Female Prisoner Scorpion: Beast Stable, released in 1973, was the third of the Female Prisoner Scorpion movies. Once again Meiko Kaji is the star and Shunya Itō is the director.
One of the cool things about the Japanese pinky violence movies is that there are often considerable differences between the various entries in a series.
If you haven’t seen the first two Female Prisoner Scorpion movies you won’t have the remotest idea what’s going on in this movie. You’ll be wondering why this girl is such a psycho bitch. If you have seen the first two movies you’ll understand. We do get snippets of her backstory in the course of the movie but nowhere near enough to make her personality comprehensible.
Matsu (Meiko Kaji), who gained the nickname Scorpion in prison, is on the run. The cops, led by Detective Kondo (Mikio Narita), almost catch her on the train. Poor Kondo has no idea what he is dealing with. There are two cops and one lone girl but if the girl is the Scorpion the odds are all on her side. The way she escapes is a fine illustration of the breathtaking excesses that make pinky violence movies so addictive. When you think you have Matsu cornered and helpless that’s when you should be really scared.
Matsu makes a friend. Yuki (Yayoi Watanabe) is a prostitute. She lives with her brain-damaged brother. She has sex with him regularly because it makes him happy.
Yuki has gangster problems. Those problems become Matsu’s problems. The first problem is Tanida (Takashi Fujiki). He knows Matsu is an escaped convict. He is going to force Matsu to provide him with regular sexual services. If she doesn’t play along he’ll turn her in. That annoys Matsu. Annoying Matsu is a seriously bad idea. The method Matsu adopts to deal with this problem is delightfully fiendish. It’s a woman’s revenge.
The other problem is sinister crazy sadistic procuress Katsu. Katsu had been in prison with Matsu. Katsu is a very tough very mean lady but she’s terrified of Matsu. She decides that Matsu will have to be dealt with.
Meanwhile Matsu still has the cops to deal with.
It all leads up to an extended pursuit through the city’s sewers, or at least we think that’s the finale but then we get a whole new subplot. And an amazing ending.
Stylistically this movie switches between gritty realism and outrageous theatricality.
One thing I like about the Female Prisoner Scorpion movies is that Matsu is not a typical kickass action heroine. She doesn’t have superpowers. She’s no stronger than any normal woman. She has no advanced unarmed combat skills. There are several factors that make her a formidable opponent. Firstly there’s her patience. She has the ability to withdraw into her shell and wait. She doesn’t care how long she has to wait. Eventually her chance will come. Then she strikes like a scorpion. And there’s her will to survive and her crazed savagery. When cornered she fights like a wounded panther at bay. She will do whatever it takes to survive. If she has to kill she will do so without hesitation. She will strike the death-blow without flinching. And she goes into a killing frenzy.
There’s a lot of emphasis in this film on Matsu’s utter aloneness. She cannot form emotional relationships with men. She cannot form friendships with other women. She trusts no-one. Yuki has some of the same problems. Both Matsu and Yuki need the friendship of another woman but can they learn to trust each other?
There’s a temptation to see Matsu as a feminist icon but in fact she’s a tragic figure. She has lost her humanity. She has been pursued and mistreated (often by other women) for so long that she has developed the personality of a hunted animal. We admire her extraordinary determination to survive but we feel desperately sorry for her. She was once a perfectly ordinary young woman. Now only a shell remains. She has survived in one sense, but perhaps not in other senses.
Female Prisoner Scorpion: Beast Stable is a weird disturbing movie but that description applies to all the movies of this series (and it applies to pinky violence movies in general). Highly recommended, but see the first two movies first.
All four movies in this cycle are included in Arrow’s Female Prisoner Scorpion Blu-Ray boxed set. The transfers are excellent. There are some extras, for those who bother with such things.
I’ve reviewed the first two movies in this series, Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion (1972) and Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 (1972). These movies absolutely have to be seen in production order.