99 Women (1969) User Reviews

It's not meant to be a happy place!

[lastliberal · 6/10 · 17 June 2009]

Ah, women-in-prison and Jesus Franco. What can we expect.

It really depends on the version you watch, as there are versions from 70 minutes (UK) to 99 minutes (Argentina). The US and Sweden have 86 minute versions, although Sweden banned even that. This is a 90 minute unrated version.

One does not expect to find a double Golden Globe and Oscar winner in a Jesus Franco film, but here she is - Mercedes McCambridge (All the King's Men - 1949) as the prison superintendent.

Also Maria Schell, who has 2 BAFTA Film Award nominations and another 14 awards, as an inspector from the Ministry. She did get prisoner 99 (Maria Rohm) out of solitary on her first day.

More expected is Herbert Lom as the Governor, the only surviving member of The Ladykillers (1955), and a Razzie nominee for King Solomon's Mines.

It appears Franco was going for quality as it is more than a half hour in before we see a breast, and some girl-on-girl action. Even that was shot with a lot of Vaseline on the camera. Don't the women in this prison take showers? Marie (99), Zoe (Rosalba Neri), and Rosalie (Valentina Godoy) attempt to cross 30 miles of snake-infested jungle and swamp at night to escape. yeah, right. They find a lily-covered pond that looks the same as the one in Virgin among the Living Dead.

Of course, it isn't the snakes on the ground they have to worry about, but the snakes attached to the dozen male prisoners that saw them and are running after them. One doesn't make it.

A good drama with some famous actors, but disappointing as a WIP exploitations.

S10 Reviews: 99 Women (1969)

[suspiria10 · 6/10 · 4 July 2005]

The newest batch of detainees arrives at a remote women's prison. The fortress-like prison is ruled with an iron hand by Thelma Diaz (Mercedes McCambridge), a woman who has no qualms against death or torture. But when a new state official takes notice of the body count coming out of the prison, Diaz must prove her ability and hide the truth. As the powers that be turn up the pressure it sets up a daring escape by several of the ladies.

"Women in prison" flicks can be a mixed bag. Many offer the usual softcore action (usually of the lesbian variety) and / or nasty torture sequences that often exploit. But "99 Women" doesn't really offer too much of either. "99" is actually more artistic than most of the "W.I.P." films that I've seen and as a result it comes off as a bit bland. The photography is fine but with most of the action taking place indoors the camera-work is not flashy. The acting is pretty decent but the script is a bit "talky" in an unnecessary way. The softcore action is not awfully titillating since many of the scenes are shot in an "artistic" fashion the X-rated version does offer some hardcore inserts but you can easily tell they were added much latter since they don't match. "99 Women" has some style but not a lot of substance. A bit disappointing.

Pretty Disappoiting, Even for Jess Franco

[gavin6942 · 4/10 · 12 December 2012]

New inmate Marie (Maria Rohm) arrives at an island prison in the women's sector and receives the number 99. The inmates are controlled by the sadistic lesbian warden Thelma Diaz and Governor Santos (Herbert Lom) and submitted to torture, rape and lesbianism.

Apparently, this film "kicked off the genre in a new direction" and "was a big box office success in the U.S. in 1969." I find this somewhat hard to believe... because as much as I love exploitation and Jess Franco, this just is not all that great. Even with veteran actor Herbert Lom, it more or less has just a group of women wandering around doing a whole lot of nothing.

Not surprisingly, Franco continued to make more films in this genre, probably turning a quick profit: Women in Cell Block 9 (1978), Ilsa, The Wicked Warden (1977), Barbed Wire Dolls (1975), Women Behind Bars (1975), and Sadomania (1980).

a classy erotic drama

[Mark Cowherd · 10 November 2001]

This is one of Franco titles that receives little comment.

So I will.

First of all it proves Franco could have of gone mainstream if he chose to. This a competent drama. Maybe he would have if "99 Women" could have received more acclaim.

99 Women is a *tasteful, well-done yet erotic WIP film; I know of no other WIP film that is. If you do please share.

In this lovely but sad movie, in "99 Women" Franco quickly strikes this tone and stays there. It's an erotic drama set on a tropical island, and yet has no lines like "take her to the Playpen!" -like the Corman stuff much later. It plays it straight. It is Erotic but has class. Know Rosalba Neri has a lot of screen time. This film is a must for fans

But maybe I'm glad he didn't go mainstream- I do love some of his later stuff which is hardly that )

*I love trashy WIP films also, but they all don't have to be

Lame Exploitation

[claudio_carvalho · 3/10 · 4 October 2011]

The new inmate Marie (Maria Rohn) arrives in an island prison in the women's sector and receives the number 99. The inmates are controlled by the sadistic lesbian warden Thelma Diaz (Mercedes McCambridge) and Governor Santos (Herbert Lom) and submitted to torture, rape and lesbianism. When the Minister of Justice replaces Diaz by Leonie Caroll (Maria Schell), Marie believes that her life will improve and her case will be reopened. However, Marie is disappointed with the new warden and decides to escape with two other inmates. But their runaway scheme fails and the three women are chased not only by the guards, but also by male's prisoners that have not seen women for many years.

