Tag: era: 1970s

Categories
extreme J-horror

Cartoons and Killer Pianos: A Review of “Hausu”

Obayashi Nobuhiko’s Hausu (House, 1977) is an assault on the senses. This is a movie designed to make the viewer say “what the…” Through a twisted plot, a barrage of visual effects and bizarre music choices, Obayashi creates an unforgettable horror film with touches of dark comedy throughout. Naturally the film contains plenty of violence, gore, and some nudity.

The basic plot of the film follows six school girls (Angel, Fantasy, Sweetie, Melody, Kung Fu, and Mac) on their summer vacation trip to the countryside. They plan to stay with Angel’s aunt. When they arrive at the aunt’s house they slowly learn things aren’t quite as they seem and they are one by one eliminated by the haunted house. The plot sounds like standard fare for a horror film. However, there is nothing typical about this film.

One cannot watch the screen for more than five seconds before something strange happens. Shots are often from atypical angles, seen through mirrors, with different coloured tints applied, and/or seen through special lens. The camera rarely stays in one place. Instead it constantly cuts, sometimes to a quick a dream sequence and then right back to the action.

Obayashi is especially creative with the death scenes. Superimposed images and video effects one might find in 1980s music videos are used heavily. Often the “killer” is a piece of furniture which becomes active and violent towards the girls including one memorable scene in which a piano eats Melody. There’s plenty of blood and severed limbs but it’s often not used to scare but for dark humour – a severed head of one of the girls taunts and laughs at another girl.

The characters are all named after their most distinctive traits. For example, Kung Fu is good at fighting and Mac (short for stomach) likes to eat. These extremely one-dimensional characters poke fun at typical horror film characters and are another source of humour for the film. Perhaps the biggest source of humour is the male teacher character Togo. Togo is supposed to join the girls on their trip but gets left behind and is constantly trying to catch up. His character is introduced as the handsome, responsible adult but what the viewer sees is a silly man with goofy sideburns. His scenes are especially cartoony (a trait which could be applied to the whole movie) – he trips downstairs and bounces around, complete with cartoon sound effects.

The music throughout the film complements this cartoon feel and contrasts the violent imagery. The main theme is a catchy, happy-sounding tune, completely atypical for the horror genre. The film also features a corny-sounding vocal pop song which is also unfit for the violence on screen. The main piano theme plays an important role in the plot as it is the song that Melody plays before she is eaten by the piano. The other characters can hear her playing the tune as they walk throughout the house but once she is attacked they start to hear discordant random piano notes. When they return to the piano room, they once again hear the happy piano tune, now being played by Melody`s floating severed fingers. The main theme is also featured in a bizarre duet between the aunt and her cat which is certainly a candidate for the scene least typical of the horror genre. The sound editing, much like the video editing, is maniac and inventive. Often a character`s line will be looped several times or brought back and played over top of a later scene. The effect subverts typical narrative structures and again draws out the cartoon nature of the film.

Obayashi was ahead of his time in his heavy use of effects and cartoonish atmosphere. Similar absurd humour achieved through those means can be seen in contemporary movies such as Kung Fu Hustle (Stephen Chow, 2004) and television such as Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! (2007-present). It`s clear that a lot of effort was put into making this film as fun and bizarre as possible. Hausu is a restless film that simultaneously leaves viewers scared, laughing, and scratching their heads.

Categories
action chambara/chanbara jidai-geki literary adaptations

“Lady Snowblood”

Lady Snowblood/Shurayuki-hime (1973) is director Fujita Toshiya’s filmic adaptation of a manga originally published in Weekly Playboy. The film transcribes the title and plot from the manga written by Koike Kazuo and illustrated by Kamimura Kazuo. Kaji Meiko, in the lead role brings to life Kashime Shurayuki (Shurayuki-hime). The film’s cast also includes Nishimura Ko as Priest Dōkai, Kurosawa Toshio as Ashio Ryūrei, Daimon as Kashima Gō, Akaza Miyoko as Kashima Sayo and Okada Eiji as Tsukamoto Gishirō.

The film is the story of a young woman, Shurayuki, on a mission to avenge a crime committed against her family.  The crime is conveyed via a flashback sequence depicting Gō Kashima with his wife Sayo and young son Shiro (Uchida Shinichi) taking a walk on an idyllic sun-filled day. In a sudden attack, Kashima and son are murdered. Sayo is spared her life, only to be raped by the aggressors later. The film opens in a women’s prison, where Sayo, having been arrested for killing one of her aggressors, lies in a cell giving birth to Shurayuki.

