Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		2.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.5

Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 13, 2016

Note: This film is currently available as part of the box set Female Prisoner Scorpion: The Complete Collection.

The damsel in distress has been a cinematic staple since the earliest day of the silents, when aghast audiences were horrified by the sight of some dastardly villain tying a helpless heroine to the railroad tracks (or something like that). Interestingly, that plot device underwent a subtle but ultimately kind of significant change decades later when the whole “women in prison” subgenre started cropping up. Suddenly, the damsels weren’t just in distress, they were surrounded by leering people ostensibly in power, and they also had to suffer various indignities fostered by their fellow inmates. This almost fetishitic subject matter had a zenith of sorts in a series of Japanese exploitation films that began with 1972’s Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion, a series which appeared probably not so coincidentally just as feminism was really starting to gain a toehold globally. Featuring Meiko Kaji, who would go on to star in the Female Prisoner Scorpion sequels as well as the somewhat tonally similar The Complete Lady Snowblood, the Female Prisoner Scorpion films are fascinating not just for their often lurid content, but also for presentational aspects that are oddly if quite interestingly theatrical, giving the films a bit of both the mundane and the arcane.

If as I mentioned in our Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion Blu-ray review heroine Nami Matsushima (Meiko Kaji) was confined to a cell that looked like something out of The Man in the Iron Mask, Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 begins with an hallucinatory sequence inside a fortress like jail that, accompanied by a haunting scraping sound, could almost be out of one of the Edgar Allen Poe — Roger Corman adaptations found in any of the Vincent Price Collections. Weird, skewed camera angles and that repetitive sound—what is it?—all combine to instantly create a feeling of discombobulation and angst. It’s soon revealed that once again “she’s baaaack” — in prison, that is, and as seems to be her predicament, bound and trussed with her hands behind her back as she resides on a cold stone floor. The scraping sound turns out to be Nami slowly but surely fashioning a spoon into a shiv by holding it in her mouth and pulling it back and forth on that cold stone floor, filing away its roundness until it’s a sharp little quasi-knife. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out there’s mayhem coming down the line with this implement.

Already the dialectic between a gritty, neo-realistic environment and a completely stylized and even surreal presentational aspect is evident, and it’s one of the most defining aspects of this second film in the Female Prisoner Scorpion franchise. This is a film that has not one but several horrifying rape scenes, but which is just as likely to tip over into theatrical stagings that, as I mentioned in passing with regard to Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion, assume a ritualistic aspect that is evocative of ancient forms like kabuki. This is a film with less of a standard narrative arc than a somewhat meandering if frankly Jungian stream of consciousness, and as such it may end up perplexing viewers as much as it intrigues them.

Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 is one of the odder entries in this series, but it also has a weird kind of poetry going for it, despite its often squirm inducing subject matter and visuals (I haven’t even gotten to the male immolation yet). That’s probably nowhere better seen than in a ravishing sequence that is like something out of Kurosawa (and, no, I’m not kidding) with Nami in a forest with some kind of spirit (or is it?) surrounded by a frenetic ballet of colorful autumn leaves. It’s a stunning sequence in a film that seems to be half hell, half heaven.

Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

All four films in Female Prisoner Scorpion: The Complete Collection exhibit some of the same tendencies, and so I'll begin each review with some general comments about the set, including Arrow's description of the provenance of the transfers, before moving on to specific comments about each individual film. Arrow's verbiage on the transfers is as follows:

The films of the Female Prisoner Scorpion Collection have been exclusively restored in 2K resolution for this release by Arrow Films and are presented in their original theatrical aspect ratio of 2.35:1 [Note: The Blu-ray ARs are actually 2.39:1] with mono sound.

A set of low-contrast 35mm prints struck from the original 35mm film elements were supplied by Toei Company, Ltd. These prints were scanned in 2K resolution on a pin-registered 4K Northlight Scanner. Picture grading was completed on a DaVinci Resolve and thousands of instances of dirt, debris and light scratches were removed using PFClean software. Overall image stability and instances of density fluctuation were was also improved. All restoration work was completed at Pinewood Studios.

