Lady Snowblood (1973)

  Ah, Japanese splatter films!  How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

First, there's the unreliable squibs that kick in a good second and a half after someone receives a death wound, forcing them to stand there and "Argh!" as hard as they can to make up for the lack of effects.  Squibs that then spray like a fire hose, drenching all nearby extras.

Then, there's the fact that it's clearly red paint.  None of that sissy karo syrup and food coloring, no!  They're going for volume and for that, you need a 2-for-1 sale five gallon drum of barn-door red paint from the local Home Depot.

Third, close ups.  Extreme close ups!  Like count-the-veins-in-your-heroine's-eyeballs kind of close ups.

Yuki was born in order to exact vengeance on the three people that ruined her mother's life.  Seriously, she has zero motivation other than that.  Her mother died in prison, and Yuki was raised by her mom's cellmate and a priest who basically abused her under the guise of "training" and constantly referred to her as a "child of the netherworlds".  As you can imagine, little Yuki didn't grow up to be the most stable of individuals.  She hits the road on her twentieth birthday to track down the three swindlers.  The first one is pretty easy since he's a total drunk whose own daughter is turning tricks to keep him fed.  Yuki has a moment's pause when she realizes that she actually likes the daughter but kills her dad anyway.

She hits a depressive turn when she learns that Villain #2 died in a shipwreck three years before she could find him, then gets pissed when the priest that raised her sells her story to a local author.  But, it does draw out Villain #3, a psycho bitch with a crazy-ass giggle.  Now facing unemployment, Yuki learns that Villain #2 is totally alive, and is actually an incredibly powerful arms dealer.  She and the writer must team up to sneak into #2's secret costume ball and slice his face off.

I can't emphasize enough that this is a crap film, suitable only for So-Bad-It's-Good nights.  If you're going to watch it, get like three of these and make a drunken marathon out of them.