Meiko Kaji is truly the goddess of women’s revenge films. Where Christina Lindberg showed promise and poise as she destroyed everyone in her path in They Call Her One Eye, Meiko showed her power in all of the Female Prisoner Scorpion films and then two Lady Snowblood films. In fact, to get his cast ready for what Kill BIll was all about, supposedly Quentin Tarantino made them watch these films.

You can see the inspiration for those two films directly in the way that Lady Snowblood hops time and space, showing you the story of its heroine’s life in a nonlinear fashion.

A woman named Sayo has lost everything. Her husband and son were murdered and then the convicts assaulted her. After stabbing one of them to death, she was imprisoned for life. Unable to escape to get the vengeance that she claims it would take seven lifetimes to fulfill, she seduces multiple prison guards, with her child born in prison and trained for a life of revenge. She is a child of the netherworld and as such, must be trained for a violent life.

Now named Yuki for the snow in which she was born, the young warrior trains under the warrior priest Dokai to become a living instrument of her mother’s hatred.

Yuki learns the names of the three men she must find and goes after them one by one. She has no remorse, even after learning that one of them, Takemura Banzo, saw his life fall apart after what he did to her mother. He’s a drunk, a cheater at gambling and his daughter has turned to selling herself. Yuki gets him pardoned at the gambling den and then reveals her identity to him on a beach before killing him.

She’s also been led to believe that her final target, Tsukamoto Gishiro, had died in a shipwreck just as she began looking for him. She becomes involved with a reporter named Ashio whose story draws out the man who personally murdered her father, Kitahama Okono.

Through all manner of twists and turns, we learn that Ashio’s father is really Gishiro, who had faked his death when he learned that Yuki was on his trail. She will stop at nothing to have her revenge, feelings and her life be damned.

While this movie is based on Kazuo Koike’s Lady Snowblood manga, the role of Yukio was written specifically for Meiko Kaji. Both this film and its sequel were directed by Toshiya Fujita, who was also behind Stray Cat Rock: Wild Jumbo and Street Cat Rock: Beat ’71.

There are literally geysers of blood in this movie, a dark rumination on revenge. It is near-poetic, an odyssey into the depths that pain can cut across multiple lives.

You can watch this on Shudder or get the Criterion set from Diabolik DVD.

Formerly known as Canaries, this movie by Welsh writer/director Peter Stray tells the tale of a New Year’s Eve bash in the Welsh Valley that suddenly finds itself battling an invasion force made up of time-traveling aliens. It’s the first movie to ever be filmed in the Welsh valley of Lower Cwmtwrch, although a few scenes are shot in the same shooting locations of Jaws in Martha’s Vineyard.

DJ Steve Dennis has returned home to Cwmtwrch, Wales to get some new investors and host a New Year’s Eve Party. Coincidentally, that’s the very night that aliens bring together decades of abductions to begin their invasion.

Steve’s not a hero by his own admission and this gets shown numerous times in the film, including a scene where he tries to escape a one night stand by quoting The Terminator before getting called out on it (that said, your author once successfully did so with a line from Pee-wee’s Big Adventure).

The alien/human hybrids are effective when left to the shadows and stalking their prey. Once they’re in the light, these yellow jacketed zombies aren’t as imposing. They do, however, cut the New Year’s party to shreds with their talons. And soon, they start revealing themselves to the people that they intend to replace.

That said, this is an attempt to make a movie with plenty of backstory and show how an alien invasion would impact normal people. It’s the debut feature from writer and director Peter Stray, who shows promise well beyond the budget of this effort.

The closing scenes — which set up a sequel — are harrowing, with the UFOs rising in the sky as the yellow-jacketed aliens stand in watch. I’m interested in seeing what happens next.

Alien Party Crashers is available on VOD and DVD this month.

Disclaimer: I was sent this movie by its PR team but that doesn’t impact our review.

In the first of the remade Scorpion movies, Nami was framed for her involvement in the murder of a politician who was threatening to expose corrupt practices. She escaped from jail to get revenge on those who set her up, including her lover, but was captured at the end. Now, she’s been sent back to prison. The rest of the inmates have been punished for her escape, making her life even rougher. And now, a tougher warden is on the way to make sure she never gets out. Scorpion!

Yu Kohira returns to direct this film, but now we have the third actress to portray Nami Matsushima, Yoko Natsuki.

In this installment, one of the guards just wants peace in the jail, so he’s willing to give the women the cigarettes and chocolate that they need to remain calm. Trust me — this technique never fails to keep my wife happy. However, the new warden just wants to be tough and make life hell for everyone.

The guard tries to expose the abuses of the new warden and ends up chained to Scorpion as they escape into the mountains. So we go from a women in prison movie to a chase film, so at least this one doesn’t follow all the steps of the previous films. Sure, it still feels like we’ve seen this all before — because we have — as this is literally a reboot of the series again!

