Scorpion is pursued in the subway by the police. At the last minute, she manages to escape them, taking with her one of the policemen’s arm with the handcuff. She takes refuge at a prostitute’s home who has strange relationships with her crazy brother.

The Beast Stable is the third and last movie produced by Shunya Ito. It digs a little more the morbid and desperate line which started with the two previous movies: Female Prisoner #701 Scorpion and Jailhouse 41. The opening which is a real uppercut in the stomach, insists on the aggressive atmosphere in which the film falls down without any restraint. During a pursuit in the subway, Scorpion is caught with handcuffs by a policeman. To escape, she has no other possibility than tearing off the policeman’s arm. For a while, she strolls in the street with the bloody arm hanging from her wrist. The literal and play metaphor of violence, which pursues the young woman marked by fate, does not beat around the bush. Goodbye ellipses, what’s left unsaid. Shunya Ito completely accepts the deal: telling a violent story full of noise and rage in an atmosphere looking like a vicious photo story. The serial had never gone so far in the sadistic and morbid atmosphere.

The stunning entrance into the bosom of true cinema of exploitation goes on with a series of very violent and audacious scenes. A prostitute sleeps with her mad brother, she becomes pregnant and is assaulted by a perverse female pimp who is an old cell rival of Scorpion. Women are beaten, humiliated and murdered in dreadful sufferings. The iconic character of Scorpion, a kind of death angel in a woman body, owns a cathartic and erotic power directly coming from the universe of a manga. Pomposity and madness are in the middle of a fabulous and stylized B serial which is on the side of the Italian bis of the 70’s. This maelstrom of deviant sex and sharpen violence is soften by a sophisticated and refined direction which is underlined by elaborated framings. The interesting game of the frame into the frame reminds of the graphical spirit of the manga. This wish of going beyond the aspect ratio of the 35mm film which is sometimes austere, curiously is at its best in the most explicit scenes of the movie. This a concern of mixing the form with the content in a film which reminds of Seijun Suzuki’s visual work, who is a great producer of films of exploitation and who managed to insert popular culture without renouncing to his artistic integrity. Shunya Ito does not go as far as the author of Branded to kill in the composition of pictures but he offers a representative sample of the Japanese cinema of the 70’s.

However, The Beast Stable suffers from a deficient story which struggles to go on when all the elements are present. The movie races so fast, going from the most extreme situations to extreme situations, that the loss of impetus is ineluctable. After an hour, Ito does not have much more to show despite a visual sans that is stunning.

However, we see the producer’s wish to avoid repetition. For example, he avoids sending the anti-heroine in jail in order to avoid the pitfall of the traditional WIP. This minor fault which is central in all the films of the serial, does not prevent from adhering to this rape and revenge which is a major influence of Quentin Tarentino who did not hesitate to take a piece of credits for his famous Kill Bill.

Meiko Kagi, who is beautiful and very inexpressive will abandon Scorpion’s character for the following opus of the serial.

(JAPAN - 1973, from Shunya Ito with Meiko Kaji, Mikio Narita)

Released by Eureka Video