Filmed in colours that tilt without warning from ashen, >ale shades into scrambled, lurid hues, Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 47 brings the characters from Tooru Shinohara's popular manga to genital-swinging life. The storyline assumes the form of a quest for vengeance by a woman imprisoned — but director Shunya Ito's images and the singular star-presence of Meiko Kaji (Stray Cat Rock, Lady Snowblood) combine to transcend a common B-film revenge tale and take on an execution that is unadulterated IMPACT.

Although conceived as a follow-up to Ito's Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion, Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 can nonetheless be enjoyed and obsessed over as a stand-alone achievement, a unique totem for the annals of 1970s Japanese cine-exploitation. It's in this installment that full-blown artifice locks horns with psychosexual horror — before collapsing in a pile of offal, wearing the grin of a gassed corpse. Prepare yourself for lock-down.