99 Mujeres

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.

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).

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).

This flick was made a year after the notorious "Love Camp 7", and it ain't as nasty as that and compared to Jess Franco later WIP sickies like "Sadomania" - "99 Women" is kinda tame but there's plenty of cheap thrills, groovy broads and Herbert (Mark Of The Devil) Lom in top form! It's also a wellmade film with a fun (yet dated) soundtrack. The infamous UK censors cut over 30 min. of the running time, so get the uncut version!

A must for Francophiles!

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