• 修羅雪姫 (Lady Snowblood)

3/5/23 (Sun)

Fujita Toshiya’s 1973 manga-based exploitation flick is translated as Lady Snowblood, an interesting translation of the original Shura Yukihime or Demigod Lady Snow. (The Japanese title is a takeoff on the fairy tale Shira Yukihime or Snow White. Snow Blood is a pretty lame attempt at preserving the pun.)

A woman is raped at the hands of a brutal gang, which also murdered her husband and son. She killed one of the villains but was consequently imprisoned for life for the murder, preventing her from completing the vendetta. She manages to get pregnant by having sex with random prison guards. After a difficult birth inside the prison, her dying wishes are that the child, who she calls Yuki (snow) because of the snowfall outside, be raised to kill the four remaining villains and pledges to imbue her vengeful spirit into the infant.

The title character is thus literally destined from birth to be a female assassin. After a childhood of intense training by a no-nonsense priest (veteran Nishimura Ko), the 20-year-old Yuki sets out to find the killers. She tracks down each of the offenders and kill them in highly creative, stomach-churning ways, the best being when she slashes a woman so fiercely that the bottom half of the victim’s body simply falls off. She is a comic-strip character in every way with little evident emotion other than her grim determination to realize her goal. That does not involve feminine wiles or emotional manipulation; she’s a straightforward killer. The appearance of a young reporter seems to open up the possibility of a love story, and she does have a moment of reflection at the end when she must choose whether to sacrifice him in order to kill the main villain. But overall she is one dimension short of a manga.

The entire film is done in comic-book style with brash colors, dramatic lighting, vivid sets, sadistically evil characters, and bold staging. It even uses panels from the original manga to illustrate some parts of the story. When Yuki stabs her victims, which is often, blood comes spurting out of their veins, covering everything around them – clothing, river, faces – in a garish red. The final villain, played with gusto by Okada Eiji (how did they convince him to do this schlock?), is like a walking cartoon. But the over-the-top style is done so shamelessly that it actually works.

Kaji Meiko, who was already famous as a vengeful woman in the Scorpion series, brings real life to Yuki. She has a steely gaze that graces plenty of close-ups and a body that seems wound to explode at any moment. The role is hardly a stretch in terms of acting ability, but she made it work by sheer force of personality. The film could easily have tipped into parody, but her seriousness keeps it all together.

If you’ve got to film a manga, this outlandish approach is one way to do it. It reminds me of the old Batman series without the camp. Enjoyable, though I’m in no rush to see the sequel.