Conceived out of suffering, she is born into a far-from-reconciled tragedy. Shurayuki is literally born in a prison cell, the symbolic significance of which becomes obvious when her mother dies of complications from childbirth. Sayo’s dying words utter Shurayuki’s fate: “For me there are things left undone…So I must let this child wreak my vengeance for me”. As sure as her words are spoken, Shurayuki is raised by Priest Dōkai, who trains her to become an assassin.  Her physical training is largely in the art of sword-fighting. She also receives mental training, largely in the philosophy of filial piety and fulfilling one’s destiny. At the age of twenty, fully trained, she begins her hunt for the perpetrators of the crime.

A significant aspect of the film is the articulation of Shurayuki’s isolation. Rhetorical devices such as dialogue are one manner in which this is achieved. However, specifically filmic elements are also employed. For example, Kaji Meiko’s first on-screen appearance is a canted angle shot of the title character hurrying through snow. Noticeably, there is no one else in the shot with her.  As she walks out of the frame, there is a jump cut to the next scene. This time, Shurayuki approaches the camera, walking against a wall located along the left of the screen. This shot appears to convey that Shurayuki must sequester herself. Keeping close to the wall, face hidden behind an umbrella, one seems to experience her heightened sense of awareness. It is as though having been born for a very specific pre-destined purpose; Shurayuki exists within the vacuum of her vengeance duty.

Another significant stylistic element is the employment of self-reflexivity. The film refers to its source not only in the appropriation of the plot, but in the editing of the narrative as well. For example, the film consists of four chapters, which invokes a literary nuance. Further, the film is visually inter-cut with photomontages, manga images, and even moments of anime. What results is an interruption of the filmic narrative, which appears to function as an appeal to the plot’s origins in popular culture. As such, the film reveals that although it is seemingly of the jidai-geki genre, it is in fact being told in the present. This is not unlike the way a manga in its very form reveals its contemporary perspective.

The film is a must-see for any Quentin Tarantino fans; the most avid will likely have already seen it. The Kill Bill trilogy is based quite intimately on Lady Snowblood. In juxtaposition, the similarities between the two films reveal how truly avant-garde Fujita’s vision was.

Categories
kaidan

The Revolving Wheels of Burden: a review of Oshima’s “Empire of Passion” (1978)

Empire of Passion is a 1978 feature film directed by Oshima Nagisa. The film stars two impassioned lovers, Toyoji (Fuji Tatsuya) and Seki (Yoshiyuki) who endeavor to kill Seki’s husband, Gisaburo (Tamura Tahakiro) in an effort to be together. But when the ghost of Gisaburo begins to haunt Seki, her ability to stay resolute begins to dwindle. Exacerbated by the villager peoples’ incessant gossip, Seki loses control and begins to go mad with grief and anguish which threatens the exposition of her and her lover’s fatal secret.

Set in a distant Japanese village in the late 19th century, Empire of Passion explores the traditional Japanese kaidan or ghost story, imbued with Oshima’s own penchant for sex and violence. The film tells of the ruin of two peasants, Toyoji, an ex-soldier who falls vehemently in love with a married woman twenty-six years his senior, named Seki. Toyoji courts Seki who initially shows resistance against his sexual advances. The cunning and aggressive Toyoji eventually wins her affection and convinces Seki that they must kill her husband, the rickshaw driver Gisaburo, in order for their love to flourish. At first, the frightened Seki shows much horror and devastation at her young lover’s propositions but her own feelings of fear and uncertainty, probed by Toyoji’s vindictive manipulation, drive her to inevitable compliance. Seki hesitantly gives Gisaburo rounds of sake until he drinks himself into a deep drunken stupor. The two lovers take the opportune moment of vulnerability to suffocate Gisaburo by pulling a rope around his neck. The two lovers drag Gisaburo’s dead body across the snow and throw it down a deep well in the remote forest. Three years pass and the villagers start to speculate about Gisaburo’s whereabouts after he had not come home for the Bon Festival. Despite Seki’s efforts at appeasing the rumours by informing them that he has gone to work in Tokyo, gossip surfaces among the villagers, including Seki’s daughter Shin, regarding mysterious dreams of Gisaburo dying and asking neighbours for help. Seki begins to feel much guilt over her involvement in her husband’s murder. Toyoji also begins to raise suspicions in his young master after he is caught throwing leaves down the well repeatedly. Gisaburo makes repeated appearances to his wife. Looking pale and ghastly, he reaches out his glass sake cup to her without a word.  Unable to placate the restless soul of her husband, the hauntings deepen Seki’s guilt and shame to the point of desperation. Toyoji at first demands that Seki stay strong but when the police officer extends his stay in the village to investigate the sketchy disappearance of Gisaburo, both lovers’ will to elude the public plummets. Toyoji becomes increasingly agitated by the suspicions of his young master, driving him to commit more immutable acts of destruction. Furthermore, the love affair suffers under the suppression of their secret as they are both consumed by despair, fear and guilt. The only way they can escape from their heavy conscience is through sexual intimacy, sometimes violent and perverse.