"Der heiße Tod", a.k.a. "99 Women" is a lame exploitation of the genre "women's prison" with a story that uses the clichés and the stereotypes of this type of story. The great cast is unusual in Jess Franco's films, but the insertion of scenes of explicit sex is ridiculous and without continuity. I believe that the version without these X-rated scenes inserted may be better. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "99 Mulheres" ("99 Women")

99 Women in Chains on the Wall; 99 Women in Chains!

[Coventry · 4/10 · 24 January 2007]

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.

More crap from Jess Franco.

[poolandrews · 1/10 · 5 July 2011]

99 Women starts as a small boatload of women arrive at an unnamed island to be become prisoners of Governor Santos (Herbert Lom) & chief warden Madame Diaz (Mercedes McCambridge) in a state prison known as the 'Castle of Death', amongst them is the pretty blonde Marie (Maria Rohm) who pleads her innocence. Branded inmate number 99 this is how Marie is to be known from now on, after trying to help a fellow inmate the warden decides number 99 needs punishing, meanwhile a kind hearted investigator from the mainland named Leonie Carrol (Maria Schell) is sent to the prison to root out corruption & abuse but Governor Santos is on to a good thing & doesn't intend to let Carrol spoil it. Marie decides to escape & along with another couple of inmates manages to make it into the harsh jungles but things aren't much better out there than inside the prison...

This English, Lichtenstein, German, Italian & Spanish co-production was written & directed by the prolific Jesus Franco whom I consider to be one of the two worst filmmakers in the horror & sleaze genre, I'm sorry but I just find virtually all of his films absolutely worthless & even worse mind numbingly boring & badly made. Lets take the abomination that is 99 Women as an example, at almost an hour & forty minutes this feels twice as long & for a film where virtually nothing happens 99 Women is slow going & I was throughly bored by it. Hell, I started to play some games on my phone about an hour in I was so bored. The story is crap, the dialogue is awful & the character's are cardboard thin. As an early example of the Women in Prison genre 99 Women really doesn't hold up, the location used looks more like a vineyard, there's no shower scene & little in the way of genuine sleaze. The script tries it's hand at a bit of drama with the plight of the abused women & the most dull prison escape ever filmed. People just don't act like people, people don't talk like people & there's not enough sleaze here to make this watchable, another worthless piece of crap from Franco who has his admirers & fans but for the life of me I can't see why.

The whole look of 99 Women is dull, some of the locations are nice but do not look anything like a prison & the way the women wear shirts but not much else means I never got the Women in Prison vibe from this at all. Surprisingly light on nudity & sex there's not a great deal of violence either although Franco manages to include a scene where a woman attacks & stabs a Snake despite it just laying on the floor doing no-one any harm, it would have been quicker & easier & safer is the woman had just stepped over it or walked around it, you know? To be honest I can't really remember much about this, it just sort of went in one ear & straight out the other if you know what I mean with no impact on me at all. The mythical French version includes hardcore sex scenes featuring people not in the rest of the film having sex in places not in the rest of the film.

Apparently filmed in Valencia in Spain this cheap film features lots of ugly zooms & really boring shots that Franco holds for ages, the editing is also bad with character's jumping around all over the place with the final riot at the end the best (or worst) example of this. The women here really aren't that good looking although a couple are attractive enough I suppose, Herbert Lom deserved better than this.

99 Women is more crap from cult director Franco but this time there isn't even any sleaze or violence to make it bearable (unless you watch the badly edited French hardcore version) & is yet another film by Franco that I can honestly say I hated. The sort of film that makes me want to give up watching films altogether.

Serious Franco fare.

[Ky-D · 7/10 · 27 April 2005]

Given Jess Franco's penchant for uber-strange, dream-like, over-sexed affairs, this comes off as one of his tamest and most main stream movies...as main stream as WIP flicks can be that is.

The film follows follows a familiar pattern. A group of girls are brought to an inescapable fortress/prison were they are to serve out their sentence. The lead girl (played by the lovely Maria Schell) may or may not be innocent, regardless she decides she does not wish to remain in the inhospitable place any longer than she has to and an escape attempt forms.

As would be expected, the prison is host to assorted debauchery and sadism on the part of the prison staff. Prisoners are mistreated, dehumanized, etc. Compared to most any other WIP flick out there, this one is pretty clean content wise. Some clothed cat fights, limited nudity and one harsh (though thankfully brief) rape scene are the most the film offers in terms of exploitation.

Technically speaking, I would argue that this is Franco's most accomplished film. Light, color, sound are all good; even his use of camera angles exceeds what would normally be expected of him. The acting is all around what would be expected from this sort of affair, with the notable exception of Herbert Lom, who manages to be both a creep and oddly likable. A major down point is the script, which is so cut-n-dry that it never does a whole lot of anything.

An actually good Franco movie that may be too tame for his more fetish fans, but certainly worth a look.

(Note: This review is based on the regular edition of the film and not the badly re-edited hardcore version) 7/10

Why do I even bother with Franco?