I did enjoy the kabuki aspects of the film, though. It’s just hard to go from watching the Meiko Kaji films to this, as there’s not much of the style and swagger. However, the scene where the warden tries to quell a riot by shooting his gun into the air, only for a woman to tell him to go have sex with himself, was totally awesome.

Once the escape into the mountains happens, Scorpion finally becomes herself. I love how she continually subverts the male gaze of the guard, willing to kill him and drag his corpse instead of letting him touch her. He asks her if she’s even a woman, but she has no reply.

As the final assassin comes upon them, however, she’s won him over with her toughness and resolve. He sacrifices himself, dashed on the rocks so that she can be free to have her revenge.

The film closes with Scorpion dressed in her trademark black hat, stalking the urban environments of Japan, on her way to get her final bloody payback.

This isn’t the best of the Scorpion movies, but I get that people just want more of them. Maybe they should just watch the first three over and over again like I do.

You think reboots are something new? The Japanese have something to tell you: It wasn’t Puffy Daddy who invented the remix. They waited just three years to retell the story of Scorpion with a new director (Yu Kohira, who also directed Sonny Chiba’s Dragon Princess) and a new, more talkative version of the lead thanks to actress Yumi Takigawa. Believe it or not, the talking makes sense, as Scorpion is foul-mouthed in the manga (and she’s also a busty blonde, but that’s another story.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x59l2f1

Nami Matsushima has a happy life and a great boyfriend. If you know anything about the woman who will one day become Scorpion, that’s all about to change. Her sister uncovers some major corruption before she’s killed and her boyfriend frames her for the crime, sending her to 15 years in the “monkey house” as they call it in Japan.

After being bullied, Nami soon gets a mean streak. The politicians want to murder her and make it look like a suicide to clean up any loose ends, but there’s no way she’s ready to die without a fight.

I really liked the way the courtroom scene was shot, with characters almost made up with kabuki makeup, fast zooms, synthesizer music and a narrow shaft of light over Nami’s face. Also — this movie has the hippest 70’s rock soundtrack you’ve heard since Ron Burgundy learned jazz flute.

At first, I wasn’t really up for a Scorpion movie with a new actress, but then there came a scene where she lit another inmate who tried to kill her on fire — despite her begging for her life. That’s the Scorpion I know and love!

There’s really no need to remake the other films in this series, but that’s not taking anything away from this one. I really liked it once it got going and enjoyed the soundtrack and scenes of Scorpion becoming the avenging near supernatural force that she became by the third film in the original saga.

Alice and her best friend Lauren have inadvertently set a hellish curse in motion. I mean, this is the kind of thing that usually happens after you find a mysterious shrunken head, right? Instead of leaving well enough alone — and throwing away that head — they decide to meet up with Hunter Perry, the host of a paranormal podcast called Beyond the Veil.

Hunter does some research and learns that the shrunken head is legit. He wants to get more hits for his podcast — I feel your pain, dude — and they do a live podcast where the real story of the shrunken head is revealed to his audience. However, doing so releases the demonic spirit of Lilith Ratchet.

When you chant Lilith’s name and play her game — which involves throwing around that severed head ala hot potato — the ancient woman comes and kills you. It turns out that back around the Civil War, her husband chose another woman, so she killed both of them and severed that woman’s head. Now, she lives eternally and always ready to claim new victims.

If you liked Mother Krampus 2: Slay Ride, the last film from director Eddie Lengyel, chances are good that you’ll enjoy this as well. Amazingly, this is the ninth American Poltergeist movie since 2015, although most of the other films aren’t connected. You don’t need to see any of them before this.

Thanks to this helpful IMDB list, those other films would be:

• American Poltergeist
• American Poltergeist 2: The Poltergeist of Borley Forest
• American Poltergeist 3
• American Poltergeist 4: The Curse of the Joker (which has Eric Roberts and Martin Kove in it)
• American Poltergeist 5: A Haunting at the Rectory (based on true events!)
• American Poltergeist 6: The Haunting of Alice D. (with Kane Hodder and Al Snow, minus Head)
• American Poltergeist 7: Haunted
• American Poltergeist (which I guess would be American Poltergeist 8)

American Poltergeist: The Curse of Lilith Ratchet is available now on VOD and DVD. For more information, visit the official Facebook page.

Disclaimer: We were sent this movie by its PR team but that has no impact on our review.

The fourth and final of the first Female Prisoner Scorpion series, this movie has Meiko Kaji coming back to portray Nami Matsushima — the Scorpion — one more time. However, director Shunya Ito was replaced by Yasuharu Hasebe, who worked with Meiko on the Stray Cat Rock series. Scorpion remains on the run after the last film, starting things off the same way, with a lone voice screaming her name.

