Women in Cellblock 9

Four hot chicks are sent off to a hellhole prison in either South or Central America and then spend most of their time butt nekkid, because it's a Jesus Franco film and chicks are contractually obliged to spend much of their screen time butt nekkid in Jesus Franco films, just like chicks are contractually obliged to have something unutterably horrible happen to them in Lucio Fulci films. In fact, I'm pretty sure that the chicks in Cellblock 9 only (very) briefly keep their clothes on for like the opening scene.

Anyhoo, this one's pretty nasty even by Senhor Franco's standards, and is chock full of misogyny, with some rather squirm inducing torture sequences to go with the bewbs and Franco's trademark lingering crotch shots.

One of the chicks in Cellblock 9, Susan Hemmingway, (At least I think it's her-she certainly looks young enough) was under 18 at the time of filming, which means it will never ever ever be accepted by the BBFC (British Board Of Film Classification) as she spends most of her screen time butt nekkid and chained, as well as getting down with three other chained and butt nekkid chicks. She also starred in Franco's Love Letters Of A Portuguese Nun, which I haven't seen, but am willing to bet isn't a dignified portrayal of a humble life of pious servitude in a convent. Cellblock 9 is also surprisingly down beat and grim, which puts it firmly in the category of totally and completely vile irredeemable filth which should not be viewed by anyone at all whatsoever, particularly chicks just released from prison. Best line: After thwarting an escape attempt by hawt chicks via fruit truck, a guard leers "THIS is the type of fruit my men like!" Awesome.

7/10, delivers in what it sets out to do in spades, and fans of dirty nasty no-value-at-all-whatsoever Eurosleaze exploitation should check out this grimy little doozy. Senhor Franco, you are a true cinematic Trashmeister, and I salute you good sir.

** Franco WIP again, though probably the softest of his excursion into caged women territory, Barbed Wire Dolls & Ilsa: Absolute Power especially being far crueler in their low budget visions of iron bar hotels for femmes. Still it's amazingly sleazy even for exploitation hell, where women spend ALL their time undressed & in a constant state of humiliation, a sheen of sweat adorning their nubile bodies, in a fast dash through the jungle or chained like dogs to a wall. It's strangely asexual but that pervy kink is always present, like the feeling you used to get sneaking downstairs to catch a late night baby blue while your parents were sleeping soundly. Naked women, power dynamics, sadism? No surprise this sub-genre found a kindred spirit in the likes of our director, zooming in on hairy crotches & pained-racked faces every chance he gets. Pulp adventure magazines filtered through the anything- goes 70's: that's Franco & it's genuinely unnerving because you can almost feel him getting off in staging these sick fantasies of submission & control. There's no budget to provide a slick sheen of commercialism, no blunt to the impact & its not like he's ever been very aesthetically formal either (to say the least).Its that jazz-riff quality that makes him invigorating & exotic for all his movies' awfulness, but also pervy-uncle creepy too; you don't have to look further than the bag-over-the-head bit from Ilsa to see what I mean, or the strapped-to-the-electrified bed, pi$$-in-the-chamber-pot from Barbed Wire Dolls. These are some dank psycho-sexual depths right here.

Again it's all lovably rinky-dink, paint blots for bullet wounds, sound effects for gunshots, Howard Vernon for depth. Its power derives from extremity, stark female objectification you don't see much outside of XXX. The women are denied even the dignity of clothing while at the whim of their evil keepers & its that kind of porno rationale that makes you envision Franco pissing himself happy staging these adolescent jerk-off skits, leaning over to fondle dear Linay while operating the camera. There's a weird kind of dedication here you won't see in the average impersonal WIP, something that lends a certain weight when usually these flicks are forgotten the moment you see them.

Otherwise the three or four women were all lovely to watch (Karine Gambier is so ethereal albino white she glows) & provided more of a presence than the usual non-Romay joint musters, adorable Susan Hemingway especially. I cared a bit more about what happened to this one dimensional lot & so the ending was very depressing but par for course.

This sexploiter was quite clearly made for the sex & gore crowd. Thus we have here several beautiful women (nude most of the time), who are imprisoned and raped and tortured and raped and killed and raped. Completely lacking in this film is a source of reference, a coordinate system in which we could place any of these people. There are no answers to questions such as "Why?", or "Where from?", regarding any of the characters. They don't have a future, a past, a motivation, a connection to any kind of life as we know it. In a way, they are like some of these alien societies encountered once (and only once) by Captain Kirk in one of the Star Trek episodes.