[movieman_kev · 3/10 · 6 September 2005]

Maria has been sent to a prison on an remote island where the warden is giving kickbacks to the warden of the mens' prison on the other side of the island via his choice of girl inmates. Naturally he has his eye on fresh meat Maria. The government gets a whiff of the corruption and sends a plant in to investigate the abuses. For a WIP flick I was surprised how tame it was, for a Franco flick i was very surprised how tame it was. The only thing that keeps one falling asleep is the horribly inserted porn inserts that don't fit well into the film in the least. What's laughable is that Franco fans (yea hard to believe they're people out there who are) actually got angry that Franco's name is even on this version. Yea, we can't have his sterling image as an ingenious competent visionary be sullied *snicker*

My Grade: D

X-rated version DVD Extras: Nothing at all

Babes Behind Bars

[Nodriesrespect · 7/10 · 25 December 2014]

From Eurotrash Emperor Jess Franco's comparatively respectable period comes this timid precursor to the WIP wave that was to engulf exploitation cinema of the upcoming decade, including of course many of Franco's own far more graphic ruminations on the subject. British-born producer Harry Alan Towers was still testing the waters as to how much sex and violence he could get away with at this pivotal moment in time for pictorial permissiveness, which accounts for the restraint in the representation of both. His past successes with a string of profitable Fu Manchu flicks based on the Sax Rohmer potboilers gave him the commercial clout to attract a "name" cast of mostly has-beens in desperate need of a paycheck, supplemented with a slew of sexy starlets prepared to pull down their panties. First among equals in the latter department was Towers' lovely young bride Maria Rohm a/k/a former Austrian stage actress Helga Grohmann who would shine most brightly in VENUS IN FURS and EUGENIE, both made by Franco for her husband. Playing Marie, the obligatory framed innocent, she's predictably overshadowed by the unrepentant bad girls headed by the ravishing Rosalba Neri's cynical Zoe.

Taken to a South American prison island (actually Alicante) where she's to be incarcerated in a magnificent fortress named El Castillo Della Muerte (the Castle of Death) for stabbing one of her rapists, shown in superbly stylized flashback, Marie (or number 99 as she will now be referred to) soon learns the ropes foolishly going up against head warden Thelma Diaz (Mercedes McCambridge hamming her way out of a mid-career slump) when another new arrival (ex-Bond girl Luciana Paluzzi) goes into cold turkey jitters. Like any other act of rebellion, this immediately lands her in solitary. An impromptu cat fight with dyed in the wool dyke Neri on account of her harassing Marie's friend Helga (Elisa Montés from Mel Welles' ISLAND OF THE DOOMED) risks making her a permanent resident there were it not for the unexpected appearance of social worker Leonie Carroll (revered German actress Maria Schell) come to inspect the prison's conditions following a number of recent deaths. This doesn't sit well with Thelma who not altogether wrongly suspects the intruder has come to take her place so she calls on the help of corrupt Governor Santos (a stoic Herbert Lom) whom she regularly supplies with inmates for intimacy.

Ticking off all the boxes (nudity, check ! whippings, check ! lesbian comforting, check !), the plot moves along as cheerfully as the grim proceedings will allow with hilariously hard-boiled dialog to keep fans grinning. McCambridge spits 'n growls her way through another turn for Towers and Franco that makes the one she gave in their JUSTINE look positively demure by comparison. Her once flourishing career might have gone down the drain but she was sure to kick up a stink. Half the fun's in watching her co-stars' perplexed looks on their faces as they attempt to keep from being blown off the screen by this one woman whirlwind.

By contrast, Schell seems all too aware she's slumming it, content to simper sympathetically and deliver the flattest line readings imaginable. Apart from Rohm and Neri, whose exploitation career would kick off in earnest with Ferdinando Di Leo's 1971 SLAUGHTER HOTEL, none of the top-popping floozies register very strongly, certainly not Paluzzi who - regardless of prominent billing - expires ten minutes into the movie and doesn't bare squat. A few years later, she would go proudly topless in Nello Rossati's entertaining THE SENSUOUS NURSE. Short-bobbed Brazilian bombshell Valentina Godoy (from Franco's THE GIRL FROM RIO) makes the most of the unfortunate Rosalie, cruelly ambushed during the botched prison break.

In light of the excesses this exploitation sub-genre was about to engender, 99 WOMEN appears almost innocent in its beat around the bush coyness. This approach forces Franco into ingenuity when it comes to boobs 'n beatings, displaying both with far more style than was his habit. Case in point being Rohm and Neri's then daring same-sex dalliance, spectacularly shot in a series of dissolves and close-ups of "non-vital" body parts by Franco regular Manuel Merino (who also photographed his COUNT Dracula) who achieves the scene's erotic effect through sheer suggestion. Bruno Nicolai's haunting theme song, The Day I Was Born (warbled by the incomparable Barbara McNair which suggests this was a recorded but unused track from VENUS IN FURS), appears in a number of starkly varying arrangements going from a jubilatory gospel rendition to a softly murmured version with minimal orchestration.

Another rubbish women in prison flick!

[The_Void · 4/10 · 21 October 2007]

I've seen a lot of these women in prison films, but I don't know why I keep watching them because I've hated every one that I've seen. Jess Franco seemed to enjoy making them, however, as this trash makes up a large proportion of his filmography; and women in prison flicks are probably one of the main reasons why a lot of people's overall impression of the prolific director is not good. 99 Women came fairly early on for this genre, being released in 1969, and as such the film is not as racy as some of the other genre entries. This is not really a benefit or a hindrance, however, as 99 Women is just as boring as most of these films anyway. The plot is just your usual women in prison theme - bunch of girls in jail trying to escape from the awful prison guards etc. It's a shame that this is just another entry in an overpopulated genre too, as the film features a good cult cast - Rosalba Neri is one of my very favourite actresses, and the film also features the likes of Maria Schell and Maria Rohm, as well as the great Herbert Lom; but the cast considered, this is still a rubbish film and I wont be recommending it!

just shows how well the old guy could direct

[christopher-underwood · 8/10 · 12 January 2007]

Surprisingly effective and well made WIP with Maria Schell and Herbert Lom as well as many of the usual good looking suspects. Not as violent as some of Franco's later efforts, this is in fact pretty sensual and always good looking and would slot alongside 'Eugenie….' and 'Venus in Furs' from the same period better than one would imagine. Good performances all round including a peculiarly effective one from a certain Mercedes Cambridge, who was apparently in 'Johnny Guitar'! Enjoyable and this just shows how well the old guy could direct if he put his mind to it or wasn't too restrained by others. Also he possibly refrained from indulging himself too much here because of his esteemed cast. Good score too from Bruno Nicolai.

