[yasr_overall_rating]
After being used and betrayed by the detective she had fallen in love with, young Matsu is sent to a female prison full of sadistic guards and disobedient prisoners.
The 1972 Japanese women in prison film “Female Prisoner 701: Scorpion” reminds me a lot of the much more popular 1977 horror film “Hausu.” Both films rely less on plot and much more on a kaleidoscope of colors and quick glimpses of surreal images. Only 701 is a film that falls firmly into the height of the women in prison genre. I know next to nothing about the women in prison genre other than it came about due to the loosening of film censorship and helped empower the role of women in movies. “Female Prisoner 701: Scorpion” is also the first part in a film series about the movie’s protagonist. Having not seen any of these other films, however, I will not attempt to explain how this film fits into the canon.
The film opens with Nami Matsushima (Meiko Kaji) who is a prisoner on the run from law enforcement. She is our heroine and the story is careful to take great strides to make sure that we sympathize with Nami, who it turns out was (1) set up by her boyfriend, (2) raped by several drug dealers, (3) made a failed attempt to stab her boyfriend, and (4) sentenced to prison and given the number 701. They’ve given her a number and taken away her name.
Nami’s greatest allies in the prison, which is run by fearsome male guards, are Yuki Kida (Yayoi Watanabe), Otsuka (Akemi Negishi) and Katagiri (Rie Yokoyama). I feel like it’s a failure of my abilities as both a writer and a critic to summarize these characters in ways that will make each memorable but the plain, cold fact is that these women are not memorable as individual characters within the world of film. Just more women in prison.
At about this point, the film evolves into just being a tale about good guys versus bad guys. Nami’s boyfriend and the Japanese mafia (or Yakuza) devise a plan to kill her and make it look like an accident. Nami is attacked in the shower, but fights off the attacker, she is then tortured, but ends up harming her torturer, and eventually, she escapes and kills both the Yakuza and her boyfriend.
The film ends with Nami walking back into the prison. While it builds room for future installments in the series, I don’t understand this scene or what it’s supposed to mean, other than a loss of power for an otherwise totally empowered female. In a way, the prison has become Nami’s world and like Quasimodo returning to the bell tower, Nami eventually returns to the cave.
Where I come from, I thought that the women in prison genre had a lot of sexual undertones but I didn’t pick up very many of these erotically toned themes in this film. In 701, we get a heroine who has all of the makings of a potentially bad guy, or woman.
Really though, the pivotal scene of this film is that after she kicks butt, Nami retreats into her prison. It’s a deflating moment for women in film. Whether this was anyone’s original intention is doubtful. 701 is a pretty film and it uses a variety of lighting techniques to really tell a simple story. You know by the end of this film that 701 is nothing more than a gateway for a bunch of sequels so it feels shallow as a film. For anyone who attempts to argue that this film is anything more than just the beginning strokes for a film franchise, I would like to point out that the film’s follow up title, “Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41,” was released a little later the very same year.
Now available in a Limited Edition Box Set of 3000 Blu-ray/DVDs including “Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion” / “Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41” / “Female Prisoner Scorpion: Beast Stable” / “Female Prisoner Scorpion: #701’s Grudge Song”