The images on all four Female Prisoner Scorpion films favor a noticeably cyan/blue look throughout. This look was inherent in the film materials supplied and relates to how these lab materials were created, as well as how the original elements have faded over time. With these restorations, we have aimed to present the films as close to their intended original style and appearance as possible.

In order to better understand what is on tap for the viewer in these presentations it's probably important to try to unpack what the preceding spiel "really" means. The fact that Arrow is commendably forthcoming to state that these were sourced off of low contrast 35mm prints explains one thing, but what exactly the "original 35mm film elements" were is something else entirely, and I personally suspect we're dealing with secondary source elements to begin with (if someone out there has definitive information, pass it along and I'll happily update the review). All four films exhibit "dupey" tendencies, apart and aside from problems introduced by the low contrast source. These include variable (and at times pretty problematic) grain structure, some mosquito noise intruding, especially in darker scenes, horizontal banding/clumping of grain and just a generally roughhewn appearance that often tends to defeat detail and especially fine detail levels. Dark scenes are often littered with crush, and due to the frequent skewing toward blue, blacks can often appear purplish and flesh tones often assume an almost ghastly pallor. In all four films when things venture out of doors in brighter lighting conditions, the palette improves at least incrementally, but there's really nothing here that looks vivid or, more saliently, natural. A little oddly (at least to me), considering the blue look of the films, reds and oranges often come off looking at least relatively better than some other tones.

Jailhouse 41 is a noticeable downturn from already questionable levels of detail and color timing seen in the first film. The opening scenes of the prison are a deep blue and suffer from recurrent crush, to the point that one of the first shots of Nami is virtually bathed in black. One of the kind of odd things about most of these transfers, and something that shows up here in early scenes in the prison, is how flesh tones regularly skew toward green. Though the entire color scheme is obviously very blue (unnaturally so, lest that not be clear), watch for example how green the flesh tones are when the women are in the back of the paddy wagon, to cite just one example. At around 27:28 there's some pretty bad image instability with a shot of a gravel hill, which is then followed by the shot captured in screenshot 6 where it almost looks like things have been greenscreened (blue screened?). During one of the more patently theatrical sequences starting at around 35:30, reds have an at least decent accounting (see screenshot 2), and in this film's signature set piece at around 39:00 the variously colored leaves offer a hint of tonal differences that the rest of this blue laden transfer tends not to. As with several other moments in films in this set, there are brief instances of relatively "normal" looking palettes, including a brief scene at circa 52:00 that offer almost human looking flesh tones and some relatively natural looking reds. My score is 2.25.

Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

All four films feature LPCM Mono tracks in the original Japanese (with optional English subtitles). There's slight but noticeable distortion in the upper midrange, especially during cues. It's somewhat more prevalent in some of the more intense cues, especially those featuring koto (as in Jailhouse 41). #701's Grudge Song probably sounds the best of the bunch, but it's notable that the entire mix seems a little hotter on that film than on the other three. All four films deliver dialogue without much problem, and sound effects (i.e., blades slashing, bullets flying) are generally decent if not overwhelmingly powerful.

Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• An Appreciation by Kier-la Janisse (1080p; 28:03) offers the thoughts of this writer and film programmer on the series.


• Jasper Sharp on the Career of Shunya Ito (1080p; 10;29) is a 2016 retrospective of the director's work.


• Tadayuki Kawana: Designing Scorpion (1080p; 16:35) is an interesting 2016 interview with the production designer of the first three films in the series.


• Trailers

  Original Teaser (1080p; 1:47)

  Original Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 3:11)

• Credits (1080p; 00:55) is a list of credits since Arrow chose not to subtitle the actual credits sequence, other than the title song lyric.

Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The allegory is slathered on fairly thickly in Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 (at one point Nami literally has a cross to bear), but the whole allusive aspect of the film is surprisingly forceful, though, due to the absolutely bizarre presentational style, which verges on the psychedelic more than a time or two. The film is odd, to say the least, but it's never less than fascinating. Unfortunately problematic video will probably be too much of a hurdle for many fans or intrigued newcomers.