99 Women

[Scarecrow-88 · 7/10 · 21 April 2010]

Welcome to hell. The prison is nicknamed "Casa de la muertez"(Castle of Death)and is ran with an iron fist to the chops by superintendent Thelma(Mercedes Mcambridge) . We are introduced to three young women who are being boated to this godforsaken place, sentenced to a female prison built by Spaniards overlooking an ocean, seemingly cut off from civilization. McCambridge is wonderfully lecherous as the strict disciplinarian whose abuse has trouble brewing due to a couple murders thanks to the harsh acts of those in charge. The prison itself looks as if it were cut out of stone, cells with cavernous walls, voices echoing when those within even speak in a normal tone. The salacious Spanish governor, with a doghead cane, (Herbert Lom) is always granted permission to have his way with the girls.

During Franco's era with Harry Allan Towers he made some pretty successful pictures with the British producer's wife Maria Rohm(Venus in Furs). "99 Women" has Rohm as a sniveling weakling, Leonie, who is pushed around by the luscious Zoie(Rosalba Neri), with a pair of magnificent legs, quite open about her sexual desire for the new inmate. For a fan of lesbian erotica, I must say that I was more than a bit disappointed in the Neri/Rohm sequence as Franco's camera remains out of focus and never centered properly on the action..this is especially disconcerting when you have two such lovely creatures making love to each other. I could nit pick about how even when Rohm supposedly suffers in the punishment cell for "repeated insolence" she looks like a million bucks, only her hair a little out of sorts. I don't mind such things because women-in-prison flicks rarely depict such scenarios involving female inmates persecuted in the harshest ways with it showing in a realistic manner. A welfare worker, Ms Carol(Maria Schell, given star treatment), may be the only hope for the inmates under Thelma for she is appointed to see that they are treated with a reasonable care. But, despite her good will, Carol finds the task of helping the inmates difficult because they don't trust that she can make a difference.

The movie establishes later that Rohm was possibly falsely accused of prostituting herself before being charged with murder when she claims to have merely defended herself against those who were trying to rape her. Staples of the genre are present such as catfights and a planned prison escape. Inmates are recognized by their assigned numbers not by name..there's a great scene where McCambridge slaps a new inmate for saying her name when asked, not her "new name", Number 98. I had always read and heard that Towers was a penny-pinching cheap producer constantly balking about having to spend money but Franco's movies in that partnership looked decently budgeted..at least he had a better camera and his movie looked to have had good production value. Interesting enough, there is a protracted jungle escape which takes up the latter portion of the movie detracting from the storyline regarding Carol and her troubles with the governor and Thelma..it worked for me because as Helga(Elisa Montés) and Marie are on the cusp of freedom, after surviving a hot, sweaty jungle and all it's many dangers(including male prisoners longing to rape them), we see that escape from their situation is pretty much hopeless. Carol's honorable intentions fall to the wayside and the denouement presents the fact that behind the walls of a cruel prison system humanity seems not to exist. I have a hard time not enjoying Franco's seductive camera capturing the ravishing bodies of his scantily clad ladies in nothing more than prison shirts and panties..color me an easy guy to please. I was impressed with Franco not going overboard with the zoom lens, although I like the use of the technique when you have interesting faces in frame. I really dug this cast.

Women-in-prison schlock.

[gridoon · 3/10 · 31 July 2002]

Surprisingly tame (at least in the version I saw, titled "Island of Despair"), boring schlock from Jess Franco, whose direction is, once again, pretty terrible (example: we get a flashback regarding the events that led a VERY MINOR supporting character to prison - and Franco inexplicably keeps it going for about 20 minutes!). Luciana Paluzzi's role is little more than a cameo. (*)

Surprisingly Tasteful

[lazarillo · 30 June 2006]

Jesus Franco is one of the few directors in the world who could take a much-maligned genre like the women-in-prison film and make it even sleazier. "Barb-Wire Dolls" would have been unwatchably repugnant were it not so inept, and "Ilsa, the Wicked Warden" WAS unwatchably repugnant despite being equally inept. For that reason, I approached this movie with great trepidation, but was surprised to find it relatively well-made and surprisingly tasteful. The plot is pretty standard. Girls are imprisoned on island--they give them a number and take away their names. Since this was made in the more censorial 60's there is no graphic torture and no showers and the prisoners actually get to wear underwear beneath their prison smocks. Mercedes McCambridge is the harsh warden. Herbert Lom is the corrupt commander of the island who takes sexual liberties with the prisoners. Maria Schell is the well-intentioned but ineffective reformer,. Luciana Paluzzi is the top-billed convict, but she exits quickly and the real stars are Maria Rohm and Rosalba Neri who together lead the big bust out at the end.

