Sasori in U.S.A.

Nami - the main character from the Female Prisoner Scorpion series, made famous by Meiko Kaji - is Japan's sorriest criminal recidivist. She spends more time in prison than Linda Blair. This time she is (wrongly, of course) convicted of blowing up her boyfriend and is sentenced to a tough Arizona prison, just as a change from all of those Japanese prisons she'd broken out of over the years.

All of the usual Babes-Behind-Bars elements are present: tough female convicts who pick fights with the heroine, brutal guards, a sadistic warden and a blind Japanese girl for Nami to befriend and rescue from all of the above. They bust out of the surprisingly poorly secured maximum security prison, spend a long and quite boring sequence wandering lost in the desert - they could have been recaptured in about ten minutes if anybody had thought to phone for a chopper - and then go after revenge on the men what wronged 'em. Familiar story, but very nice production values and two attractive female leads make it watchable, and the bright sun and scorching heat of Arizona makes a nice change from the greenery and overcast skies of Japan in the earlier Scorpion movies. Japan was meant to seem like a harsh and unyielding environment, but the Great Southwestern Desert actually is! I wish I could report that the movie is a non-stop action bender, but it actually has several long sequences in which nothing much happens. The action when it comes is fairly brutal and realistic rather than the usual stylized chop socky nonsense so familiar in Asian action pictures.