Meiko Kaji

If there’s one standout point of reference for Kill Bill, it has to be the groundbreaking girlie samurai movie Lady Snowblood aka Blizzard From The Netherworld, which, like Kill Bill Vol. 1, climaxes (and that’s definitely the right word) with a massive masked fight.
Toshiya Fujita’s 1973 epic revenge fantasy about a hyper-emotional woman (really, really hyper – we’re talking menstrual meltdown style) is the ultimate rape-revenge movie. Having been brutalised and forced to watch her husband’s murder, a 19th century courtesan does what any decent mommy would do. She raises her daughter to wreak a maelstrom of terrible revenge on the perpetrators.
Of course, it helps that her daughter is played by Meiko Kaji, the untouchably brilliant and unstoppably violent star of another Tarantino fave, Female Convict Scorpion – Jailhouse 41 (1972). In that heavy-duty women’s prison flick, she orchestrates a jailbreak and leads a group of fellow convicts to freedom, where they encounter a whole busload of misogynistic males with savage results. I’m sure you can guess which gender comes off the worst in that particular scrap.
“What I took from Meiko Kaji,” says Tarantino, “was the idea that if you cross her, she’ll pull out your teeth or bite your cock off. I wanted that quality for The Bride in Kill Bill.” Quite.