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.

Uriah43 After being wrongly accused of prostitution "Marie" (Maria Rohm ) is sent to an extremely harsh island prison known as the "Castle of Death" which is run by a sadistic director named "Thelma Diaz" (Mercedes McCambridge) and her immediate supervisor "Governor Santos" (Herbert Lom). While there she is subjected to all kinds of abuse which includes both torture and rape. However, her hopes of being treated decently are revived when a new director by the name of "Leonie Caroll" (Maria Schell) arrives and appears to have the interests of the prisoners in mind. Now, rather than reveal any more of this film and risk ruining it for those who haven't seen it I will just say that as far as Women-in-Prison (WIP) movies are concerned this one wasn't too bad. Admittedly, the addition of several beautiful women like Luciana Paluzzi (as "Natalie Mendoza"), Rosalba Neri ("Zoie"), Elisa Montes ("Helga") and the aforementioned Maria Rohm and Maria Schell had much to do with this assessment but that's an important ingredient with movies of this type anyway. Additionally, having established actors like Herbert Lom and Mercedes McCambridge helped as well. On the other hand there was at least one particular scene which the director (Jesus Franco) probably intended to be artistic but totally bungled as it was much too dark and blurry. Likewise, the film seemed to lack continuity from one scene to another which also lessened the overall quality to some degree. On a side note I should probably add that there are several versions of this movie out on the market and at least one of these has an X-rating. So viewer caution is advised. Along with that I should probably also point out that the movie I saw was filmed in French with English subtitles in case some viewers might need to know as well. In short, while this movie clearly isn't Academy Award winning material it still wasn't terribly bad and I rate it as only slightly below average.

James Hitchcock Although there have been a few prison-set comedies, such as the British "Porridge" (based upon a popular TV series), most films about men in prison have been made with a serious purpose ("Cool Hand Luke", "Brubaker", "The Shawshank Redemption", etc.). At one time this was also true of the smaller number of films about women in prison; the American "Caged" and the British "Yield to the Night" are well-known examples from the fifties. The late sixties, however, saw the birth of a new genre, the women in prison exploitation film. Jesús Franco's "99 Women" is an early example of the type. Films like this were made as entertainment catering for male sexual fantasies rather as serious drama about crime and punishment, but in their early days they were not explicitly pornographic. Even in the swinging sixties there was a limit to what the censors would permit. (A film on this subject made ten, or perhaps even only five, years after this one would doubtless have been considerably more sexually explicit). We know that "99 Women" will turn out to be an exploitation film as soon as we see that the inmates of this particular jail- all 99 of them- are young and attractive and that the prison uniform consists of little more than a very short mini-dress. The actual plot storyline does not matter too much- it includes the punishment and humiliation of the women by a cruel female warder, the attempts of a relatively liberal new governor to reform conditions and a jail break- but the film features several recurrent clichés of the women in prison genre. These include cat-fights between prisoners and physical abuse of the prisoners by sadistic guards. There are, however, no real sex scenes and no full nudity. Those mini-dresses may get ripped, but the girls' underwear always stays intact. Any lesbianism remains implied rather than explicit. "99 Women" was a box-office success when it first appeared in 1969, but by the standards of anyone other than the titillation-hungry young men of the late sixties it is a very poor film indeed, with a hackneyed plot, a villainously written script and generally low standards of acting. The film was originally shot in French and dubbed into English, but in the version I saw the dubbing had for some reason been omitted from several scenes, which remained in the original language without subtitles. In most of Franco's films the cast is made up of long- forgotten porn stars, but this one features several well-known names, not only the former Bond Girl Luciana Paluzzi but also actors as distinguished as Herbert Lom and the one-time Oscar-winning Mercedes McCambridge, neither of whom can be said to have enhanced their reputation by appearing in it. The film is today of no more than historic interest except perhaps to those who subscribe to the idea that Franco was some great "cult director". To my way of thinking he had more talent for arousing controversy than he did for actually making films and the only "cult" that grew up around him consisted solely of those attracted to his brand of soft-core erotica. 3/10

Coventry Does the world really need all these 'Women in Prison' flicks? The legendary director Jess Franco apparently seemed to think so, because almost half of the titles that fall under this category are his. There's also a lot of variation in this questionable sub genre of cult-cinema - largely determined by how old they are - as most of them are really nasty and exploitative whereas some (the pioneers mainly) are more sensual and emphasizing on the drama-elements. "99 Women", at least the original non-hardcore version, got released during the earliest stage of "W.I.P" madness and thus Franco was still clearly 'exploring' how far he could go with inserting lesbian sleaze and brutal whippings. The later ones are a non-stop series of tasteless sex and raw violence, but this film actually has a remotely decent script and an above-average amount of stylish elements. A small island in the Pacific Ocean serves as a gigantic prison, with a fort for women in one corner and one for men in the other. Female prisoners n° 97, 98 and 99 arrive one morning by boat and they immediately meet the sadistic head warden Thelma and the sleazy Governor Santos. The girls are punished and put in isolation cells for no reason and lethal 'accidents' appear to be a regular routine. Just because so many prisoners die, the government sends a new female principal to the island. She makes efforts to befriend the prisoners, particularly the beautiful & innocent Marie, but the wicked old headmistress constantly boycotts her. "99 Women" isn't the most exciting movie ever, as many sequences are dreadfully slow and pointless, and there's a serious lack of continuity. The locations are very nice looking and the photography is occasionally even elegant, but sadly it's all just an empty package. If you don't purchase the X-rated version, you won't have much sleazy goodness to admire. "99 Women" is incredibly tame, with only a couple of scarcely dressed women cat-fighting and some lesbian experimenting. The cast is really good, though, with the ravishing regular Franco-nymphs Maria Rohm ("The Bloody Judge", "Eugenie") and Rosalba Neri ("Amuck!", "Lady Frankenstein") playing likable characters. Herbet Lom is awesome as the fiendish, nudity-obsessed (can you blame him?) governor. Mainly just recommended to Francophiles.