After the poetically beautiful ending of the second film in the Female Convict Scorpion series, Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41, this film starts with sheer violence. Matsu the Scorpion (Meiko Kaji) is wanted, with her face on every wall in the city, after leading a jailbreak. As she sits silently by herself as every newspaper around her shows that she is a dangerous fugitive, Detective Kondo and his partner notice her.

As they go to grab her, she pulls out her knife but she’s handcuffed to Kondo. However, the Scorpion will not be denied and she rushes out of the train car as the doors close. She hacks off the detective’s arm and runs through the streets, spraying the lawman’s blood everywhere.

Scorpion is back and woe to anyone that gets in her way.

There is one person willing to help Scorpion: Yuki, a prostitute who is abused on the streets and at home by her mentally deficient older brother. When they first meet, Scorpion is still stuck to that bloody arm, which later shows up in the mouth of a dog in a striking sequence.

Soon, she becomes Yuki’s defender in a world that is ready to take everything from her. All Matsu wants to do is be a seamstress and fade away, but her attack against a Yakuza member leads to her former prison mate Katsu recognizing her. This is where the series takes a turn for cartoonish, as his boss lady’s makeup, demeanor and dress suggest that she’s some demented Disney villainess, complete with an army of evil animals. She throws Matsu into a cage of deadly ravens, but she soon escapes and starts destroying Katsu’s gang, which brings back the one-armed Kondo, who wants personal and not just professional revenge.

This film deals with issues of motherhood and abortion, as both Yuki and another prostitute must both terminate their pregnancies. However, as the second woman dies as a result of her back alley surgery, her hand drops a blade into Scorpion’s hand. Director Shunya Ito cites Luis Bunuel as one of his favorite directors. Therefore, the recurring images of blades being pulled across the eyes in this series are homages to Un Chien Andalou. Whereas in the previous film, the old woman who faded into the leaves gave Scorpion all of her powers, here the dead prostitute’s gift of the blade unleashes the first tears we’ve seen our heroine shed. She is now more than just the destroyer of worlds. She is death incarnate, the black angel, the final defender of women who have lost everything.

In what he saw as the final film of the series — Kaji would return for one more — Shunya Ito wanted to create a world where all of the demon ghost stories of old Japan became true, such as the tale of Tsuna Watanabe cutting off a demon’s arm and the brother and sister in a forgotten village, whose incest was the only way they could support one another.

There’s a proto-Goodfellas sequence here where we follow Scorpion as she kills off everyone on her list, one by one, just as the camera follows the victims of Jimmy Conway to cover up the Lufthansa heist. Bodies are left in the streets, in movie theaters, in car washes and in one striking sequence, Scorpion slashes a man in front of an entire wall of wanted posters bearing her name. The kills come quickly and brutally, with no need to set up time or place. We are in the poetic world of art now and her art is death. She even appears from mirrors, saying that she has been possessed by the spirit of the dead girl before unleashing a raven that attacks a man and sends him flying through a glass window.

Scorpion then runs from the police, across rooftops and dodging searchlights before being cornered by an army of officers. She takes to the sewers, as man after man is sent down, each dying by her hand. As Scorpion goes deeper into these watery passages, the camerawork becomes more claustrophobic.

All these men with their toys, like bulletproof vests, SCUBA gear, boats and submachine guns. And all our heroine has is her knife.

Yuki finally runs to the streets, after her brother takes her one more time, and the rains wash the sewers, ruining the hiding place. Scorpion won’t give up. She can’t. Yuki feeds her friend but is discovered by the detective, who abuses her with a roomful of men in full armor who beat her with wooden swords and threatens to keep her so that her brother will starve.

The end of this movie is beyond perfect. After setting the sewers ablaze and Kondo laughing like a maniac — this movie has a Die Hard fireball 16 years before that movie came out — everyone’s life moves on as if Scorpion were dead. Or is she? We see Yuki bruised and back in her brother’s arms before the blazing waters of the underground are broken by Scorpion rising from the water like some sort of ghost.

As a result of her dealings with Detective Kondo, Katsu is in jail, her face pale but no longer sporting her distinctive makeup. Yet you can tell that she’s in power, even behind bars.

Then a new prisoner shows up for a short three-month sentence. Katsu becomes convinced that this woman is Scorpion. Even when Kondo comes to the prison to either clean up loose ends or question Katsu further, he shows up at her cell just as she’s convinced that Scorpion is about to kill her. She ends up killing the detective as a woman mops the floor. As Kondo struggles and demands she sound an alarm, the woman looks up and it’s Scorpion. She locks eyes with him as he dies.

Finally, all of the wanted posters are ablaze as Scorpion’s theme plays one last time. We end on her face. She should be happy now that her mission of vengeance is over and she can rest. But no — all we get are her eyes staring at us.

I can’t even explain how life changing this movie is. Rush to find it, watch it and be changed by it.

You can watch this on Shudder or go all in and buy the Arrow Video box set at Diabolik DVD.