▶ watchobscureStray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter
1970 · Japan · 86m
Meiko Kaji before Toei, leading a girl gang through Nikkatsu's coolest delinquent picture.
Pinky violence
1969–1979 · 12 films catalogued
Toei's female delinquent films. Formally beautiful, thematically indefensible, often in the same shot.
A Japanese studio cycle, mostly Toei, concentrated in 1971 to 1974: female gang films combining pinku eiga soft-core content with yakuza-film structure and, in the best cases, extraordinary widescreen composition.
The series that matter
Girl Boss (Sukeban), Terrifying Girls' High School, and Female Prisoner Scorpion (1972 to 1973), which is better than the category it was made for.
Meiko Kaji is the face of all of it. The unblinking stare she does in Scorpion and Lady Snowblood is the most copied image in Japanese genre cinema, and it went into Kill Bill more or less intact.
The problem
These are exploitation films. Sexual violence is a recurring device and the camera is not neutral about it.
They are also films where a woman methodically destroys the institutions that abused her, made during a period of real Japanese student and feminist militancy, and shot with a formal ambition that has nothing to do with how they were sold. Shunya Ito's work on Scorpion in particular belongs in a different conversation than the marketing.
Neither of those cancels the other out.
Where to start
The three Ito-directed Scorpion films. After he left, the series becomes ordinary very fast.
Where to start
All 12 →▶ watchobscure
▶ watchobscureHorrors of Malformed Men
1969 · Japan · 99m
Suppressed by Toei for decades. Butoh dancing, an island, and total delirium.
▶ watchobscureZero Woman: Red Handcuffs
1974 · Japan · 88m
Toei's red-coated killer cop, and the blueprint for every lone avenging woman after her.
▶ watchcultBlind Beast
1969 · Japan · 84m
Masumura, one set, three actors, and an ending that goes much further than expected.
▶ watchcultFemale Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41
1972 · Japan · 90m
Ito's second, and the most formally daring film in the whole category.
▶ watchcultGirl Boss Guerilla
1972 · Japan · 84m
Norifumi Suzuki at full speed. Reiko Ike is the whole show.
▶ watchcultFemale Prisoner Scorpion: Beast Stable
1973 · Japan · 87m
Ito's last. Kaji drags a severed arm through Tokyo in the opening minutes.
cultSchool of the Holy Beast
1974 · Japan · 91m
The Japanese entry, and formally the most accomplished of them.
▶ watchcultSex & Fury
1973 · Japan · 88m
The naked snow swordfight. Everyone remembers it; the rest is decent Meiji melodrama.
cultTerrifying Girls' High School: Lynch Law Classroom
1973 · Japan · 89m
The title is the pitch. Delivers on it with unusual formal care.
▶ watchcultFemale Prisoner 701: Scorpion
1972 · Japan · 87m
Sold as a women-in-prison quickie. Shot like an art film. Meiko Kaji barely blinks.
▶ watchknownLady Snowblood
1973 · Japan · 97m
Where Kill Bill got most of its ideas, including the snow.