Relatively speaking this movie had a decent budget and a talented cast, and perhaps because of this (and the aforementioned threat of censorship)Franco had to reign himself in from his usual indulges. (I can just imagine the conversations he would have had with these relatively classy actresses: "No Jesus, I'm NOT going to perform analingus on her masticated rectum, I was a Bond girl for christsakes!"). Not that there isn't any sex or nudity. There is a great catfight/lesbian sex scene between Neri and Rohm as the lascivious Lom looks on, but the action is shot almost entirely in a montage of extreme close-ups (the only time after this that Franco was this circumspect in a sex scene was in "Erotismo" and that was no doubt because he was trying to avoid child porn charges after stupidly casting an underage actress). My favorite scene though is a flashback sequence where Neri does a sexy strip to a flickering candelabra, and in a touch that is both perverse and surreal her audience is a bunch of cigarette-smoking schoolgirls! Of course, there are those Franco aficionados out there who would prefer endless static shots of Lina Romay or somebody rolling around naked on a bed while Franco conducts a gynecological exam with his zoom lens to these much more sedate sex scenes, but there can be little doubt which is more classy and tasteful.

The best part though might be the catchy theme song ("Born to Be Bad") that leaves you with a warm feeling of nostalgia for that era (whether you experienced it or not). I don't know if I'd want to watch this movie again, but at least I didn't feel like running for the shower when it was over. If you want to see a Franco a WIP flick this is a good place to start (and also to stop).

Rather tame for a Jess Franco film

[augustian · 3/10 · 22 January 2017]

Jess Franco may have had high hopes for this women-in-prison (WIP) film. The cast which includes Herbert Lom, Luciana Paluzzi, Maria Schell and Mercedes McCambridge certainly suggests that Franco meant business. The end result though, falls short. Made in 1969, perhaps Franco was hampered by censorship constraints. Compared to his later films, this one is rather tame.

Herbert Lom gives it his all as the corrupt and lascivious Governor Santos but the rest of the cast could have done better. There is not much of the sleaze factor in this film. Nudity, hot Sapphic action and lathering-up in the showers are in short supply, as are torture and whippings, surely the mainstays of WIP films. Franco seems to have gone for the mainstream cinema, with attention to the new warden, the attempts to get rid of her and the escape of three inmates which all goes horribly wrong.

There is a so-called notorious French edition which includes some hard core action but these clips have been clumsily spliced in. In one scene, the inmate with short red hair is replaced by a blonde with long hair for the hard core action. How crass is that? In my opinion, the one to go for is the Director's Cut. If you want hard core sex action get a proper porn film.

99 reasons to avoid

[Prismark10 · 1/10 · 13 January 2014]

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 lots of campiness.

99 Women has decent production values, good acting but is dull as dishwater. The soft porn will send you to sleep. The story is just plain bad and the dubbing is nonsensical. The English dubbing just reverts to French at random moments.

It is bad and boring.

Exploitative trash yawn fest.

[Aussie Stud · 1/10 · 6 January 2006]

"99 Women" starring Oscar-winner Mercedes McCambridge as a sadistic prison warden and Maria Schell as a super-intendant with lesbionic tendencies towards one of the female inmates, who'd have thought that you could have gone wrong with this one? Apparently not me as I was quite excited about my purchase of this movie. It was pretty horrible as expected, but not in a good way. I was hoping this was going to be one of those hilarious women-in-prison exploitation flicks that were high in camp value. Hell, Mercedes McCambridge is in it! First off, the movie started off positively. We have three broads arriving on a boat, still in the clothes they were apparently arrested in, tried in Court, and then literally, sent up the river in! We are introduced to the blonde starlet, Marie, the black-haired stripper, Helga, and some other brunette who dies from some sort of "accident" that required medical surgery.

The camp factor needle hits "HIGH" as soon as we are introduced to Mercedes McCambridge appearing in a warden's uniform, barking orders in a faux-German accent (even though her name is Thelma Diaz) and giving Marie a backhand across the face for using her name instead of her number, "99".

However it only gets worse from here. While there are certainly some entertaining cat-fight scenes (ie hair-pulling, clothes being ripped off, face slapping, etc), the rest of the film is incredibly boring. There is a sadistic male warden (Herbert Lom) who coerces one of the female prisoners into seducing Marie for his pleasure, and there is one un-named prison guard who has the most hilarious facial expressions when introducing guests to McCambridge, but the rest of the film falls flat.

Maria Schell is not in the film nearly enough, and when she is, it's hard to determine what her true agenda is. It seems like she has a thing for Marie, but they never explore it.

When the girls finally break out and trek through a "jungle", there are a few more camp moments, such as the scene with the harmless snake where upon spotting it and instead of running around it, the girls proceed to scream, grab it and cut it with a knife (LOL). The other semi-amusing moment was watching Marie and Helga make a dash for the fishing boats, hand-in-hand and wearing nothing short of see-through panties and torn jumpsuits.

Mercedes McCambridge was the movie's only saving grace. Her accent border-lined German and Spanish, and she had some pretty hilarious one-liners such as, "She was put in the punishment cell... for repeated insolences!" At various moments, her voice deepened into that same voice she used as Pazuzu in "The Exorcist", I thought maybe she was going to morph into Satan at any moment.

