The Female Prisoner Scorpion and Lady Snowblood film series present a similar 
challenge: at the end of the first film in each, Meiko Kaji’s protagonist has found her revenge, so how will the series continue? I suspected Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 (1972) might be a sequel in name only, starring Kaji and her titular, vengeful protagonist in a new scenario, rather like the Outlaw films of the 60s. Instead, Jailhouse 41 picks up where the first film left off, with a brutal reminder that Scorpion’s vengeance is not complete: the prison warden yet lives.
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Like a few of the other Japanese gangster movies I’ve reviewed here on Kino 893, it’s a title that 
The directorial debut of Shunya Itō, starring Meiko Kaji, 
satisfying take on the 
horizons on Japanese cinema, one of the main reasons I want to watch films from the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s is their outsized influence on later filmmakers. Quentin Tarantino is outspoken on the influence Japanese cinema has had on his pictures, with 
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