Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41
Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 is a 1972 film from Japan, directed by Shunya Itō, running 89 minutes. reelscum files it under pinky violence and women in prison.
- Year
- 1972 · 1970s films
- Country
- Japan
- Runtime
- 89 min
- Director
- Shunya Itō
- Updated
- 29 Oct 2026
- Obscurity
- cult (54/100)
- Also known as
- Female Convict Scorpion Jailhouse 41
Defined in the glossary: Pinky violence, Women in prison
Ito's second, and the most formally daring film in the whole category.
Shunya Ito's second Scorpion film, and the most formally daring of the entire cycle. Escaped from prison, Nami Matsushima and a group of fellow inmates cross a hallucinatory landscape while the authorities hunt them, and Ito abandons realism for pure expressionism, seasons changing in a single shot, a Greek-chorus figure narrating in song.
Meiko Kaji barely speaks and dominates every frame, and Ito's imagery, the group frozen against a blood-red sky, belongs in an art museum. It is astonishing that this came out of a programme of women-in-prison quickies.
One of the most visually stunning films on this entire site.
Trailer
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The cycle in depth
- Pinku eiga and the rules that shaped it
Pinku eiga is a Japanese trade category for cheap independent sex features, sized for small theatres and shot to fit Eirin's rule on what a body may show.
- Meiko Kaji and the art of not blinking
Toei hired her to headline prison quickies. She built the most-copied performance in Japanese genre cinema out of about forty lines of dialogue.
Filed alongside
Female Prisoner Scorpion: Beast Stable
Ito's last. Kaji drags a severed arm through Tokyo in the opening minutes.
Female Prisoner 701: Scorpion
Sold as a women-in-prison quickie. Shot like an art film. Meiko Kaji barely blinks.
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Bare Behind Bars
Brazil's Boca do Lixo does women-in-prison with everything the drive-in cut left out.
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Toei's red-coated killer cop, and the blueprint for every lone avenging woman after her.