Female Convict Scorpion Jailhouse 41

An absolutely phenomenal surrealist-cum-exploitation picture, "Female Convict Scorpion--Jailhouse 41" is the second in a series of films about Matsu (known to her fellow inmates as "Scorpion"), a diminutive but volatile woman who is wrongly sent to prison by a betraying boyfriend. Incredibly satisfying and spectacularly photographed, these women's prison pictures feature an anti-heroine who is beautiful, strong, principled and basically honorable and decent--especially when compared to everyone around her. One of the truly genuine masterpieces of violent 1970s cinema, "Female Convict Scorpion--Jailhouse 41" is, in its own way, as subversive as Donald Cammell & Nicolas Roeg's "Performance," John Boorman's "Point Blank" and Jean-Luc Godard's "Weekend."