Watch Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion For Free

I love this movie so much

Highly Overrated But Still Good

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

This first installment in the Sasori (scorpion) series featuring Kaji Meiko and is much more of a exploitation movie than the follow up. That means girls running around naked in punishment for whatever lack of discipline and getting raped by idiot prison guards.Showing the making of Matsu the vengeful prisoner, we understand her motives quite well and it turns out to be a dense action movie. In the end though this is more or less a display of sadistic torture in both a campy way and a more artistic way. As such it is not quite my cup of tea.Kaji Meiko is not as developed as an actress as in her later movies here, but still puts up a good show, and a brilliant antihero although inferior to the more psychedelic Jailhouse #41 follow up.

Shunya Ito's "Joshuu 701-gô: Sasori" aka "Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion" of 1972 is an absolutely brilliant masterpiece of Japanese Exploitation cinema that is not quite comparable to anything else. The WIP (Women In Prison) sub-genre may have brought a bunch of highly entertaining flicks, but each of the four "Sasori" films (all of which were released between 1972 and 1973) outshines any other movie of the kind by a million times. Not only does "Joshuu 701-gô: Sasori", or "Sasori: Scorpion" as it is entitled here, outshine any other kind of WIP flick, this is one of the films that reign supreme in Exploitation cinema generally. More than any other movie, this film combines Exploitation and Art-house cinema, sleaze and artistic beauty in a most unique way. The absolutely divine Meiko Kaji is the star of this unforgettable film and nobody else could have played the leading role of Nami Matsushima aka. Sasori with such brilliance. Not only does she play the lead, Meiko Kaji also sings the beautiful theme song to this film, one of the greatest and most memorable pieces of Japanese film score ever, "Urami-Bushi", which became known to a wider Western audience when Tarantino used it for the soundtrack of "Kill Bill 2".Raped, imprisoned tortured and abused, female prisoner #701, Nami Matsushima lives only for two things, escape from the hellhole of a woman's prison she is incarcerated in, and revenge on her former lover, who used her for his benefit and is responsible for all her misery. Due to her toughness and power of endurance, Nami, who is constantly tortured by sadistic guards in order to break her will, is referred to as "Sasori" ("Scorpion") by her fellow female prisoners...The stunningly beautiful Meiko Kaji, one of my personal favorite actresses of all-time, plays her role with sheer brilliance. Sasori, who hardly says a word has an incomparably vengeful determination in her eyes, and Kaji's performance seems to become greater each time I see this movie. The rest of the performances are also outstanding, above all Riye Yokoyama, who is excellently sadistic as Katagiri, another female prisoner who hates Sasori, and Fumio Watanbe as the sadistic prison warden Goda. "Sasori" truly is an absolute exploitation highlight, and probably THE movie in which exploitation and art-house elements complement each other the most. The opening sequence, in which hundreds of naked women have to walk down a narrow hallway in a humiliating exercise (to the song "Urami-Bushi") alone is the best example for that, and furthermore one of the most memorable sequences ever in exploitation cinema. This movie is sleazy and often extremely brutal, with nasty scenes of rape, murder and sadistic torture, and yet so incomparably beautiful and often symbolic in its extreme violence and sleaze. The entire "Sasori" series with Meiko Kaji reigns supreme in the WIP sub-genre, and is a truly brilliant highlight of Japanese Exploitation cinema. Every fan of Exploitation and every lover of film in general MUST SEE this first "Sasori" film and personal favorite of mine, which easily deserves the highest rating of 10/10!

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!

Uttering as few words as possible, Nami Matsushima (played by the stunningly beautiful Meiko Kaji) dispenses with the pleasantries and builds a reasonably impressive body count by the end of "Female Prisoner 701: Scorpion," one of the premiere films in the women's prison genre of films.Natsuyagi is a cop looking to move ahead in his life, and money, after all, is the root of all evil. He hatches a scheme to use his lovely girlfriend, Nami, to lure the local mafia bosses into a scheme. But when the gang feels something's amiss, they escort Nami into a back room and rape her. Breaking in, Natsuyagi realizes he finally has what he wants: ignoring his fallen girlfriend, he convinces the mob that he can make all of their problems go away if they pay him off. They agree, and Natsuyagi has Nami thrown into prison … where she undergoes the obligatory beatings, teasing, and other forms of degradation so common to 'girls behind bars' films.What makes "Scorpion" different is the fact that Director Shunya Ito – in his debut film – decided to ride the fine line between art and trash. He combines the best elements of the vindictive woman's feature along with artsy lighting in order to achieve the effect of a car crash: the viewer really hates to slow down and watch, but there really must be something to see here, right? The violence is gratuitous, if not psychedelic, at times, but it all manages to flesh out (pun intended) before Nami manages to finally break out of prison and go on her murderous rampage, taking out the mobsters one-by-one until her final showdown with the unsuspecting Natsuyagi.Also, in Kaji's graceful hands, Nami isn't so much a victim as she is an antihero, not at all unlike Clint Eastwood in Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns. The viewer is pulled into this world by means of a very beautiful woman who refuses to be a 'prisoner' to the genre. Instead, she's defiant and calculating at every turn, refusing to comply with the warden's demands of good behavior. She challenges every authority, instituting her own code of justice which applies to everyone: her fellow inmates, the prison guards, and even the police outside. Uncompromising in her dedication, she ignores the acts she endures for the sake of focusing on one sole objective: revenge.… and that's an act she takes with complete seriousness.