The Female Convict Scorpion Quartet

Title: Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion
Director: Shunya Ito
Actors: Meiko Kaji, Fumio Watanabe, Rie Yokoyama
Year Released: 1972
Genre: Exploitation
See Also: Black Cat's Revenge/Blind Woman's Curse

Title: Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41
Director: Shunya Ito
Actors: Meiko Kaji, Fumio Watanabe, Kayoko Shiraishi
Year Released: 1972
Genre: Exploitation
See Also: Lady Snowblood, Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance

Title: Female Prisoner #701 Scorpion: Beast Stable
Director: Shunya Ito
Actors: Meiko Kaji, Yayoi Watanabe, Mikio Narita
Year Released: 1973
Genre: Exploitation
See Also: Yakuza Graveyard, Battles Without Honor or Humanity: Deadly Fight in Hiroshima

Title: Female Prisoner #701 Scorpion: Grudge Song
Director: Yasuharu Hasebe
Actors: Meiko Kaji, Masakazu Tamura, Yumi Kanae
Year Released: 1973
Genre: Exploitation
See Also: Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter

I have a complicated relationship with Toei's Scorpion films. Let me be more specific: I have a complicated relationship with exploitation films in general. Being the sensitive guy that I am, I have trouble watching women get tortured, raped, all that, and yet being the male that I am, I can't help but be titillated by all the naked goings-on. And, being from the West, with a Judeo-Christian sense of morality, I can't help but feel guilty and ashamed for being turned on. I told you: complicated.

My justification, at least in terms of the Scorpion films, is that they're so damn good. More than just mere women-in-prison films, the four Scorpion flicks starring Meiko Kaji repeatedly transcend the genre into art-house levels of beauty, surreality and expressionism. That they happen to feature a lot of naked flesh is beside the point.

Meiko Kaji had already been made a star by Yasuharu Hasebe's Stray Cat Rock series, in which she played the leader of a gang of bad girls, by the time Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion hit theaters in 1972. Based on a manga by Toru Shinohara (who also wrote the strip that Zero Woman was based on), Female Prisoner #701 is the sordid tale of Nami Matsushima, a woman who is forced to take the fall for her corrupt policeman boyfriend. Now known as Sasori (Scorpion), she's the baddest con on the (cell) block, a near-mute force of nature that can't be broken or held down. The character's overwhelming silence was apparently the idea of Kaji herself, who disapproved of the manga character's foul language. All of her acting is done with her eyes, piercing orbs of hate that see all.

Shunya Ito was a first-time director for Female Prisoner #701 but you'd never know it from watching the film. There's a steadiness and sense of confidence that belies his lack of experience. Right from the start he obviously knew what he was doing, and what he wanted from the series. Genre is toyed with and trumped: the obligatory shower sequence turns into a kabuki-inspired escapade, complete with wild makeup and stage-like lighting.

The surreality reaches dizzying heights in the second film, Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41, which largely takes place outside the prison. Sasori has been in solitary confinement for a year, yet she refuses to be broken. She manages to escape prison with a group of girls while doing forced labor in a quarry. They escape across a volcanic landscape, eerily vacant and desolate. Things get increasingly weird from here, with more kabuki and stage-like elements arriving incongruously. All the while, Sasori silently observes. At one point, a woman breaks away from the group to find her family. In the foreground is a close-up of Sasori's face, her eyes the focus; the background is a rear-projection of the con running through a forest. Imagine Bunuel burying his politics and instead making a genre picture. That this is only Ito's second picture is remarkable.

For his third, Female Prisoner #701 Scorpion: Beast Stable, Ito largely abandons the whole scale oddness of the second in favor of social commentary. Sasori is now on the run in the real world. The film begins with her hacking off the arm of a detective that had the unfortunate luck of being handcuffed to the Scorpion. Sasori is helped by a kindly prostitute with a revolting home life—her brother, brain-damaged from an accident at the plant where he worked, regularly has sex with her, not aware of what he's doing. That she puts up with it is meant to be more indicative of her unfortunate position in society than of her lax morals. It's a much more sad and plaintive film than any other in the series, yet no less stylish.

Shunya Ito was replaced by Kaji's Stray Cat Rock director Yasuharu Hasebe for Female Prisoner #701 Scorpion: Grudge Song, her last contribution to the series. A suitable subtitle for the film could be "Sasori In Love." After escaping from the police, who catch up with her at a wedding, Sasori, badly injured, is rescued by a man who works at a strip joint. The two bond over a shared hatred for the police and soon are falling in love, but when push comes to shove, her lover caves and turns her over to the police. The resulting act of vengeance is made all the more poignant by the fact that they shared feelings. This poignancy is not enough to elevate Grudge Song to the same level as the previous three films, which far surpass this entry's pedestrian approach.

As with many exploitation films of the '70s, the overwhelming theme of the Scorpion films is revenge. Sasori is a character completely driven by vengeance. Yet, she is principled, caring, and even loving, as the last film reveals. Despite a lack of character-revealing dialogue, she is shown to be a complex, complicated person. It is to Meiko Kaji's credit that she was able to carry four films in near silence. As with Jean-Louis Trintignant in Sergio Corbucci's excellent western, The Great Silence, the eyes say it all.

Meiko Kaji's four Scorpion films were followed by two New Female Prisoner Scorpion films (1976, 1977), the straight-to-video Scorpion Woman Prisoner: Death Threat (1991, by Toshiharu Ikeda, creator of Evil Death Trap), Scorpion's Revenge (1997), and Scorpion: Double Venom (1998). Meiko Kaji would go on to make the two Lady Snowblood films, as well as two pictures for Kinji Fukasaku, Yakuza Graveyard and Battles Without Honor or Humanity: Deadly Fight in Hiroshima.

—Adam Douglas

Otaku Alert: Yayoi Watanabe, who played Yuki in Beast Stable, was also in Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion as well as Grudge Song (and not to mention School of the Holy Beast). How could I have missed her in all those films?

Comments

[The Hague]

My wife and I saw Scorpion. A textbook surrealism film. I wish we had watched it in film school back in the day. Would have changed me for the better. Masterpiece.