Capsule reviews

japanese sleaze edition: female prisoner #701 and natsuo kirino's grotesque

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Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion (Shunya Itō, 1972)

This movie is so out of my usual lane that I kind of wondered if I should write it up at all. But then I thought: never doubt that a newsletter writer wildly opining about things she lacks context for can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has…. Anyway, I watched this because somebody I follow on Letterboxd reviewed it with “this is why i watch movies.”¹ So then I scrolled up to the description to see what that was all about since the title didn’t seem that promising:

After being cruelly set up and deceived by Sugimi, a detective in cohorts with the mob with whom she was whole-heartedly in love, Matsushima’s desire for revenge knows no bounds.

I scrolled back down to the review. I thought: really? Back up. Back down. I was not going to figure this one out by scrolling. I sometimes think about half the stuff I read or watch I do for this kind of stupid reason: I stumble across it and I think… why not?