The most interesting thing that I heard about this movie was that there is an X-rated version out there. I watched the un-rated version which had no explicit sex scenes, only some gratuitous breast shots and a glimpse of bush. I shudder at the thought that Mercedes McCambridge might have filmed a scene not knowing that at some later point her body double would be enjoying an explicit lesbian sex scene with one of the female prisoners.

I would not recommend this movie to any women-in-prison enthusiasts out there. In fact, I would only recommend this movie to Mercedes McCambridge fans as she is the sole reason I gave this movie "one star". Don't waste your time with this one folks.

Another Franco Masterpiece

[TM-2 · 6/10 · 12 April 2005]

******Possible Spoilers******

I just finished the 'notorious' x-rated french version. It reminds me of Caligula where the x-rated stuff was added and is sooooo out of place. It looks like it was spliced in as an afterthought.

That said, I enjoyed Herbert Lom, though I'm pretty sure it was a 'stunt double' during the penetration shots. I bet he never knew he was in such a movie!

I can't help liking Jesse Franco. He tries so hard and I'm sure he could have done more mainstream work given the chance. I have seen much worse movies from so-called mainstream directors!

I was disappointed in the DVD. The x-rated version has no extras. It dropped the interview with Jesse and some other stuff found on the censored DVD (R-rated). Very sad. I thought they would make this a special edition.

If you like 60's & 70's euro-sleaze, you really can't go wrong with this one.

Not really a date movie, but if your date 'digs' it, the best part of the evening is just ahead.....

Saved By The Sultry Cast

[Theo Robertson · 5/10 · 10 September 2013]

99 WOMEN gets off to a bad start by having a theme tune that belongs in another movie and when you've got an inappropriate soundtrack that belongs in another movie you're getting one out of ten there and then . That said it is directed by Jesus Franco so you have a rough idea what expect - not much

As you can imagine with a Jesus Franco movie set in an all female prison so pious celibacy is not on the agenda and the director deserves some credit for casting some very attractive actresses . It's a film of two distinctive halves where the first half introduces the characters and gives an excuse to show their sleazy back stories and their bi-curious lifestyle while the second half revolves around an escape attempt which resembles an exploitative female version of PAPILLION

Neither half is all that good and fail to work as a coherent story , just a series of scenes strung together with no great thought put in to the wider picture . It also suffers from several scenes where people talk in French without the benefit of English subtitles . That said one has to look on it of the context of when it was made when people would be still used to the rather repressive Hays Code in American cinema and this must have been a very subversive not to mention titillating film when it was released in 1969 but at the end of the day it's still exploitation cinema

Spanish/British/Italian co-production dealing with the violent subgenre WIP with a great international cast

[ma-cortes · 6/10 · 30 June 2022]

Typical WIP movie with a lot of women behind bars without men . Off the coast of Panama , there is an island with a female penal colony , run by a sadistic superintendent (Mercedes McCambridge) and a cruel governor (Herbert Lom) . They are really villainous and heinous wardens who the prisoners really fear them . When three prisoners (Luciana Paluzzi, Elisa Montés, Maria Rohm) arrive in the penal colony , one of them mysteriously dies , leading to a mutiny and a getaway , resulting in an extensive investigation of the horrific deeds . Then a new warden named Leonie Caroll (Maria Schell) is assigned to the hard prison, but things go wrong . Somewhere in the jungles of South America some prisoners breakout and being relentlessly pursued by the nasty wardens. The unfortunate girls escape but are mercilessly chased by the most dreaded pursuers and they will stop at nothing to get their purports and at whatever means .What do they do to satisfy their innermost female desires! . New inmate Marie arrives at an island prison in the women's sector and receives the number 99 ! . Now you can see it for the first time! . As it really is! In all its raw realism!.Due to the Subject Matter of This Film Only the Very Mature Will Be Admitted!.99 Women... behind bars -- without men! . Apprehended and handed over to the custody of the local prison wardens and jail wardens ! . One soul hungered to touch another!.Whisper to your friends you saw it! Beaten ! Shackled ! Raped ! Just another day in the ruthless prison !

Sadistic and sleaze Women-in-prison movie from prolific Spanish filmmaker Jesús Franco or ¨Uncle Jess¨. Sleaziness and nudism abound in this movie with a lot of erotic scenes , grisly killings and gory frames. From the fevered , wonderfully perverted minds of Spanish filmmaker Jess Franco and Britsih producer Harry Alan Towers comes the notorious WIP shocker Der heiße Tod(1969) . This is an extremely controversial movie , in fact it remained banned in several countries . The moving story tells the ordeals suffered by a gaggle of female prsioner who are taken to a secluded women's prison-castle where they endure al manner of violent humiliations . And with Herbert Lom and Mercedes McCambridge showing as two feared villain wardens at a deadly prison mistreating inmates and undergoing creepy criminal acts . This is a so-so and extremely sadistic film with lots of graphical violence, rape, lesbianism and naked women. Like all of the production in the prolific Franco/Harry Alan Towers collaboration cannon (most of which were made in budget enough : Castle of Fumanchu , The Blood of Fu Manchu , Paoxismus, Count Dracula, The Bloody Judge ) this 99 Women is a visually lush , erotic and exploitation work , armed with exotic locations , weird interpretations , colorful cinematography by Manuel Merino and rousing musical score by Bruno Nicolai . Plot is incidental to violence , tortures and loads of nudism enjoying the female prisoners and torturing them . Here the sinister entertainment is watching as the torture-loving wardens mistreat prisoners as well as the subsequent getaway of the distresses girls across the lush jungle .

