Sorry, this movie sucks

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Directed by future cult director Jess Franco, this is a restrained and commercial film that doesn't have much of his voice but all of his skill. This would be his most profitable box office global hit ever as it was made for producer Harry Alan Towers, a guy who got big locations, big international stars and big distribution. To be honest, this is mostly Towers' film, which isn't bad. Its melodramatic, easy to digest and has some softcore kicks. This is considered the genesis of the Women in Prison film genre and quite a few writers claim there wouldn't be an Orange is the New Black without it. It establishes the archetypes like lesbianism, corporal punishment, evil wardens and big escape plans. Surely that stuff is lifted from male prison films, but whatever. Jess Franco would remake and riff off of 99 Women many times and some of those films are more entertaining or at least more sleazy: Sadomania, Tropical Inferno, Women Without Innocence, Love Camp.

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

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

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).