Sasori: Joshuu 701-gô

This 1998 film was a remake of the 1971 hit movie Female Prisoner 701: Scorpion. Here, Nami once again gets thrown in the slammer and has to contend with the usual Babes-Behind-Bars clichés: belligerent fellow prisoners, deviant prison officials and rampant institutional injustice. Cult actress Meiko Kaji (Lady Snowblood), who played the title role in the earlier Scorpion movies appears here as a nasty prison official, and you can see right on the box what the main problem with this remake is: Meiko (lower corner) has a darkly intense charisma which shows up even in a still shot but the actress chosen for the lead role, Chiharu Komatsu, while quite beautiful, has no such presence. None. With an interesting lead character to follow around, the paint by numbers plot and routine action might have been tolerable, but Chiharu's just boring and so is everything going on around her. Once again, as in the original, Nami attempts a jailbreak, but unlike the original which had a fairly exciting jailbreak sequence, what should have been the main action sequence in the movie was something of a snore.

Nothing much worked in this one. Unimaginative, unoriginal and dull is a bad combination in action cinema.

Scorpion, part I (1998) is an loose remake of the original sleazy W.I.P. series that's based upon a popular manga. Despite the low budget values and the cheesy dialog, this movie is designed to be entertaining and it is. A woman is searching the persons responsible for kidnapping her younger sister. Ever since her disappearance, she's kept it in the back of her mind. Her past comes back to haunt her one day when a patient is admitted into the hospital where she just happens to work. The patient brags to her that he was involved in her sister's kidnapping and tells her there's nothing she could do about it. She snaps and takes care of his loud mouth. For her crimes she's sent to a women's prison. Whilst inside she's violent abused by her fellow inmates and is constantly hit on by the bi-sexual warden. However she uncovers a shocking secret whilst in lock-up.

A good sleazy women in prison film filled with nudity, blood, gore and lesbian sex. You know the usual staples that you'll find in a good W.I.P. film. I enjoyed this movie and if you're into this genre you will to. Jesus Franco would be proud. Fun stuff, followed by Scorpion, part II. Beware of the one armed man!

Strongly recommended.

A friend of mine rented this in hopes that it would be a lesbian kung fu exploitation piece. We were not disappointed! (Except for the kung fu part) Nami witnessed her younger sister Yumi kidnapped as a child, something that would haunt her for the rest of her life, until as fate would have it, her murderer turns up as a patient at the hospital she works. She kills him with a scalpel and is shipped off to a woman's prison to do ten years hard labor. What follows is an unintentionally hilarious film that is constantly entertaining due to some bad fight sequences, gratuitous nudity, and some really funny lines. Take for example, what Nami says to her sister's murderer at the beginning of the film.

Nami: You killed her!

Murderer: So what? What you gonna do?

Nami: I'll call the police!

Murderer: Unfortunately, the statute of limitations on that case ran

out yesterday.

That had me laughing for about five minutes straight. The film is bloody, poorly scored, and absolutely hilarious. There is also a sequel but it's convoluted and boring and just has none of the things that make Scorpion so much fun to make fun of. If