Female Prisoner #701 Scorpion: Beast Stable

You have to love a bit of outré Japsploitation, especially one that starts with an arm-severing about 2 minutes in, then features the antiheroic protagonist holding said arm in her teeth as she tries to saw through the handcuffs attaching it to her on a gravestone. Fucking ace.

This is the third film in the Female Prisoner Scorpion series, and I think it’s probably my favourite. It’s a bit less tied down to the series’ prison setting, enabling it to take in a Ming the Merciless-like female pimp with a cage of crows, a forcible abortion, incest, and a finale involving the inimitably cool Meiko Kaji taking refuge in a flooded – and subsequently set-alight – sewer.

There are numerous idiosyncratically stylistic moments, many of which are unexpectedly beautiful; the perpendiculars of a prison corridor cross-hatched with the shadows of bars, burning wanted posters hanging in darkness, or hundreds of lit matches falling through manhole covers.

Total trash of course, but innovative and inventive in a way that approaches brilliance.