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Japan’s most wicked and violent female prisoners are sent to a mysterious island and forced to participate in grueling physical training at a reeducation camp. Misaki Sayama played by bikini idol, Aki Hoshino, finds herself on this island with stern looking guards watching her every move. Each morning names are called out and if you do not show up, a guard will drag you kicking and screaming out of bed and force you to stand in line and answer your name. This is followed by running, pushups, and martial arts training. Misaki likes to project herself as being tough so on her first day practicing with a Bo instructor she challenges him to a fight. She soon finds herself face down in the mud with a big red bruise on her forehead.

Misaki longs to escape this harsh reality and starts to plan her escape. The rumor from the other girls is that the island is surrounded by sharks. One unlucky lady jumped into the sea and later on her torso washed up on the beach. The only hope is that a boat docks on certain days. One girl is keeping track on her personal calendar on which days the boat is docked.

These women will do anything to escape as the prison guards taunt them with the promise of a return to Japan, if they fully cooperate and train hard. They are repeated told that only those who worked the hardest will be able to leave. One girl has sex with one guard, just for the hope of getting away. A grim fate awaits all the prisoners that is much worse.

Death Row Girls, aka Female Prisoner 1316 is a miserable movie to sit through. For starters it is shot digitally and the lighting is so bad that in scenes that require a lot of light, just to see actors talking in a room, all you can see is darkness and shadows. I have never seen a movie with such bad lighting. The main female lead, Aki Hoshino cannot act at all. She only has one grim facial expression, and for such a limited acting range, not ever being cute can save some of the worst acting ever filmed. Hoshino acting is so bad that it even makes Steven Seagal look good. The movie’s only purpose is to show women fighting and taking showers. Death Row Girls is a watered down version of Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion that lacks the power of Meiko Kaji’s fine performance. Death Row Girls is a terrible women in prison movie that has nothing at all going for it. You would have a better entertainment experience watching high school buddies showing you their first movie than suffering for one second of this trash. I do have to say that it takes effort to make something this rotten and real skill to film women being sprayed by a high powered water hose boring. Even an army of cute girls cannot save this, even when those girls are wearing wet t-shirts. It also takes a total lack of skill as a director to turn fighting females into a boring waste of screen time.
Nothing about Death Row Girls works at all and grindhouse fans are sure to hate this ridiculous piece of trash.

This is a Direct-to-DVD movie about what not to do. If you study this movie carefully you should be able to avoid making the same mistakes.

The only positive thing about Death Row Girls is that director Sadaaki Haginiwa has not made another movie since 2004 when this garbage was released. I can only hope that Haginiwa is never allowed to make a movie in Japan or anywhere else for that matter.

Zero Stars – Winner of Golden Poop Award for Stinking so Bad!!