| Review by Jim |
| Plot: After getting raped by gangsters on a sting operation and being betrayed by her lover, a corrupt narcotics agent, Nami Matsushima tries to kill him only to get thrown in a nightmarish prison. Nami quickly earns the ire of fellow inmates, backstabbing ass-kissers, and tyrannical prison guards. But Nami isn't going to give up her quest for vengeance no matter how much gratuitous sex and violence it takes. Review: Ah, there's nothing like an entertaining Japanese exploitation flick to lift one's spirit. Female Prisoner #701 is of course going to reel in people with promises of tons of sex and gore, but looking beyond all that this is a pretty damn good movie. Sure it follows the usual "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" formula like I Spit On Your Grave in which an innocent girl gets raped and goes on a mad killing spree, but what separates Female Prisoner #701 is the fact that more thought, effort, and style has been put behind it. But before I yak on about the deeper levels of the flick, let's get the obvious sex and violence out of the way, and there's lots of it! This is a tit-fest, no bones about it. We get shower scenes, strip scenes, panty shots, rape sequences, cat fights, and to top it all off we have a lesbian love scene. It's a female prison, what did you expect? Okay, so it was done just for the sake of nudity, but you won't hear me complaining unlike the one guard getting a giant breast stuck in his face (that poor, poor man!). On the other end of the spectrum we have some good, gooey bits with the highlights being a guard getting his eye poked with a glass shard and my personal favorite in which one gushes blood after getting whacked with a shovel. I guess my only real complaint about all these cheap thrills is that there's an imblance between the two, there's way more nudity than there is gore (although there's some pretty brutal, albeit bloodless sequences). Scorpion needed more of the red stuff to make it a well-rounded exploitation flick. More knifings would've been a good place to start. Adding onto all this is the "super '70s" feel of the movie with some truly groovy tunes that you can't help but chuckle at, though, "The Flower of Carnage" is a catchy song in its own strange and hypnotic way. But that's only half of why I like the movie, there was a good serious side as well. The acting is pretty good here, but I feel that Susimi (Isao Natsuyagi) didn't get enough time devoted to his character. I know he was a bastard and that's all we really needed to know about him, but since he's Nami's main antagonist I wanted to see some more of him. The warden was a pretty harsh character portrayed well enough, but he mostly just let the freaky eye do most of the acting. Then there was the mandatory "bitch" of the female prison, Kairi, who played her part perfectly. Talk about someone you love to hate. But the best performance has to go without a doubt to Meiko Kaji. She just plays Nami so well you can't help but root for her after going through all that shit and still coming back for more. Her icy stares through her long hair just set the tone for the character perfectly, nobody else could've played her as well as Meiko Kaji did. Maybe Nami isn't the loudest anti-heroine, but she's one of the better ones I've seen. Then there's the stylish camerawork that helps the movie not look too dated (even though it's over thirty years old). Gotta love the extreme angles during the climax and the fight sequence in the shower. Female Prisoner #701 has all of its bases covered to say the least. Maybe this movie wasn't really original, but it has all its pieces in place and is very entertaining. Female Prisoner #701 is a great piece of Japanese '70s exploitation that shouldn't be missed. It had more than enough satisfying aspects to make this a must rent as soon as possible. If you see one Japanese female prison movie this year, make it this one. |
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| Rating: ***1/2 |