We normally criticise movie characters as two-dimensional when they are underwritten - here even "one-dimensional" would give too much credit, as they don't move in space, time, or behaviour. Thus there wasn't much acting skill asked of the cast and thus they have no problems coping with this very limited demand; especially Howard Vernon is (as ever) excellent at portraying unpleasant people of the sinister kind.

Compared to other Franco flicks the cinematography is exceptionally good (none of his trademark out-of-focus zooms) and at times even inspirational. The sets are fine too, although it has to be said that torturing instruments that are meant to aid interrogation completely fail their purpose if they almost instantaneously kill.

A group of women led by Karine Levere is caught by the warden of a women's prison,located somewhere in the South American jungle.None of them will reveal the secrets of their organization or the names of their collaborators in the cities,so they are handed over to Dr.Costa who,after four years inactivity in Europe,is delighted to be able to practice his torture techniques once more.Laverne fails to resist the inhuman treatments and reveals all.The only hope of saving the organization is for the girls to warn the city cell before it's too late.They trick the prison guard into having sex with them,knock him out and break out of prison.The warden and Dr.Costa must prevent them from revealing the practices inside the prison,so the hunt begins."Women In Cellblock 9" is an enjoyable exploitation film made by Jesus Franco.The script is terrible,but it serves as a pretext for showing lots of full-frontal nudity,sexuality and some rather nasty torture sequences.The film was produced by Erwin C.Dietrich,but it's not as memorable as "Barbed Wire Dolls".Franco regular Howard Vernon is perfect as a sadistic Dr.Costa and Susan Hemingway is a stunning beauty.So if you are ready for some fun sleazy thrills give this film a look.8 out of 10.

I saw this a few years ago when I was living in Europe (it's currently unavailable in the US except as a bootleg or an import). It is a completely stereotypical and unremarkable Franco WIP film of the era. Four implausibly sexy "revolutionaries" in an unnamed South American country are captured and thrown into an isolated jungle prison (after they try to drive their caravan right by the prison). They are stripped naked, chained by their necks to the ceiling in the titular "Cellblock 9" and forced to stand hours on end. The "Ilsa"-like female and her bent doctor cohort (long-time Franco regular Howard Vernon) take great delight in trying to torture information out of them. Some of the tortures (like the "Spanish horse) are exceedingly unpleasant but also surprisingly non-graphic, and this movie doesn't quite approach the nastiness of Franco's earlier "Barb-Wire Dolls" and "Ilsa, the Wicked Warden". It also doesn't have the plot of the later "Women Behind Bars" (or feature the genuinely talented Lina Romay). The girls eventually bust out, run into the woods (still completely naked mind you) where the movie ends EXACTLY the way all these Franco WIP films do. Furthermore, despite the four girls having very nice bodies and being almost perpetually naked, the only time this movie approaches any real eroticism is when the heroines stage a four-way lesbian orgy (that goes on for some minutes) in order to trick a horny, dimwitted male guard into unchaining them. This movie is completely unremarkable in any way, EXCEPT. . .

The BBFC (British Board of Film Censors) recently banned this movie after they somehow discovered that one of the incredibly obscure actresses was underage (I'll let you figure out which one--she looks maybe 17 and a half at the youngest). I do NOT want to try to defend Franco on this particular count, but this is a perfect example of where what no one knew would not have hurt anybody. Now though thanks to the "vigilance" of the BBFC (you're about thirty years late, guys) this movie, widely available from continental Europe through importers and bootleggers, will become another "holy grail" for the perverts who obsess about this kind of thing. Worse for me though is the hypocrisy. The BBFC did not cut the gratuitous nudity of much more obviously underage girls out of the more recent and much more respectable movies like "American Beauty" and "The Hole", even while the girls in question (Thora Birch and Keira Knightly, respectively) were STILL underage. If you are not going to protect actual underage actors from exploitation, it is downright silly to try to "protect society" from us Franco fans who might unwittingly see a naked seventeen year old and presumably go on some kind of sex-crazed rampage. This movie sucks frankly, but not nearly as much as brain-dead censorship and the BBFC.