This time, our heroine is found by the police — including her new nemesis Hirose — in a wedding chapel. Despite handcuffing her, she’s able to escape and makes her way to find Kudo, a political radical who now works in a sex show club. He’s covered by scars from multiple run-ins with the police, so he has no problem keeping Scorpion hidden.

However, one of the girls in the club, upset that Kudo had rebuffed her advances, finds the detective’s handcuffs in Kudo’s room and calls the police. They show up and beat Kudo until he finally gives in and sells out the Scorpion. Yep, she falls in love with him, even gives her body to him willingly unlike every other time in this series and he still lets the cops know where she is. He even leads them to her. Bad move, Kudo.

Soon, Nami is back in prison and sentenced to death. Despite a guard who reaches out to her and asks her to open her heart and ask for forgiveness, Scorpion finally reappears. That’s my main issue with this film. Despite opening with an awesome sequence of Scorpion in her trademark trenchcoat and black hat, the rest of the movie is all about Nami reacting and running instead of being the master manipulator that we know that she can be. That said, by the end of the film, she comes back to who she should be all along, escaping the prison with the help of the warden, murdering the detective who won’t give up on capturing her and then returning to find Kudo, getting her revenge. She tells him that she didn’t stab him. Instead, it was Nami, the woman who fell in love with him. Now, she is only the Scorpion.

This is the final film that Meiko Kaji would play Scorpion, but in 1976, Yutaka Kohira would direct New Female Prisoner Scorpion: #701. He followed that up with New Female Prisoner Scorpion: Special Cellblock X. Evil Dead Trap director Toshiharu Ikeda also presented Scorpion Woman Prisoner: Death Threat in 1991, a new version of the story.

You can watch this on Shudder. Or you can grab the Arrow Video box set at Diabolik DVD.

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.

Declan Holmes is about to graduate college and head into the real world. But to get there, he has to experience losses beyond what he’s ever felt before. This movie is all about his journey through the most difficult time of his life and the relationships that will either make or break him.

Delan has it rough. His dad is dying but they haven’t reached any resolution beforehand. He’s broken up with the love of his life. And most importantly to him, he has a script that he just can’t finish.

This is a pretty talky affair and I found it difficult to connect to the hero, but that may because I’ve lived more life than he has and know that the issues that make you feel like its the end of the world in your 20’s are nothing compared to the pain and stress that you’ll feel in your 40’s. I’m certain I’ll feel the same way twenty years from now as I look back.

This was shot right in my home area of Western Pennsylvania, so it’s cool to see movies coming out of the region. I’m looking forward to seeing where Matt Croyle’s work proceeds from here.

You can buy and watch this movie at the official site.

DISCLAIMER: We were sent this movie by its PR firm, but that doesn’t impact our review.

“You’re a beautiful flower” – his words flatter you today

But once you’re in full bloom, he’ll just toss you away.

Foolish, foolish, foolish woman’s song.

Her song of vengeance.

“Sorrow is my fate.”

So you’ve given up on men.

Show him your tears and he’ll bring you grief again.

Tearful, tearful, tearful woman’s song.

Her song of vengeance.

A bright red rose has thorns that you might not see.

I don’t want to pierce you, but how else will I get free?

Burning, burning, burning woman’s song.

Her song of vengeance. 

With these words, we have returned to the world of Female Prisoner #701 Scorpion. When we first see our heroine, Nami Matsushima (Meiko Kaji, truly the queen of all revenge movies), she is bound and stuck in solitary confinement, but her eye stares directly at us, the viewer. It is not a look of sadness or fear. It is a look that this jail is temporary, as are all things, and as we hear the scraping of metal against concrete, we notice the spoon between her teeth being turned into a shiv.

Inspector Goda, the warden of the prison that Matsushima, or Matsu the Scorpion, walked back into in the last film is due to be promoted to a higher position. As another inspector comes to the jail, he brings Matsu out of confinement so that she may be inspected. Of course, this is when our heroine attacks, scratching his face and inciting a riot.

The punishment? Four guards are sent to brutally assault Matsu and then she and six other inmates are sent to a labor camp. On the way, the six women beat Matsu mercilessly. The guards are told that she may be dead, so when they stop the van, they’re shocked. She’s still alive and the women murder the guards and blow the van up.

As the women escape, they reveal their crimes to one another. Oba discovered that her husband was unfaithful, so she drowned their son and stabbed herself, which led to her killing their unborn child.

Then, an old woman with a dagger shows up and the further crimes of the gang are shown as the old woman gives Scorpion her blade before dying and turning into leaves that blow away in the wind! I love that the Scorpion films can seemingly be based in reality in one moment and then become strange art films with no warning at all.