The atmospheric effects and dramatic lighting in the film, coupled with the shrill musical score, work in conjunction to enhance the suspenseful unfolding of events in the film. The mountainous, rocky region where the murder takes place is fitting to the bone-chilling re-emergence of Gisaburo’s restless soul. His eyes and skin appear grey and pallid, expressionless but nonetheless petrifying. The cold, white light that shines down on Gisaburo’s pasty face mirrors the grey haziness of the harsh winter itself. The mist and steam that envelop the atmosphere obscures the view where the ghost of Gisaburo appears to Seki and insists she ride his rickshaw. Gisaburo goes offroad on his rickshaw, evidently having forgotten his way home.  The mist engulfs Seki, shrouding her view of Gisaburo. When he turns around to show his face, she sees his ghastly face emerge from the haze. She emits a shrill scream that echoes through the undisturbed forest. The vapor from her breath magnifies the intensity of the moment when she comes face to face with her avenging husband.

Some visual elements and dialogue are re-enacted throughout the film, suggesting a theme of circularity. Before Gisaburo makes direct contact with Seki, Seki witnesses Gisaburo’s rickshaw wheels spinning on their own. The camera pans into a view of the spinning wheels, which increases in speed as Seki’s feelings of dread worsen. Towards the end of the film, the couple makes an effort to console one another by living with together “like husband and wife” as they initially wished. Toyoji begins to recite the same lighthearted conversation he had had with Seki when he was courting her. At first Seki is amused and plays along until she is reminded of their painful secret and feelings of guilt overcome her to tears. The theme of circularity may suggest the inability of the lovers to overcome both their crime and burdensome conscience, as well as fear of their eventual demise. The theme of circularity manifested by the spinning wheels of Gisaburo’s rickshaw may also suggest the old maxim, “what goes around comes around.”

Some viewers may find the prevalence of sex and violence in the film disturbing or confusing. In some scenes, Oshima also seems eroticize sexual violence, which may be difficult to watch or interpret. The film definitely does not shy away from titillating and suspenseful themes, blending elements of horror through convincing make-up and atmospheric effects. Such dramatic devices make for a highly entertaining and genuinely eerie film, resonating in the viewer’s mind for days.

Categories
comedy drama, melodrama gendai-geki romance shomin-geki

The Road to True Love

The Yellow Handkerchief (Shiawase no kiiroi hankachi, 1977) is a film directed by Yamada Yoji. The lead male actor is Shima Yusaku, whose real name is Takakura Ken. Yamada had been working on episodes of the ultra-popular Tora-san series which shares many similarities with The Yellow Handkerchief. The film was later remade as a Western movie by producer Arthur Cohn. Yamada states that the original story is an American story, and he adopted it as Japan-based story (Michi Kaifu). It was also the winner of the first Best Picture award at the Japan Academy Prize. This film can be categorized into more than one genre, including comedy, romance and drama. However, in my view, its primary genre is romance. The film begins with a comic mood and the story gradually become heart-warming.

