Watch 99 Women For Free

Brilliant and touching

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

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.

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.

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

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.