99 Women (1969)

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

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

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Giving a fine imitation of Bela Lugosi, Oscar winning actress joins the ranks of Esther Dale, Sara Allgood, Hope Emerson, Ida Lupino and Jeanne Cooper as tough or sadistic matrons/wardens in a women's prison. She's hard looking, hard acting, and the heart is as hard as granite. This is one of the many exploitation films that used lesbian subterfuge to pack in an audience, a sort of international Eurotrash drama that is tedious and often distasteful.There's never an opportunity to get to know or understand any of the characters, only the element of 60's trash to try and sell. So in the amount of obviousness, there's also Maria Schnell as McCambridge's potential successor and "Pink Panther" foil Herbert Lom as the prisoner's governor and practically the only male character in the film. Around the prisoners, McCambridge dresses severely and extremely mannish, but in front of Lom, dresses extravagantly, as if to use the few womanly wiles she can to hold onto her job. She truly is a sight to behold.While the DVD print is a ton of improvement over the old faded VHS print, it still struggles to give some reason for being other than the use of sex and violence to titillate. Brief flashbacks to several of the girl's pasts don't really endear them, and it just drags on and on. I'll rank this among the lowest of the women's prison films, because the exploitation elements just expose it for being cheap and vulgar with a waste of talents for a few middle of the road names who are more like cult figures today rather than real movie stars.

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 lot of campiness.99 Women has decent production values, good acting but is dull as dishwater. The soft porn will make you go to sleep, very little of the women in prison trademark action, the story is just plain bad and the dubbing is nonsensical where the English dubbing just reverts to French at random moments.Its just bad and boring and I cannot list 99 reasons to give for you to not watch it.

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).

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.