The film is about a road trip of three strangers who originally meet together out of loneliness. In the opening scene, Takeda Tetsuya is depressed because his girlfriend breaks up with him; therefore he quits his job and decides to go on a trip with his new car. He meets a girl Ogawa Akemi in Hokkaido and she decides to travel with Tetsuya. At the beach, Tetsuya and Akemi meet Yusaku, the lead male actor who was just released from prison. Flashback scenes are like puzzles that put together Yusaku’s memories. One of the flashback scenes shows that Yusaku writes his ex-wife Shima Mitsue a letter after he is released from prison. He wants to know the well-being of his ex-wife and asks her to tie a yellow handkerchief on the flagpole if she is still alone. If he does not see any yellow handkerchief, he will leave her forever. Tetsuya decides to offer Yusaku a ride. Yusaku is like a mysterious person since he always thinks before he speaks. His background and his purposes are unknown until later on. On the way home, Yusaku looks forward to seeing his wife, while he is afraid and anxious because he might see what he does not want to see in the end, and that would mean the collapse of his last hope in life.

This film captures the ideal lover of the traditional Japanese: a tall man whose true love is covered behind a serious and tough look, and who does not know how to express his love to his lover; a woman who is faithful to her lover and willing to suffer for her lover until he is back on her side, and forgives him for his wrong doing. In my view, the reason why this film is so popular is because it depicts the classic view on love: tolerance, forgiveness, sincerity. The director contrasts two male in this film: Yusaku and Tetsuya. Tetsuya is a young man who is hurt by love and who has become careless about love and women, whereas Yusaku is deeply affectionate to his ex-wife. In one film scene, Yusaku madly criticizes Tetsuya as the latter attempts to sexually harass Akemi, he says “Akemi is a lady and ladies are fragile like flowers, so we can’t harm them. As men, we should protect them, but you horndog, do you behave like a man?!” As the movie progresses, we learn that Yusaku is a coal miner who accidently killed a gangster and was put into jail. He missed his wife very much while he was in jail. However, he understands that his wrongdoing might hold up onto his wife’s future life, therefore, he divorces with his wife and hopes she can find a better man. In the movie, Yusaku acts more like a mature man compared to Tetsuya who does not show respect to women. This road trip symbolizes our lives which gradually change from absurd to sensible. In the end, Tetsuya gradually learns to take relationship more seriously and sincerely.

The director tells the story by using well-placed flashbacks as his directing technique. Instead of telling the whole story directly to his audience, the director puts Yusaku’s story into unconnected flashbacks and we gradually learn his past in flashbacks. This creates suspense. In the beginning of the film, I was confused by those sudden pieces of memories from Yusaku. At the end of film, all the flashbacks made sense to me. As Yusaku tells his story through flashbacks, we learn how much he loves Mitsue and we also learn how he ends up in prison, which turns a beautiful love story into a heartbreaking one. The audience is seeking the result as well as the heroine, as well as the two young people, throughout the story. This unique way of telling the story might be one of the features that make this film stand out from others.

This film is focusing on the popular need to love and to trust. The film starts with a comic atmosphere, but there is also a hidden sadness behind this humorous mood. Many of the humorous scenes are very common in daily life such as taking a leak beside the road. All three people in this film carry a great deal of pain which keeps them traveling together. The pain that each of them has is somehow related. Along the road trip, their relationships change in many ways, leading to the second chances in life and love. I like how Arthur Cohn uses this slogan to summarize the film: “A love lost in the past. A love struggling for a future.”  The ways that the director uses to film a romantic film are unusual but beautiful. Thus this film is one worth watching if you enjoy watching a love film or a multi-genre film, and for people in love or seeking the meaning of true love, or who have good or bad memories about love.

Bibliography
MichiKaifu. “Yoji Yamada’s “The Yellow Handkerchief” to Be Remade in Hollywood.” Hoga News. 12 Feb. 2007. Web. 01 Nov. 2010. <http://hogacentral.blogs.com/hoganews/2007/02/yoji_yamadas_th.html>.

Categories
drama, melodrama gendai-geki thriller

Imamura’s “Vengeance is Mine”: Well-Crafted Nihilism

Imamura Shôhei’s 1979 crime thriller Vengeance is Mine (Fukushû suru wa ware ni ari) is a well-crafted and brilliantly-acted example of 1970s nihilism. Ogata Ken stars as Enokizu Iwao, the psychotic and womanizing protagonist of the film based on a real-life serial killer and swindler.

The film opens with the police having apprehended the now-notorious Enokizu and attempting to obtain a confession. The suspect is uncooperative but does little to maintain his innocence. He is calm and detached, making the occasional wisecrack. The title card appears to blaring music.

The viewer is then treated to two murders in a row, Enokizu’s first. They are shown in explicit detail and seem to lack motive. The whole rest of the film, excepting the very end, is told in further flashbacks, sometimes in nested flashbacks.

