No surprise that Quentin Tarantino stole a ton of it for Kill Bill.

For example, he used the theme song, which is an incongruously bouncy jazz-pop number. It shows up at odd times and suddenly cuts out to silence. It’s an odd effect, but it works.