Produced in limited but acceptable budget by Harry Alan Towers who wrote the screenplay as well and under his usual pseudonym : Peter Welbeck .The motion picture was professionally directed by Jesús Franco or Jess Frank with lots of skin and little acting , providing a decent flick in budget enough but with some shortfalls , failures , flaws and gaps . In the Seventies Franco directed various WIP movies , such as : this revered classic ¨99 Women¨with Maria Schell , Herbert Lom , Elisa Montes , Mercedes McCambridge ; ¨Love camp¨ (1977) with Muriel Montosse , Monica Swinn ; ¨Barbed Wire Dolls¨with Lina Romay , Paul Muller , Monica Swinn ; "Wanda , The Wicked Warden" 1977 by Jess Frank with Dyanne Thorne , Lina Romay , Tania Busselier , or ¨Women in Cellblock 9¨ (1978) or Frauen für Zellenblock 9 with Karine Gambier, Susan Hemingway, Howard Vernon, Dora Doll and ¨Sadomania¨(1981) with Ajita Wilson , Andrea Guzon , Ursula Buchfellner, Antonio Mayans . This Der heiße Tod(1969) or 99 Women or 99 mujeres or 99 Femmes is an essential and fundamental trash movie gem not to be missed for Uncle Jess enthusiasts. It is a 78 minutes of pure mind melting sleaze entertainment with no sense and for some fans being an exploitation gold , though it depends on the version you have opportunity to see : light , softcore or hardcore . Rating : 5.5/10 . Passable and acceptable .Not for the easily offended , but what Franco movie is ?.

The triumphal procession of meaninglessness

[hasosch · 1/10 · 25 October 2009]

On the American market, two basic trends can be observed nowadays: First the sustained lack of availability of monumental German as well as general European films, second the flooding with cheap editions of even cheaper film elaborates for which even the plastic of the DVD is wasted.

"Jess" Francos work belongs to the second category. After World World II, the film industry lay down in Germany. The good directors were either dead or in the US, successors were not in sight. The people was lacking even its basics. However: Panem Et Circenses! Bread and Plays! Simultaneously with the Adenauer era which supplied the starving people with bread and sausage, the German film industry set wholly on entertainment. The 4 main branches, that had been cultivated, were: 1. The "Heimatfilm" (maudlin Melo-Dramas). 2. The "Schlagerfilm" (Schlager musicals), 3. The "Lederhosenfilm" (rustic, blunt and outspoken sex(-Ploitation) movies in the era of German Pre-liberalization (vide: "Schulmädchenreport" and the like), and 4. "Krimi" (thrillers compared to which Grimm's fairy tales are startling).

When the liberalization of sexuality came, towards the end of the 60ies, there was a sensible shortcut in "apt" directors who could handle these smeary, sleazy and grimy concoctions. Ulli Lommel belonged to those who tried, but the Spaniard Jesus Franco filled in the blank. In a sheer endless series he produced crap over crap, manure over manure, feces over feces (for which, in 2009, he awarded the Goya-Price by the Spanish King). Well understood: Germany in the film landscape of the 60ies - that was sex and crime, Heimat and Wirtschaftswunder, crap and dilettantism. At exactly the same time, e.g., in France, directors like Godard, Rohmer, Truffaut, Eustache, Chabrol, Rivette, Melville a.o. worked with actors like Belmondo, Brialy, Anna Karina, Lafont, Leaud, Jeanne Moreau, Piccoli, Jean Seberg. Not to speak about the US, where despite the Big War there always has been continuous high-level film work.

Would there not have come the Big Release from all that manure - and it came in the person of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who mucked out the German Augias Stall beginning at approximately 1966 - one could hardly imagine what would have happened. But such movies like "Der Heisse Tod"/"99 Women" (1969) still stand here in the now historic landscape like monuments of an epoch when the level of the German film sank below zero. This does, however, not legitimate anybody to put such dung onto DVD. Can one really hold anything against that once famous film critique who said that the new German film did not only start with Fassbinder, but also ended with him?

Absolutely berserk

[BandSAboutMovies · 8/10 · 16 May 2021]

This movie is quite literally the Justice League - more like the Legion of Doom - of scumbag film superstars.

It was written and produced by Harry Alan Towers, who went from syndicating radio and TV shows to being arrested along with his girlfriend Mariella Novotny - who was played by Britt Eklund in Scandal - for operating a vice ring. He jumped bail and ran to Europe while his lover revealed that Towers was a Soviet agent using his girls to get info for the Russians. And Novotny, a high-class call girl, had already been linked to both John and Robert Kennedy, as well as having experience working for MI5.

Once he settled down in Europe, Towers married actress Maria Rohm - she's in this, as well as several other Jess Franco movies - and started writing and producing movies based on the novels of Agatha Christie, the Marquis de Sade and giallo father - one of many, but a father nonetheless - Edgar Wallace.

Plus, he worked extensively with the second member of our rogue's gallery: Jesus "Jess" Franco. This may have been the first film that Jess and Towers worked on, but they would make The Girl from Rio, Venus in Furs, Justine, Eugenie... The Story of Her Journey into Perversion, The Bloody Judge, Count Dracula, The Blood of Fu Manchu and The Castle of Fu Manchu.

Franco made at least 173 movies and took a gradual slide from horror, Eurospy and softcore films into grimier and grimier films. He's an acquired taste that I've grown to enjoy, yet for every well-made movie like Bloody Moon, you'll find one where you wonder if Franco had even seen a film before, much less made one.

