Lady Snowblood served as a major inspiration for the 2003 Quentin Tarantino film Kill Bill and its lead character, The Bride.

Naming the child Yuki from the snow outside, Sayo confides to her inmates how she was brutally raped by three of the four criminals who murdered her husband and son a year ago.

She visits a poor village looking for a man called Matsuemon, the leader of an underground organization of street beggars, and asks him to find her mother's surviving tormentors in return for having killed Shibayama for him.

Yuki kills him, then learns that the last of her mother's rapists, Tsukamoto Gishirō, has suspiciously died in a shipwreck three years earlier when she first attempted to find him.

Yuki is followed by a reporter named Ryūrei Ashio, who learned of her story from Dōkai who persuaded him to publish it as a means to draw out one of Sayo's tormentors: Kitahama Okono.

Kikumaru Okuda, a producer from the independent studio Tokyo Eiga, wanted to make a film starring actress and singer Meiko Kaji, known at the time for her role in Toei's successful Female Prisoner Scorpion series.

He felt that a film adaptation of the Lady Snowblood manga would be ideal for such a project, and contracted Norio Osada to write the script and Toshiya Fujita to direct.

[1] Toei initially attempted to prevent Kaji from taking the role, although she would return to the studio to make her final Female Prisoner Scorpion film, 701's Grudge Song, after completing work on Lady Snowblood.

[citation needed] A 1977 Hong Kong martial arts film, Broken Oath, directed by Jeong Chang-hwa and starring Angela Mao in the leading role is an unofficial remake of Lady Snowblood.

[10] According to Meiko Kaji, Tarantino made the cast and crew of Kill Bill watch DVDs of Lady Snowblood during filming breaks.

[12][13] In 2012, the film was released in a box set with Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance on Blu-ray and DVD by Arrow Video.