Lady Snowblood

In 1874, a woman named Sayo gives birth to a baby girl in a women's prison. Sayo confides in the inmates that she was brutally raped by three of the four criminals who murdered her husband and their son a year ago. She seduced many prison guards in order to conceive Yuki. Due to difficulties during birth, she dies shortly after telling her story. Her final words are for her child to be raised to carry out vengeance against the three remaining tormentors. Yuki undergoes brutal training in sword fighting under a priest to become her mother's wrath incarnate. Yuki enters the world of assassins, killing several men and their leader Shibayama using a sword concealed in an umbrella handle. She finds one of her mother's rapists, Banzō, and kills him after revealing her identity remorselessly leading her to the last of mother's rapists Gishirō who had suspiciously died 3 years ago when she first attempted to find him. After attacking Gishirō's tombstone in frustration, Yuki finds herself being followed by a reporter named Ashio Ryūrei. She warns him to stay away from her as she kills several of Okono's men while pursuing Okono after Ashio learned of Yuki's story from Dōkai who persuaded him to publish it as a means to draw out one of Sayo's tormentors: Okono Kitahama. Yuki offers Ryūrei Ashio her gratitude for helping her accomplish her mission. In a final battle scene, Ashio tells Yuki that Gishirō is his father; she finds him at a masquerade ball and kills him with a sword through Ashio into Gishirō's chest before cutting Gishirō’s throat as he shoots into her. He falls over a railing onto the ground floor full of guests. Wounded, Kobue has been pursuing Yuki all this while in revenge for her father's murder stabs Yuki as she escapes; Yuki manages out of town but collapses in snow, apparently dead. The following morning; however, implying she will live on to spread more violence, she opens her eyes.

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Some movies that have similar genres and were produced around the same time as Lady Snowblood include Switchblade Sisters, Death Wish, White Lightning, Walking Tall Part II, Walking Tall, Magnum Force.

Lady Snowblood was released in theaters on March 27, 1974.