Nami Matsushima (Meiko Kaji) once again escapes from the cops, and is soon hidden & cared for by a strip club worker, Yasuo Kudo (Masakazu Tamura) who shares her disdain of the law. She cares for him, too, to the extent that he might actually change her very low opinion of men. Kinuyo Kodama (Yumi Kanei) is the unorthodox, sadistic lawman still pursuing our tight-lipped anti-heroine.

The last in this four-film series about "Female Prisoner # 701", a.k.a. "Scorpion", showed this viewer a reasonably good time. It serves its purpose as an exploitation film: it's grim, it's brutal, it has a smattering of sex & nudity. Nami is still a compelling piece of work who never lets her nemesis break her, and she still always causes trouble whenever she gets a chance. It's fun to watch Kaji do her thing, and the supporting cast is fine, too. The viewer hates Kodama in record time, and feels some sympathy for Kudo (the cops tortured him, too) until what has to be an inevitable moment of disappointment.

The first half of the film, however, when it focuses on Kudo and gives Nami precious little to do except react and be swept along, is not nearly as compelling as when the story once again becomes hers. This is a great character, and at least the viewer can feel some degree of satisfaction in the way things are resolved.

The consensus is that this is the least film in this series, but it did remain watchable for me for a fairly well-paced 89 minutes.

Seven out of 10.

And so at last we come to the end of the great Matsu the Scorpion's bloody, weird, and incredibly thrilling saga. This is the only entry in the series not directed by Shun'ya Ito, so I was a bit nervous going into this film; I've really enjoyed all the FPS movies, and I really didn't want the final outing to fall flat on it's face.

To my great delight, this film didn't fall flat; it delivered everything I'd want from an outing with Matsu. At the same time, Matsu's story seems to be wearing a little thin; at this point in the saga she's escaped from prison with others, had her revenge, and in the last entry ("Beast Stable") she even become a kind of savior for oppressed women. In this entry, history more or less repeats itself; the storyline in "Grudge Song" is relatively the same as the first and second entries ("FPS #701" & "FPS: Jailhouse 41"), only the story is compressed into an hour and a half. If you've seen the other entries, you pretty much know what's going to happen in this entry, and while there isn't necessarily a problem (people still line up for Marvel movies, and they're all relatively homogenous), to me, the series has started to loose a bit of it's appeal, and I honestly think ending it here was probably the best choice: go out on a note that is still relatively positive, and people will be keener to return to the franchise. I, for one, will happily go through Matsu's journey multiple times in my life.