After the two murders, the film becomes something like a dark version of Spielberg’s more recent Catch Me If You Can; Enokizu travels around Japan scamming people out of money and occasionally killing them. One assumed identity, that of a professor, stays at a disreputable inn, and Enokizu becomes romantically—if it can be called that—involved with a prostitute, Haru, as well as acquainted with her depraved mother, Hisano.

Along the way, we meet Enokizu’s father, Shizuo, and wife, Kazuko, neither of whom are portrayed sympathetically. The film, in fact, lacks any sympathetic characters, excepting perhaps two detectives, who have limited screen time and whose colleagues in the police are literally unable to spot the killer with whom they are directly speaking. Sincere Catholic faith in both the Enokizu men does not prevent them from flying into homicidal rage—though the son ironically becomes enraged only at times when he is not committing murder. A flashback to Iwao’s childhood shows him already displaying the same rage. The viewer is thus left to conclude that there is no psychological explanation for Enokizu’s psychosis; he is simply congenitally evil. Imamura portrays the whole world as depraved, but among the characters in the film only Enokizu is compelled to go so far as to murder without reason.

Imamura almost explicitly parallels the emergence of an inexplicable evil like Enokizu to the perceived loss of innocence and optimism after the early 1960s. At one point, Enokizu is at the theater, and a bulletin from the police about the protagonist is preceded by a newsreel of JFK’s funeral. Juxtapositions like this, as well as the lead’s acting, elevate the movie beyond a simple exploitation flick.

Ogata is able to make an entirely unsympathetic protagonist engaging. Enokizu’s demeanour ranges from a chilling calm to violent rage to manipulative friendliness. Imamura has Enokizu almost always hide his face with glasses, but even on the occasions when he is without them, Ogata makes sure that the only thing the viewer can discern from Enokizu’s face is what Enokizu himself wants to display.

Imamura’s direction manages to be clinical with the occasional artistic touch. The director occasionally employs handheld shots for a slight cinéma vérité vibe, though this is used sparingly so that control is maintained. Each flashback is introduced with text crawls from the police reports on Enokizu. Shots of depravity are composed to show all details, as though they are intended to be incontrovertible evidence in a court case. By contrast, a shot of the detectives interviewing witnesses is framed in a long shot showing everyone at once, but obscured by being shot through a window barred like a prison cell. A couple of times Enokizu is in an apartment where a cord hangs from the ceiling like a miniature noose, further foreshadowing the fate that the viewer knows is coming from the start.

Vengeance is Mine is definitely not for everyone. On one hand, it is bleak and relentless in its depiction of violence and cruelty. There is little in the way of a profound sociological or political theme to gain from this cruelty beyond a cynical suggestion of incompetence on the part of the police. Indeed, perhaps the title should be interpreted as meaning “God only knows” what made Enokizu the way he is, knowledge, no less than vengeance, being impossible to obtain for mere mortals. On the other hand, while there is explicit sex and violence, this is spread out between long stretches of focus on ultimately fruitless examination of the killer between his killings, so the fan of slasher films will be unsatisfied. What makes the film worth watching is thus nothing else but the craftsmanship of Imamura and the controlled performance of the lead actor.

Categories
action drama, melodrama jidai-geki literary adaptations

A Double-Edged Sword: The Duality of “Lady Snowblood”

Ever wonder where Quentin Tarantino gets his ideas? In the case of Kill Bill (2003-04), his most significant source of inspiration was Fujita Toshiya’s Lady Snowblood (Shurayukihime, 1973). Fair warning for the potentially squeamish: Lady Snowblood was several decades ahead of its time in terms of its frequent depictions of stylized violence. Based on the manga by Koike Kazuo (who also wrote the film’s screenplay), the film is a jidai-geki with a twist – not to mention a snap, a slice, and a gush of blood. Set in the late nineteenth century, Lady Snowblood follows the story of Kashima Yuki (Kaji Meiko), a sword-wielding heroine on a quest to avenge the beating and rape of her mother Sayo (Akaza Miyoko), as well as the murder of Sayo’s husband and son. Yuki herself is conceived for the sole purpose of revenge, as Sayo realizes that she needs  a progeny to track down and exterminate the three people who took part in the heinous attack on her family. After Sayo’s death in childbirth, Yuki embarks on a life of training in weapons and martial arts in order to prepare her for her ultimate destiny: confronting her mother’s attackers one by one, with predictably graphic results.