The reason for that is often the funds that Franco had at his disposal. He's the kind of filmmaker who would make ten bad movies instead of one good one, providing that he was getting the chance to make a movie.

He reminds me a lot of the third member of our exploitation army of evil and that would be the man that edited this movie - and from all accounts directed the pornographic insert (pun intended) scenes - Bruno Mattei..

The French version of this movie features eight minutes of fully adult footage, shot with body doubles in similar settings, all to give the illusion that this movie is way more hardcore than it really is.

To be perfectly frank, this movie is an aberrant work of absolute indecency even without seeing gynecological footage of the old in and out.

New inmate Marie (Rohm, yes, the producer's wife, yet she endures so much that you really get the idea that this is not an example of nepotism) has arrived at Castillo de la Muerte, an island prison where she's given the number - she no longer has a name - 99.

She's joined by Helga, now known as 97. She's played by Elisa Montes, who had appeared in several peplum and westerns before this. And Natalie Mendoz - 98 - is played by Luciana Paluzzi, who was SPECTRE assassin Fiona Volpa in Thunderball, as well as showing up in everything from The Green Slime to A Black Veil for Lisa, The Man Who Came from Hate and The Klansman.

They're suffering under the oppressive sapphic rule of Thelma Diaz, a tough warden who is, shockingly, played by Oscar-winner Mercedes McCambridge, who won that award for All the King's Men, was nominated for Giant and was also the voice of Pazuzu. She's berserk in this movie, laying it all on the line, unafraid to go over the top and then keep her upward trajectory.

"From now on you have no name, only a number. You have no future, only the past. No hope, only regrets. You have no friends, only me," she barks at them before they even get into the prison.

Eventutally, Diaz takes things too far, but even the new warden Caroll (Maria Schell, who had an affair so memorable with Glenn Ford that she remembered it two decades later and gifted him with a dog named Bismarck who became his constant companion) can't improve this hell on earth. So the women escape at the same time that several men break out from the similarly brutal rule of Governor Santos (Herbert Lom).

What happens when you have several damaged women on the run being followed by men who haven't even seen a woman in decades? And what if that happens in a Jess Franco movie? Yeah, you can see where this is heading.

Rosalba Neri - Lady Frankenstein! - is also on hand to pretty much set the film on fire in every single frame that she shows up in.

Every Women In Prison movie that would follow in the slimy wake of this film would be based upon the path that it blazed, including Mattei's own The Jail: Women's Hell, which he waited nearly four decades to make and pretty much stuck pretty close to what Franco started. Well, he was also following the even more berserk template he'd established with Violence In a Women's Prison and Women's Prison Massacre. Man, if you want a WIP movie, call Bruno Mattei. Sadly, you can't. He's dead.

Or you could call Jess Franco, were he alive. He made nine WIP movies in his career, including Women In Cellblock 9, Tropical Inferno, Justine, The Lovers of Devil's Island, Barbed Wire Dolls, Women Behind Bars, Love Camp, Sadomania and this movie.

This is one of the Franco films where he's making not just a movie, but a good movie. The focus is soft, the feel is surreal and the interplay with the Bruno Nicolai score is fabulous. I could have done without the scumdog feel of the French cut, but hey, I'm doing an entire week of Bruno Mattei movies.

Trust me, Jess Franco will get his turn.

Worth A Slack-Jawed Look

[ferbs54 · 6/10 · 8 June 2010]

Anyone at all familiar with the work of director Jess Franco knows that choosing a rental from his gigantic oeuvre of 190+ films (!) is a crapshoot at best. "99 Women," from 1969, is fairly typical Franco: cheaply made, often sleazy, and featuring an overdependence on the ol' zoom lens. This early WIP (women in prison) flick transpires at an unnamed island locale, although the press kit for the film states that it takes place off the coast of Panama. Here, the 99 female inmates of the title are sadistically looked after by a superintendent played by Mercedes McCambridge, in heavily accented monster mode; on the other side of the island, Herbert Lom (born Schluderpacheru...love that name!) wards over the 500 male prisoners, using Mercedes' girls as his own private brothel. The film boasts a very impressive cast, including Luciana Paluzzi, Rosalba Neri and Maria Rohm--three of the hottest Eurobabes of the time--as prisoners, and Maria Schell as a kindly prison investigator. Unfortunately, the great Paluzzi is shockingly underused in this film, her role limited to a mere seven words of dialogue and barely 10 minutes of screen time. Worse, a seemingly obligatory soft-core lesbian scene between Rosalba and Rohm is somehow made quite dull by Franco; don't know how he managed that with two such smoking beauties! On the plus side, "99 Women" features some fairly decent acting (especially by the old pros McCambridge and Lom), scenic outdoor locales (on one of this Blue Underground DVD's copious extras, Franco reveals that the film was largely shot at an ancient fortress in Alicante, Spain, on the Mediterranean coast), and a nicely downbeat ending. The movie, apparently, was quite a hit in its day, and with its many exploitative elements--nudity, lesbianism, prison escape, prison riot, whippings, drug and prostitution references--it is easy to see why. Today, the film strikes the viewer as entertaining shlock, but at least it IS entertaining, and certainly worth a slack-jawed look....

Masterpiece of funny crap.

[hitchcockthelegend · 2/10 · 31 October 2013]

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