After stealing clothes and hiding in an abandoned home, the prisoners wait for nightfall. One of them, Haru, finds her own home and son, but is found by two of the jailers. They offer her freedom if she reveals where the others are. Matsu kills one of the guards, but one of the convicts is also killed and the other guard makes his way back to Inspector Goda.

A tour bus passes through the same area and everyone is warned that the convicts are on the loose. That doesn’t make three of the men on the bus any less leering and lecherous. They end up finding one of the convicts, who they assault and throw into the river for dead. The other girls find her body and attack the bus, holding everyone hostage while taking their revenge on the three men.

As they approach a police checkpoint, the de facto gang leader Oba throws Scorpion out of the bus. The roadblock also has Haru’s son on it, so she runs toward him and is killed by a sniper. Oba and the convicts kill the bus driver and plow through the roadblock. However, the police soon corner them and Goda sends Scorpion to learn of the hostages’ status.

She lies and states that everyone is dead, so the police attack. The women throw the three evil men outside, who are all killed by police bullets. Everyone except Oba is killed. As the police capture both her and Scorpion, they plan to kill our heroine on the way back to the prison. Oba saves her and gives up her life, finally freeing Scorpion.

Inspector Goda has been promoted and is now in the city, where Scorpion finally tracks him down. She repeatedly stabs him and her dagger is passed to the ghosts of all the convicts, who pass it back and forth as they run wild through the streets.

Made just months after the original, this film posits that Scorpion spent an entire year in solitary confinement, just waiting for her revenge. Well, she gets it. She might have to go through hell, but she gets it.

Meiko Kaji is, of course, beyond amazing in this film. She made 26 movies between 1970 and 1972, which is some feat of endurance that I don’t see many capable of doing these days. In each of these, she often faced excruciating scenes of torture and emotional pain, yet she never loses her dignity nor willingness to come back and decimate all in her path. In 1973, she’d make two more Scorpion films and Lady Snowblood, so it wasn’t like she was about to slow down any time soon.

I love that despite the antics of the gang of women, Scorpion remains separate from them. Her goal throughout is her own solitary revenge and whatever it takes to get it.

The final scenes, where we go from Scorpion staying with Oba as she dies in a garbage dump to her finally tracking down Doga in the city are beyond amazing. Her vengeance is such that even the screen can’t contain it, as she slices through the fourth wall and splits it asunder. The once powerful man has become weakness in Scorpion’s arms, as she has assumed her true form, the black-clad destroyer of worlds, as she repeatedly stabs him without expression. Only when his false eye falls out and we see inside it do we get to watch her laugh and smile as she leads the women’s spirits out of death and through the streets. It brought tears of joy to my eyes. Such a pure moment of cinema!

You can watch this on Shudder or order the beyond impeccable Arrow Video box set at Diabolik DVD.

Toshiya Fujita comes back to finish off the Stray Cat Rock series with one last tale. In this one, Meiko Kaji also returns to play Furiko, a girl in love with Ryumei. They want to live together as hippies, but his politician father Mayor Araki wants him to be a businessman. So he does what any dad would do: have a gang of bikers abduct his son. However, Ryumei kills one of them in self-defense and Meiko ends up being blamed for the crime. What’s a girl to do?

Furiko escapes prison whole her hippy friends stage all manner of scandalous behavior for the press while the boss Piranha plays spaghetti western music. It’s all for money, which seems alien to the hippy ideal, but what do I know? So does holding them up for more money.

The gang argues about Furiko killing the man and realize that it was all for her man’s sake. She took the fall while he returned home. As soon as she busts out, she goes to find him. But now he’s gone straight and his family kidnaps her.

So that means that the gang of hippies leave Shinjuku and bicycle up to the countryside to save Furiko. The trailer those hippies live in is pretty happening and they mostly pose on top of it and show off for reporters who come by.

I mean, they had nothing better to do after Nekuro had sex with a jackhammer and died of an orgasm induced heart attack. What is going on with this installment of Stray Cat Rock!?!

If you can guess that Ryumei’s father runs the town and that even if he loves Furiko that everything is going to end badly, you’ve been watching the Stray Cat Rock series. I did love the sacrifice that Piranha makes at the end so that his gang can live, though.

After this movie. Meiko Kaji moved to the Toei studio and started work on the Female Convict 701 Scorpion series. It’s just as well as she’s an afterthought in this movie and deserved way better.

Should you watch the Stray Cat Rock series? How do you feel about motorcycles and random music numbers? Enjoy 1970’s fashion? Want to get to know people only to have them killed by the end? Then by all means, it’s time to get into them.

You can watch this on Amazon Prime or get the entire Arrow Video box set.