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The Complete Lady Snowblood – The Criterion Collection (Blu-ray)

Theatrical Release Dates: Japan, 1973 (Lady Snowblood), Japan, 1974 (Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance)
Director: Toshiya Fujita (Both Films)
Cast: Meiko Kaji, Toshio Kurosawa, Masaaki Daimon, Miyoko Akaza, Shinichi Uchida, Takeo Chii, Noboru Nakaya, Yoshiko Nakada, Akemi Negishi, Kaoru Kusuda, Sanae Nakahara, Hôsei Komatsu (Lady Snowblood), Meiko Kaji, Jûzô Itami, Kazuko Yoshiyuki, Yoshio Harada, Shin Kishida, Tôru Abe, Rin'ichi Yamamoto, Kôji Nanbara, Masasuke Hirose, Shunsuke Mizoguchi, Akira Hamada, Hiroshi Ishiya, Mizuho Suzuki, Shôichi Hirose (Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance)

Release Date: January 5th, 2016
Approximate Running Times: 97 Minutes 15 Seconds (Lady Snowblood), 89 Minutes 24 Seconds (Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance)
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Widescreen / 1080 Progressive / MPEG-4 AVC (Both Films)
Rating: NR
Sound: LPCM Mono Japanese (Both Films)
Subtitles: English (Both Films)
Region Coding: Region A
Retail Price: $39.95

Lady Snowblood: "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." - synopsis provided by the distributor

Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance: "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." - synopsis provided by the distributor

Video: 4.5/5 (Lady Snowblood, Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance)

Here’s the information provided about this release's transfer, "These new digital transfers were created in 2K resolution on a Scanity film scanner from new 35mm low-contrast prints struck from the original camera negatives. Thousands of instances of dirt, debris, scratches, splices, and warps were manually removed using MTI's DRS, while Digital Vision's Phoenix was used for small dirt, grain, noise management, jitter, and flicker."

Lady Snowblood and Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance come on a 50 GB dual layer Blu-ray.

Disc Size: 44.2 GB

Feature: 20.1 GB (Lady Snowblood), 18.5 GB (Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance)

These brand new transfers are a noticeable improvement over their previous home video releases. Both transfers look excellent, flesh tones look correct, colors are nicely saturated, image clarity and compression are solid, and black levels are strong.

Audio: 5/5 (LPCM Mono Japanese - Lady Snowblood, LPCM Mono Japanese - Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance)

Each film comes with one audio option, a LPCM mono mix in Japanese with removable English subtitles. Both audio tracks sound excellent; the dialog comes through clearly, and everything sounds balanced. Range-wise, both tracks do a superb job when it comes to ambient sounds and the score.

Extras:

Extras for this release include a theatrical trailer for Lady Snowblood (2 minutes 45 seconds, Dolby Digital mono English, no subtitles), a theatrical trailer for Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance (2 minutes 24 seconds, Dolby Digital mono English, no subtitles), an interview with Kazuo Koike, the writer of the manga that inspired the films (10 minutes 18 seconds, Dolby Digital mono English, no subtitles), an interview with screenwriter Norio Osada (21 minutes 27 seconds, Dolby Digital mono English, no subtitles), and a leaflet with cast & crew information for both films, an essay titled Flowers of Carnage written Howard Hampton, information about the transfer, and a poster on the reverse side of the leaflet.

Summary:

Lady Snowblood and Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance reteam director Toshiya Fujita with Mieko Kaji; they had previously collaborated on Stray Cat Rock: Wild Jumbo and Stray Cat Rock: Beat ‘71. Kazuo Koike’s (Lone Wolf and Cub) manga Lady Snowblood is the source for these two films.

"Be grieving snow falls in the dead of morning. Stray dog’s howls and the footsteps of Geta pierce the air. I walk with the weight of the milky way on my shoulders, but an umbrella holds onto the darkness is all there." – Flower of Carnage

Lady Snowblood: A woman born for one reason, "bloody revenge," inherits her mother's vendetta.

The narrative revolves around Yuki, aka Lady Snowblood, an assassin for hire who exacts revenge for those who are powerless. A woman on a snow-covered road is carrying an umbrella that obscures her face. From there, she crosses paths with a man and his bodyguards. When she refuses to move aside, all hell breaks loose as she quickly disposes of the bodyguards and the man they are protecting. Not only does this scene perfectly set the tone, but it also does a phenomenal job establishing that Yuki is not someone to be taken lightly.

Though one would be hard-pressed to find any faults in any of the performances, all performances pale in comparison to Meiko Kaji’s portrayal of Yuki. She delivers a towering performance that perfectly captures her character's rage. By the time she made Lady Snowblood, Meiko Kaji had already firmly established herself as the premiere actress when it came to portraying badass female assassins in 1970s Japanese cinema.

Toshiya Fujita’s direction is solid, the visuals are stylish, and there are inventive framing choices. A particularly striking moment is the way he juxtaposes a flashback of Yuki’s mother being raped with the moment of Yuki’s birth. That said, most of the standout moments center around the carnage, which includes blood flowing like geysers, severed limbs, and a hanging woman that is cut in half.

All around, Lady Snowblood is an extraordinary piece of filmmaking. The narrative constructs a perfect story, builds tension effectively, and delivers an amazing final conclusion. That said, Lady Snowblood doesn't conform to the typical exploitation film, and it uses violence only to advance the story.

Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance: The secret police forced Yuki to assassinate political dissidents or face the death penalty.

Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance is different tone-wise than its predecessor. No longer driven by revenge, this time politics takes center stage. All of the acts of carnage are directed at political dissidents. Also, when it comes to violence, Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance takes on a more realistic approach than its predecessors comic book-style violence.

Yuki had come full circle by the end of Lady Snowblood; she no longer had anything to prove. In Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance, her motivation changes from revenge to survival. Meiko Kaji returns in the role of Yuki, aka Lady Snowblood. And once again, she delivered a scene-stealing performance. The character's shifting from calm to rage effortlessly fuels the power of her performance. The rest of the cast is very good in their roles.

From a production standpoint, there is no area where Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance comes up short. The narrative does a great job building momentum, and there is an ample amount of spurting blood and severed limbs. And though Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance is a film that stands well on its own, it still pales in comparison to its predecessor.

The Complete Lady Snowblood is an excellent release from The Criterion Collection, highly recommended.