gavin6942
Matsu, known to the prisoners as Scorpion, is locked away in the bowels of the prison as revenge for disrupting the smooth operation of the prison and for her disfiguring attack on the warden. Granted a one day reprieve due to the visit of a dignitary, she takes advantage and attacks the warden again. This leads to more brutal punishment and humiliation. But the punishment gives her an opportunity to escape along with six other female prisoners.Jasper Sharp notes that while the 1970s were full of women in prison films all around the world, the Scorpion films were "far better made and far less exploitative, and adopting an almost fantastical approach to the material". He also notes that this second part, interestingly enough, spends a great deal of time outside of the prison.There is is a definite shift from the first film. We still get a sense of color, letting us know the director actually cared. But we also have the exploitation angle toned down a bit. If you're counting the naked bodies, you will notice they have decreased sharply this time around. Whether that makes this a better film is open to debate, but it indicates the people involved believed they had something to sell besides naked bodies.
bertom7
This is one of my favorites in Japanese exploitation cinema, the second part out of four from the scorpion series created by Shunya Ito. I consider this movie as a masterpiece, because of its surrealism, color, camera angles, its intensity and its main character, played by Meiko Kaji (also known from Lady Snowblood).Despite its simple plot, its exaggerated violence and eroticism and everything else related to exploitation cinema, Ito manages to create something poetical, original and captivating. Meiko Kaji's second appearance in the Scorpion series is in my opinion the best one. In the first part (Female prisoner 701), Matsu is a poor woman, betrayed by her lover, looking for revenge. In this episode the scorpion woman is more bitter, way more dangerous, and insanely mysterious
The plot is simple: the prison director, Inspector Goda, is mad at her (she stabbed out his eye in the first part), and wants to make her suffer and drive her crazy. He locks her up in the deepest, darkest prison cell available, where she lies tied up on the floor. Matsu is lying on the floor holding a spoon firmly clamped between her teeth and scraping it against the stone floor. She is preparing her revenge
What follows are Goda's desperate attempts trying to break Matsu, which make Matsu's determination even stronger. An escape from prison through dazzling landscapes, meeting the strangest people and experiencing surrealistic and hallucinatory events. A rape, a murder
And a final bloodthirsty, but very satisfying vengeance.Meiko Kaji (also the singer of the original soundtrack song) is delivering an ecstatic performance playing Matsu's character so intensely with only 2(!) lines of text.
Dave from Ottawa
Another Sergio Leone influenced film in which the protagonist is the sort of character who would traditionally be a villain - a steely eyed, unsmiling killer (lead actress Meiko comes off like a female Charles Bronson) - who happens to be the only principled person in the film's bleak landscape of casual, opportunistic violence. In fact, the whole setting reads like an allegory for the breakdown of moral responsibility: authority figures are motivated not by honor or a desire for justice but by petty revenge. And out of this world (the prison) the main character escapes into something worse: the real world!
Eegah Guy
***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** This is film strikes the perfect balance between art and exploitation. Shot with the colorful, stylised look of manga/comic books, this film is a masterpiece of violence and degradation. The Scorpion character is put in solitary confinement, raped, nearly beat to death then betrayed by her fellow inmates before ending up (appropriately enough) in a garbage dump at the end of the film. There's too many beautifully shot sequences to list here so I'll just leave it up to you to see this gem now that it's available here in the US from Image.
AD
