Japanese Title: Joshuu sasori: Dai-41 zakkyo-bô
Director: Shunya Ito

Based on the popular manga series by Tooru Shinohara, director Shunya Ito frames the action of Jailhouse 41, the second film in the Female Prisioner Scorpion series, in pure comic strip style. Star Meiko Kaji was apparently unhappy with the original portrayal of the character of Sasori on the page, especially the perpetual stream of obscenities flowing from her mouth, so the script was tailored to allow her to play the role almost silently. The change makes for a surprisingly effective heroine, bringing an exquisite dignity to the character as she tags along aloof from the rest of the group, only entering into the fray when absolutely necessary.

Introduced shackled and bound and bathed in blue light at the bottom of the pit where she has lain for a year, scraping at the ground with a spoon in her mouth before she is hosed down by her wardens and dragged back to rejoin her fellow convicts, Sasori's year in solitary confinement fails to subdue her. Straight away she lunges at the Head Prison Warder's face shattering his spectacles with the sharpened spoon handle, an act which lands her bound to a makeshift crucifix of tree branches surrounded by braying dogs and guards clad in nylon masks as the rest of the rest of female convicts are chained together and put to hard labour. The film really gets underway when the girls break out of the van transferring them to a higher security unit, swathed in black robes as they flee across a village buried under volcanic ash through a string of diverse and increasingly weird episodes.

As night falls in a scene where the wanted women hide out in a deserted village, the whole set appears to peel away against a loud crack of thunder to reveal the only inhabitant, a ghostly woman clutching a knife. Later the girls are introduced individually in Kabuki style against a plain black backdrop, a male singer crooning in the background revealing their crimes, which are predominantly against the male sex: this is a world where women rule. Sasori's main rival in the group (played by Kayoko Shiraishi) is a snarling caricature of evil, lifting up her smock to display the scars of when she committed infanticide by stabbing at the unborn foetus nestling in her belly after murdering her husband. After fleeing through an autumnal forest of golds and reds, the gang clash against a busload of rowdy tourists - sexist salarymen who come out of the deal rather the worse off for their behaviour.

© Jasper Sharp courtesy Midnight Eye