Female Prisoner Scorpion: #701's Grudge Song

1973 [JAPANESE]

Action / Crime / Drama / Horror / Thriller

4
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 74%
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 74% · 500 ratings
IMDb Rating 6.3/10 10 1850 1.9K

Plot summary

Nami is once again on the run from the law but is saved by an old classmate who works at a strip club. Through a subsequent conversation they discover they both have a score to settle with a particular crooked cop. However, Nami has doubts about ever trusting a man.

Director

Yasuharu Hasebe Photo
Yasuharu Hasebe

Top cast

Akemi Negishi Photo
Akemi Negishi as Prison guard Minamimura
Kotoe Hatsui Photo
Kotoe Hatsui as Tome Kudô
Kôichi Yamada Photo
Kôichi Yamada
Masakazu Tamura Photo
Masakazu Tamura as Yasuo Kudo
720p.BluRay 1080p.BluRay
813.69 MB
1280*534
Japanese 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 28 min
Seeds ...
1.48 GB
1920*800
Japanese 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 28 min
Seeds 13

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by Coventry 6 / 10

Even the mightiest Scorpion loses its deadly sting eventually

More than practically every film I've seen before in my life, "Grudge Song" emphasizes the essentialness of one certain director linked to a cinematic franchise. Shunya Ito directed the first three installments of the ""Female Prisoner: Scorpion" series and they were simply phenomenal and pretty much flawless. For this fourth entry, Yasuharu Hasabe took place in the director's seat and promptly the narrative ingenuity as well as the stylish characteristics notably lowered in quality. By no means I intend to claim that "Grudge Song" is a bad film – far from it, as you can derive from the rating I've given – but it nearly isn't as breathtakingly awesome as the previous ones. But in all honesty, Hasabe can't be blamed entirely, as he actually just remained faithful to his own personalized style and filming methods. This man also directed uncompromising and vastly outrageous Cat-III movies with delicious sounding titles such as "Rape! The 13th Hour", "Assault: Jack the Ripper" and even "Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter", so you honestly can't expect this man to alter his style towards a more elegant and suggestive type of exploitation cinema. The fourth film is much sleazier and straightforward, with less likable character drawings and visually dazzling gimmicks. Hasabe obviously didn't care too much for the complexities of part three ("Beast Stable") or the deliriousness of part two ("Jailhouse 41") and returned to the gritty in-your-face mentality of the original. The script is largely a re-run of familiar themes. Nami is still a fugitive from the law and she has yet another relentless copper obsessively chasing her. She finds shelter, and even affection, in the arms of a porno theater employee who still has an old score to settle with the police. But when he get captured by the police and brutally interrogated, he betrays Nami's hideout place. Back in prison our heroine picks up her old habits of causing riots, manipulating personnel and fellow inmates and – of course – attempting to escape from the hangman's rope. "Grudge Song" is definitely still a good movie, far superior to the majority of contemporary exploitation movies for sure, but a weaker entry in the series. The plot only offers few surprises and Nami suddenly transformed into a genuine antagonist to the audience as well. You always sympathized with her before, but here she commits a handful of crimes that can't possibly be justified. She also talks a little more in this film, and her silence was part of her charming personality in the other installments. Talking in terms of visual decoration, "Grudge Song" is fairly mediocre with only a couple of noteworthy highlights (like the truly menacing POV-shots of the noose in the middle of the prison's yard). This film also immediately marked the end of the "official" Female Scorpion cycle. The successors, appropriately entitled NEW Female Prisoner, don't star Meiko Kaji in the title role any longer and aren't directed by any of the above-mentioned directors. I'm curious about the remaining two films (which I own in a fancy box set), but I'm keeping the expectations rather low just to be sure.
Reviewed by Hey_Sweden 7 / 10

The final outing for female prisoner # 701.

Nami Matsushima (Meiko Kaji) once again escapes from the cops, and is soon hidden & cared for by a strip club worker, Yasuo Kudo (Masakazu Tamura) who shares her disdain of the law. She cares for him, too, to the extent that he might actually change her very low opinion of men. Kinuyo Kodama (Yumi Kanei) is the unorthodox, sadistic lawman still pursuing our tight-lipped anti-heroine.The last in this four-film series about "Female Prisoner # 701", a.k.a. "Scorpion", showed this viewer a reasonably good time. It serves its purpose as an exploitation film: it's grim, it's brutal, it has a smattering of sex & nudity. Nami is still a compelling piece of work who never lets her nemesis break her, and she still always causes trouble whenever she gets a chance. It's fun to watch Kaji do her thing, and the supporting cast is fine, too. The viewer hates Kodama in record time, and feels some sympathy for Kudo (the cops tortured him, too) until what has to be an inevitable moment of disappointment.The first half of the film, however, when it focuses on Kudo and gives Nami precious little to do except react and be swept along, is not nearly as compelling as when the story once again becomes hers. This is a great character, and at least the viewer can feel some degree of satisfaction in the way things are resolved.The consensus is that this is the least film in this series, but it did remain watchable for me for a fairly well-paced 89 minutes.Seven out of 10.
Reviewed by truemythmedia 7 / 10

Solid Conclusion to a Great Series

And so at last we come to the end of the great Matsu the Scorpion's bloody, weird, and incredibly thrilling saga. This is the only entry in the series not directed by Shun'ya Ito, so I was a bit nervous going into this film; I've really enjoyed all the FPS movies, and I really didn't want the final outing to fall flat on it's face.To my great delight, this film didn't fall flat; it delivered everything I'd want from an outing with Matsu. At the same time, Matsu's story seems to be wearing a little thin; at this point in the saga she's escaped from prison with others, had her revenge, and in the last entry ("Beast Stable") she even become a kind of savior for oppressed women. In this entry, history more or less repeats itself; the storyline in "Grudge Song" is relatively the same as the first and second entries ("FPS #701" & "FPS: Jailhouse 41"), only the story is compressed into an hour and a half. If you've seen the other entries, you pretty much know what's going to happen in this entry, and while there isn't necessarily a problem (people still line up for Marvel movies, and they're all relatively homogenous), to me, the series has started to loose a bit of it's appeal, and I honestly think ending it here was probably the best choice: go out on a note that is still relatively positive, and people will be keener to return to the franchise. I, for one, will happily go through Matsu's journey multiple times in my life.
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