Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion (1972)

I've seen a handful of women in prison films and before seeing this one, hadn't seen a really good one. It's a genre closely associated with lesbian sex, torture and general sleaze and is one of the staples of the oeuvres of Italian trash directors such as Jess Franco and Joe D'Amato. Female Convict Scorpion adheres to the trends of the genre, but it does it with so much more class than the majority of genre offerings and the result is a film that transcends its trash origins into masterpiece territory. Female Convict Scorpion excellently straddles the boundary between the two types of film - its trash shot as art! Like most women in prison films, this one focuses on one particular prisoner inside a women's prison. The prisoner is Nami Matsushima, a woman betrayed by her boyfriend (a police officer with mob ties) and wrongly imprisoned. She wants revenge on the man who put her in jail, and since she knows a lot of his secrets; he wants her dead. The policeman/mobster soon decides to have one of the other prisoners arrange an "accident" for Nami Matsushima...The film starts as it means to go on; first we get a prison break that sees two prisoners hunted down and caught by the ruthless prison guards, and the next scene sees a bunch of naked women being directed about by said prison guards. There is not as much sleaze in this film as there is in my other women in prison flicks, but there's more than enough - and the fact that it doesn't go over the top means that the sleaze we do get is far more potent. The film is also rather gory, and although much of the violence is in a comic book style, seeing the blood spill is still a treat. The film features some stunning cinematography, and director Shunya Ito is obviously keen to get the art-house style across as much as possible. There's also several excellently shot sequences; the scene involving a disgruntled inmate rampaging through the showers with a shard of glass being particularly excellent. It's all topped off by a sensational performance by Meiko Kaji in the lead role, and overall; it has to be said that Female Convict Scorpion is a masterpiece that does not deserve to be missed!

A beautiful young woman is double-crossed by her corrupt cop boyfriend, raped by his Yakuza thug associates, and then--to add insult to injury--unjustly sentenced to a brutal women's prison. She becomes increasingly stoical, however, biding her time until she can have her revenge on all her enemies both in and out of prison.This is an enjoyable movie which manages to be both a WIP film and a rape-revenge film. It's also probably the best of the "Female Scorpion" series because it focuses more on the WIP elements while the later films are mostly rape-revenge (or eventually just revenge)movies. To be honest, I've never quite gotten the appeal of these female action movies. While some of their fans are female, the vast majority are men, and it's beyond me the masochistic thrill these guys get out of the "butt-kickin' babe"(personally I prefer women that do NOT beat me up, shoot me, or run me through with a samurai sword). Meiko Kaji's Female Scorpion character is in a class by herself though in that her strength comes not so much from her ability to dish out extreme punishment as to quietly endure it until she has a chance to turn the tables. The epitome of this is when she is she is strung up by the other prisoners (quite naked of course) and tortured with hot lamp bulb--Ouch! This is also the only film in the series where Meiko has nude scenes. They're pretty tame by WIP standards, but there are plenty of other naked Japanese girls (if you're into that sort of thing)including in one hilarious scene where the female prisoner "rape" a couple of male prison guards during a riot (poor bastards!). It's a matter of taste I guess, but I liked this better than the more famous "Lady Snowblood" (also with Kaji) and definitely better than "Kill Bill".

I think there's a lot of fellow film fans out there who have no time for snooty snooze-fests like the films of Ingmar Bergman or any of those "inspirational tales of redemption" that people like Roger Ebert want to shove down our throat, but are far too intelligent to sit through the vast piles of pumped-out schlock that people find a way to appreciate. So when a film can be equally artful and entertaining, it's a reason to rejoice. If you love Lynch's Wild at Heart, or Miike's genre work, like Dead or Alive, I cannot recommend Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion enough. The structure of the film is pure rape-revenge exploitation and women in prison boobfest, but the acting and directing elevate this into the realm of truly great films. While the camera-work throughout is disorientingly perfect, scenes like the shard-of-glass fight scene prove Shunya Ito is truly masterful. Even a throwaway scene like upper tier prisoners putting on lipstick and discussing Matsu's fate is made surreal and psychedelic by the truly bizarre sound effects. Meiko Kaji in the lead carries the defiance and cold eroticism of her character perfectly. I actually think Chan Wook Park's choice of the lead for his recent Sympathy for Lady Vengeance had something to do with her resemblance to Kaji. Apparently that's her singing in the theme song too. Gotta check out Lady Snowblood. Much of the violence in this film is truly cringe-worthy, and I mean in the good way. It's effective because it makes you uncomfortable. I'd also like to clarify, my understanding of Matsu's betrayal is that she was sent by her Narc boyfriend as bait, as he knew that she'd be found out and raped, so he'd have the blackmail he needed to form an alliance with the drug dealers. If seeing him drop money on her after the deal is cut isn't enough for you to root for her revenge, the endless torture she suffers in prison will be. I'd give this 10 if it weren't for a couple of things, the digging scene is overly long, although that probably has more to do with the script Ito was given to work with, and I've heard the sequel is even better. Still, if you like any of Park's revenge trilogy, Miike films, Kurosawa's Yojimbo or the works of Dario Argento and George Romero, do yourself a favor and watch Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion.

Shunya Ito's debut film hits all the genre highlights of your standard Babes Behind Bars flick, but does it so much better than any other exploitation pic of the era.Action queen Meiko Kaji stars the unbreakable "Scorpion." Betrayed by her slimy police detective lover Sugimi (Isao Natsuyagi), she winds up in a brutal prison run by the evil bureaucrat Goda (every directors favorite badguy Fumio Watanabe) where she endures tortures that would have reduced Cool Hand Luke to jelly in about five minutes.A solid cast, excellent direction and occasionally brilliant cinematography make this perhaps the second best W.I.P. movie ever made. For the best, you'll have to see the sequel, "Jailhouse 41."