Sasori - Scorpion
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Sasori - Scorpion |
| Original title | 女囚 701 号 さ そ り Joshū 701-gō: Sasori |
| Country of production | Japan |
| original language | Japanese |
| Publishing year | 1972 |
| length | 87 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 18 ( SPIO / JK ) |
| Rod | |
| Director | Shun'ya Ito |
| script |
Fumio Konami , Hirō Matsuda |
| music | Shunsuke Kikuchi |
| camera | Hanjirō Nakazawa |
| cut | Osamu Tanaka |
| occupation | |
| |
Sasori - Scorpion ( Japanese 女囚 701 号 さ そ り , Joshū 701-gō: Sasori , German female inmate No. 701: Scorpion ) is a Japanese feature film by director Shun'ya Itō from 1972 and is about a woman who is opposes a male-dominated world, which inevitably amounts to a confrontation. The work is the first part of a six-part film series based on the manga Sasori ( さ そ り ) by Tōru Shinohara ( 篠 原 と お る ).
The women's prison film produced by the Tōei studios is part of the Japanese sexploitation cinema, called Pink Eiga , a sophisticated soft porn variant that combined sex and violence with a female identification figure. Toei's most important exploitation star of the in-house Pinky Violence films , a harder version of the Pink Eiga strips, was Meiko Kaji , who was lured away from the Nikkatsu studios in the early 1970s .
The actress, who became a big screen star with the film series, also sang the title song Urami Bushi ( 怨 み 節 ) composed by Shunsuke Kikuchi , which was later also heard in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill .
action
The young Nami Matsushima falls in love with the drug investigator Sugimi, who smuggles her into a yakuza club as an informant . According to the plan of the police officer, Nami is supposed to explore illegal drug trafficking routes, but is soon exposed and abused by members of the gang and later raped. To her greatest disappointment, she finds out that she has been betrayed by her former lover who betrayed her about her career; Furthermore, he turns out to be an accomplice of the Yakuza boss. Humiliated, injured and disappointed, Matsushima tries to take revenge on Sugimi, but is overwhelmed after a failed murder attempt and is ultimately sentenced to several years in prison in a maximum security prison for women.
Three years later, Nami Matsushima, prisoner number 701, who everyone just calls “Sasori” - the scorpion - starts an unsuccessful escape from the women's prison with her fellow inmate Yuki . The two fugitives will soon be arrested and transferred back to the “toughest prison in Japan”. In response to the attempted escape, the prison administration introduced collective punishments and initially rationalized the distribution of food. Matsushima and Yuki, however, are tortured. Both find themselves tied up on the floor of a solitary cell, where they are harassed by fellow prisoners and mistreated by self-righteous, sadistic guards. Due to her tenacity and her great will, Matsu, in contrast to her companion, who is also in solitary confinement, suffers all the torments and humiliations that she is supposed to break. She rarely speaks and fights against her inner, irrepressible anger for her revenge on Sugimi, who has meanwhile been promoted to head of the drug search. A yakuza boss observes Matsushima in prison on behalf of Sugimi and soon identifies her as a potential danger due to her unusual behavior, which he wants to get rid of through fellow prisoners Katagiri. Katagiri is supposed to kill Matsu.
Matsu is taken back into solitary confinement with a female police spy, Kito, after rioting by hostile inmates in which she was involved. The prison warden hopes to finally get her to talk. But after this project also fails, new collective punishments follow. All prisoners are called to the labor service, where they have to dig holes in the stony ground for hours under supervision and then fill them up again. The physically very strenuous activity not only stirs up hatred of Matsu, but also a real unrest, in the course of which there is a revolt against the guards, with deaths on both sides. Overwhelmed with weapons, some of them dead, the imprisoned women manage to take three of their tormentors hostage and hide themselves in a warehouse. Katagiri also takes advantage of the general unrest and shoots Matsu with a captured rifle, but only meets her escape companion Yuki, who bravely stands between Matsu and the shooter. Yuki dies as a result of her injuries, but can still tell her friend the name of the shooter: Katagiri.
In the surrounding warehouse, Ōtsuka turns out to be the ringleader of around 60 women, including Katagiri, who, in addition to food and better prison conditions, also demand Nami Matsushima in exchange for the hostages. However, the prison director is unwilling to go into the blackmail of the hostage takers, but does not hesitate to hand over Matsu, who suffers another ordeal in the warehouse. She is mistreated several times by Ōtsuka and her entourage, whose hopeless situation is attributed to Matsu. After the group has settled down a bit, Katagiri tries to burn Matsu, but is prevented from doing so by the angry group who sees Katagiri as a traitor who wants to burn them all. At that moment, the guards stormed the storeroom and a firefight broke out with general tumult. In this mess, Matsu ignites a fire that quickly develops into a larger fire and reaches the captured katagiri who burns so excruciatingly. Matsu himself manages to escape.
As a black-clad “Sasori” she starts her campaign of revenge in freedom and first kills some Yakuza members who once beat and raped her, as well as their boss, Yakuza boss Takenaka. She ambushes her last victim, Sugimi, in the police headquarters and kills him with several knife stabs on the roof of the building. In the last shot of the film, you see her again as a prisoner wandering through a cell block of the women's prison.
Production notes
Director Shun'ya Itō, who assisted the renowned Japanese filmmaker Teruo Ishii , among others , created the beginning of a six-part film adaptation based on the popular manga "Sasori" by Tōru Shinohara, which was also the template for Tōeis, which was extremely successful in commercial terms with his debut work Sasori - Scorpion Prison series 網 走 番 外地 ( Abashiri bangaichi ) delivered. His work, which can be assigned to the popular Japanese women's prison film series, a mixture of art house and exploitation films, combines violence, blood and sex with expressionistic images, innovative camera angles and cuts, the experimental nature of which gives the film an even greater manga-like resemblance .
The leading actress Meiko Kaji, who was previously known mainly for the Stray Cat Rock series and was under contract with the Nikkatsu Studios, moved to the Toei Studios. Here she increased her popularity with the Sasori series (Japanese for "scorpion"). In the first part, however, there is no information on how she got this name. In contrast to the manga, in which Nami "Matsu" Matsushima constantly throws profanity around her, in the film version she is an extremely silent character who endures all abuse with a stoic calm.
There are four so-called “Female Prisoner” films with Meiko Kaji in the lead role. After Sasori - Scorpion , the two sequels followed Jailhouse 41 - Sasori (1972) and Sasori - Den of the Beast (1973) by director Shunya Itō and Sasori - Grudge Song (1973) by Yasuharu Hasebe . The last two parts of the so-called Female Prisoner Sasori series received little attention from the cinema audience without Meiko Kaji's participation. The main role was instead played by Yumi Takigawa (in Shin Joshū Sasori: 701-gō ) and Yōko Natsuki (in Shin Joshū Sasori: Tokushu-bō X ). In the early 1990s, another film adaptation of the material was made under the title Scorpion Woman Prisoner: Death Treat .
Reviews
Björn Becher wrote on the website filmstarts.de that with " Sasori 1 - Scorpion the director offers a real firework of staging ideas " that are not for the " sake of formal gimmicks " but always " the plot and the socially critical elements of the film " served.
The lexicon of international films wrote that the film was a "women's prison film with a lot of sex and extremely harsh scenes of violence that focused on a stoic and ruthless woman" . The film is also "exploitation on a visually high level with disturbing images."
Web links
- Sasori - Scorpion in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Sasori - Scorpion in the online movie database
- Sasori - Scorpion at Rotten Tomatoes (English)