Female Prisoner 701: Scorpion

Shunya Ito had never directed before and appears not to have been told what kind of film he was making.

The brief was a sukeban prison picture for Toei. What he delivered contains a set that rotates on stage machinery, a colour-shifting flashback lit like kabuki, expressionist lighting cues that change mid-shot, and a lead performance built almost entirely out of stillness. Meiko Kaji has perhaps two dozen lines and dominates every frame she is in.

It is still an exploitation film, and the sexual violence in the first act is presented for an audience that was expected to want it. The film's own attitude curdles against that almost immediately: every institution in it is corrupt, every guard is a coward, and the revenge is total.

Ito's three entries (1972–73) are the ones that matter. What came after him is ordinary.