Lady Snowblood’s strength lies in its duality. The film explores problems associated with modernity and Westernization, but does so through a complex and modern narrative structure, an unorthodox visual style, and the presence of a powerful female protagonist in a genre usually dominated by male characters. In this respect, it’s at once conservative and progressive – a not insubstantial degree of thematic depth given that Lady Snowblood is a film best known for its blood and gore. Set during the Meiji period, the film depicts the era as being overrun by the potential pitfalls of modernization: organized crime and the yakuza, gambling, corruption, duplicity for the sake of money, and militarism run amuck. The criminals’ most horrific crime – the murder of Sayo’s family – is fundamentally rooted in their capitalistic lust for money; they set up an extortion scheme to exploit the local villagers’ fear of the military draft (a by-product of modernization and Japan’s desire to achieve military parity with the Western powers).

Symbols of modernity and Western influence are also present throughout the film. Two of the criminals, Tsukamoto Gishirô (Okada Eiji) and Kitahama Okono (Nakahara Sanae), use guns, while Yuki prefers the more traditional sword. In addition, the film’s climax takes place at a Western-style masquerade ball, where Tsukamoto mingles with foreign dignitaries and members of high society as part of his work as a weapons dealer. The linkage created between militarism and growing Western influence stands as a condemnation of some aspects of modernization, and indeed lends the film a degree of topical relevance (both in the 1970s and today) given ongoing debates in Japan concerning Westernization and traditional Japanese culture. The final image of the ball sequence – a dying Tsukamoto falling from a second-story railing, over which are draped side-by-side American and Japanese flags – is representative of the film’s philosophical underpinning. Tsukamoto, the embodiment of all of the negative aspects of modernization, pulls the Japanese flag down to the floor with him as he falls, implying that Japan itself is being pulled down by its abandonment of traditional principles like honour, integrity, and family. Yuki’s traditional dress and strong family allegiance to the mother she never knew posit her as the defender of these traditional values.

Standing in contrast to the film’s thematic conservatism are its strong female protagonist and non-traditional structure. In spite of her traditional costume and values, Yuki herself is arguably a progressive figure; she wields a sword and defeats legions of dangerous men, taking a beating and somehow always emerging alive and (relatively) unscathed. This type of female protagonist is absent from most other jidai-geki but makes sense within its proper historical context; it serves as a vaguely feminist reaction to earlier Japanese films, as well as fitting in with the cycle of rape/revenge movies made all over the world in the 1970s, including Sweden’s Thriller – A Cruel Picture (Bo Arne Vibenius, 1973) and the United States’ I Spit on Your Grave (Meir Zarchi, 1978). In Lady Snowblood, Yuki uses the expectations of her male antagonists to her advantage, both in terms of their objectification of her and her perceived weakness.

The style and structure of the film itself is likewise untraditional. Fujita employs an incredibly complex narrative structure, including long flashback sequences and, in one instance, a flashback within a flashback. Maps and documents are also shown to provide necessary exposition, and voice-over narration conveys relevant information to the viewer. Furthermore, the controversial content of the film – explicit violence and some sexual imagery – seemingly contradicts its more traditional thematic elements, as does Fujita’s use of unorthodox photographic techniques, including extreme camera positions (low-angle shots, extreme close-ups, and canted angles) and jarring snap-zooms. In several scenes, the non-diegetic music utilized is completely anachronistic, seemingly inspired more by the 1970s funk music evident in American exploitation films of the era than by any traditional Japanese sources. These elements result in a style of filmmaking that comes across as ultra-modern, adding to the film an intriguing interplay between traditional themes and non-traditional storytelling techniques.

Elements of Tarantino’s Kill Bill that have been inspired by Lady Snowblood are too numerous to list, but they include the film’s revenge plot, its jumbled narrative structure, blood that shoots like a faucet, Lucy Liu’s character’s costume (a replica of Yuki’s), and the use of Lady Snowblood’s theme song (“The Flower of Carnage”), sung by Kaji Meiko herself. Discussing Lady Snowblood merely in relation to Kill Bill, however, is unbefitting its quality. Like Gojira (Honda Ishirô, 1954), Lady Snowblood uses genre cinema as a means of exploring pressing social and political issues. As long as you don’t mind the occasional severed torso, the film is both fascinating and fun.

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