Vashirdfel Simply A Masterpiece

Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Claysaba Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Nigel P Here's something - a Jess Franco 'Women in prison' film (his first), with Harry Allan Towers and not Erwin C. Dietrich, who would be associated with future incarceration endeavours. It is interesting to note the differences - this is nearly a decade before the Dietrich projects and the usual lesbian and titillation hasn't reached graphic levels yet. Also Bruno Nicolai's soundtrack almost seems to have been loaned from a blockbuster movie, lending more doom-laden atmospherics to the terrifically austere surroundings than is sometimes strictly necessary.There's a good cast here. Herbert Lom is always very watchable: I'm surprised he did this - his perverse cold-hearted Governor Santos is someone Howard Vernon or Paul Muller (or Franco himself) might usually play. Having said that, his peccadillos are always off-screen. Marie Schell is hardened and glamorous as Leonie Caroll, brought in to observe the activities of current governor Thelma Diaz. Diaz is played by the magnificent Mercedes McCambridge, short on stature but a performance as arch and camp as can be imagined. McCambridge (whose main point of interest for horror fans might well be her voicing of the demon in 1973's 'The Exorcist') appears to relish each moment and steals every scene. Maria Rohm plays Maria who, blonde and pretty, is always in Diaz's sights. And it is always a pleasure to see Rosalba Neri, here as constantly smouldering Zoie: a former 'exotic dancer', I'm delighted to say.The Alicante location is delicious and the building used for the prison is suitably Spartan and yet crammed with interest. Flaking paint, featureless walls, paradise-like views always out-of-grasp. The whole production looks terrific and might well be Franco's most restrained, coherent and 'mainstream' WIP picture. It also might just be my favourite. Things move at a fair rate, the relentless austerity is broken up by the flashbacks that flesh out the back-stories for the main inmates. The violence and torture takes place for the most part, just off-camera, and is no less effective for that. And the story builds up a genuine sense of frightening momentum towards the end, which makes the very satisfying finale tragically inevitable. Thoroughly recommended to those familiar with Franco, and those who are not.The soundtrack is enlivened by the occasional insertion of variants of the theme song, 'The Day I Was Born' (sung by Barbara McNair, the wronged and wonderful Rita from Franco's 1968 'Venus in Furs'), which is guaranteed to bury itself into your brain for a long time after you first hear it.

Prismark10 99 Women is a women in prison film with a high calibre cast including Oscar winner Mercedes McCambridge as well as distinguished thespians Herbert Lom and Maria Schell.These type of films have a mix of soft core sex action, lesbianism, some torture, even violent torture and a lot of campiness.99 Women has decent production values, good acting but is dull as dishwater. The soft porn will make you go to sleep, very little of the women in prison trademark action, the story is just plain bad and the dubbing is nonsensical where the English dubbing just reverts to French at random moments.Its just bad and boring and I cannot list 99 reasons to give for you to not watch it.

Spikeopath Women in Prison, the soft core exploitation cut! Even by director Jesús Franco's inept standards this bottom feeds at the well of pointlessness. From the moment that we are introduced to the ladies of this penal island hell, in a whirl of bad dubbing, bad colour and camera techniques from the kinder garten, you know you are going to have to stick forks in your legs for alternative entertainment.These lady cons are babes, they don't look like the fictional caged dolls of Prisoner Cell Block H, or real life monsters like Aileen Wuornos, on no! They have wandered in off of the pages of Penthouse and Playboy, or from one of my dreams when I was a horny teenager. I was half expecting Emmanuelle to make an appearance at some point, but Franco probably used all his budget on getting Herbert Lom, Mercedes Mccambridge and Maria Schell to star!Yes, three quality thesps in this! Lom is resplendent in stubble and shifty shades, and with a sinister limp to accentuate his degenerate badness. McCambridge is some harpy bitch with a screw loose and a bad accent, she wants to be Eva to Herb's Adolf. Then poor Maria, wandering around lost, like someone slipped a Mickey Finn in her cuppa and she has no idea what film she is in. The three of them must have been so proud and had annual reunions to rejoice at what a fun time they had on the shoot.The plot, basically, is girls in prison are abused and used by a sadistic regime that's meant to reform. There are cat-fights, some flesh, an escape that is used purely to introduce some blokes from the men's prison on the other side of the island, and of course rape, torture, lesbianism, desperation and some sand! All tastefully filmed...of course. Woeful film and woeful film making, but it still gave me one of the biggest laughs of the year, and that porn movie jazz is half decent! 2/10

Michael_Elliott 99 Women (1969) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Director's Cut One of the first WIP (Women in Prison) films deals with an innocent girl (Maria Rohm) being sent to prison where she has run ins with the wicked warden (Mercedes McCambridge) as well as a woman (Maria Schell) out to make the prison a better place. This was directed by Jess Franco who was still in his serious film-making days where he was actually producing higher budgeted, better looking films. The movie is decent enough but I prefer Franco's later, more sleazier efforts like Barbed Wire Dolls, Women in Cellblock 9 and Sadomania.