Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 (Joshuu sasori: Dai-41 zakkyo-bo) (1972)
Shunya Ito’s second instalment in the Sasori series is, if possible, even better than the terrific original film. Ito moves further away from anything you could label as typical women in prison movie, or typical exploitation. The first big surprise comes soon after the technically brilliant but storywise not so surprising opening scenes. Seven female prisoners manage to escape while being transported to the prison, and the whole rest of the movie takes place outside the prison walls. Among the escaped prisoners is Scorpion (Meiko Kaji) who holds personal grudge against the sadistic warden (Fumio Watanabe).
Most of the film plays out like a surreal road movie. The storyline itself is simple but slightly spiced it up with some sensitive subjects like echos of Japan’s wartime crimes. Visually the film is exceptional with terrific cinematography and use of colours. The surreal content is perfectly balanced with the more realistic parts and never feels out of place in the story. Sound effects, music, silence and songs by Meiko Kaji are used extremely well and deserve a special mention. The ending is not quite as satisfying as in the first film, but what preceeds it is one hell of a memorable trip.
The main star Meiko Kaji dominates every scene she’s in, despite the fact that she has no more than two lines of dialogue in the entire film. But her eyes say more than a thousand words ever could, and this is certainly not left unnoticed by Ito who takes full use of close ups of her eyes. As far as male cast goes Fumio Watanabe, Shinzo Hotta and Hideo Murota all return from the first film.
The dvds
I own two dvd editions of the film. The japanese dvd by Toei (used in this review) is interlaced and heavily cropped, which is a serious problem in such a carefully framed film. The colour and brightness however is pretty much perfect. The french Studio Canal dvd is not cropped but is overly bright, which hurts the films colours which in case of Jailhouse 41 is an extremely big deal. The film is full of discreet color and brightness details that go missing on the Studio Canal dvd. The background detail is also a mess, plus there’s edge enhancement. It also features burn it french subtitles for credits and for one song in the middle of the movie.
The Studio Canal dvd is cut. The rape scene in the beginning is missing the last 12 seconds. There’s no graphic footage, just men laughing. On the Toei dvd the sound goes mute near the end of the scene (I’m sure this is intentional). My guess is that some french smart ass though it wasn’t intentinal and cut that footage out. I don’t see a reason to avoid this dvd because of this specific flaw, but it does make the scene worse as the sudden transition from the horror to complete silence is very effective.
There’s a third transfer for the film which was used on the old OOP US dvd by Image (NTSC) and the recent UK dvd by Eureka (NTSC to PAL), but that transfer seems very poor (although not cropped) and comes with burnt in english subtitles. I really wonder why Eureka went for the US transfer instead of the native PAL Studio Canal transfer... especially when Studio Canal are well known for licensing their transfers to other companies. Aside these four editions there’s also a German dvd by R.E.M which is very likely to a port of the Toei transfer (but NTSC to PAL).
Extras wise Studio Canal has the edge with their exclusive Shunya Ito, Romain Slocombe and Risaku Kiridoushi interviews. There’s also an introduction for the film (by Jean-Pierre Dionnet), picture gallery and text infos. But where the hell are the trailers? Well, they’re on the Toei dvd, which comes with both the original trailer and the original teaser. The usual photo gallery is also included, and Toei has used the original poster as cover art. Studio Canal too went for the original poster, it’s just that the idiots picked the wrong movie. They’ve used artwork from the third movie (Beast Stable)! The titles found in the cover are ”Beast Stable” (in japanese) and ”Elle S’appelait Scorpion”. The back cover claims the original title is Female Convict Scorpion (which is the first half of the US title). And they have four or five different spellings for the director’s name....
EDIT:
Pathe later released all 6 movies in a box set in France. For Jailhouse 41 is seems they have used the Studio Canal, but they have remastered it. It is sharper than Toei and does not feature the cropping present on Toei’d dvd, but the colours are a bit bluish, and not as accurate as Toei in my opinion. The cut remains, but no burnt in subtitles anymore. It’s a good release but I still consider Toei the best edition.
Discotek / Eastern Star has also licensed Jailhouse 41 and will release it in 2009 or 2010.
Toei screencaptures
Footage missing from the french dvd
Picture quality comparison between Toei, Studio Canal and Pathe dvds can be found here:
https://www.bulletsnbabesdvd.com/forums/ ... php?t=3693