Paul Andrews 99 Women starts as a small boatload of women arrive at an unnamed island to be become prisoners of Governor Santos (Herbert Lom) & chief warden Madame Diaz (Mercedes McCambridge) in a state prison known as the 'Castle of Death', amongst them is the pretty blonde Marie (Maria Rohm) who pleads her innocence. Branded inmate number 99 this is how Marie is to be known from now on, after trying to help a fellow inmate the warden decides number 99 needs punishing, meanwhile a kind hearted investigator from the mainland named Leonie Carrol (Maria Schell) is sent to the prison to root out corruption & abuse but Governor Santos is on to a good thing & doesn't intend to let Carrol spoil it. Marie decides to escape & along with another couple of inmates manages to make it into the harsh jungles but things aren't much better out there than inside the prison...This English, Lichtenstein, German, Italian & Spanish co-production was written & directed by the prolific Jesus Franco whom I consider to be one of the two worst filmmakers in the horror & sleaze genre, I'm sorry but I just find virtually all of his films absolutely worthless & even worse mind numbingly boring & badly made. Lets take the abomination that is 99 Women as an example, at almost an hour & forty minutes this feels twice as long & for a film where virtually nothing happens 99 Women is slow going & I was throughly bored by it. Hell, I started to play some games on my phone about an hour in I was so bored. The story is crap, the dialogue is awful & the character's are cardboard thin. As an early example of the Women in Prison genre 99 Women really doesn't hold up, the location used looks more like a vineyard, there's no shower scene & little in the way of genuine sleaze. The script tries it's hand at a bit of drama with the plight of the abused women & the most dull prison escape ever filmed. People just don't act like people, people don't talk like people & there's not enough sleaze here to make this watchable, another worthless piece of crap from Franco who has his admirers & fans but for the life of me I can't see why.The whole look of 99 Women is dull, some of the locations are nice but do not look anything like a prison & the way the women wear shirts but not much else means I never got the Women in Prison vibe from this at all. Surprisingly light on nudity & sex there's not a great deal of violence either although Franco manages to include a scene where a woman attacks & stabs a Snake despite it just laying on the floor doing no-one any harm, it would have been quicker & easier & safer is the woman had just stepped over it or walked around it, you know? To be honest I can't really remember much about this, it just sort of went in one ear & straight out the other if you know what I mean with no impact on me at all. The mythical French version includes hardcore sex scenes featuring people not in the rest of the film having sex in places not in the rest of the film.Apparently filmed in Valencia in Spain this cheap film features lots of ugly zooms & really boring shots that Franco holds for ages, the editing is also bad with character's jumping around all over the place with the final riot at the end the best (or worst) example of this. The women here really aren't that good looking although a couple are attractive enough I suppose, Herbert Lom deserved better than this.99 Women is more crap from cult director Franco but this time there isn't even any sleaze or violence to make it bearable (unless you watch the badly edited French hardcore version) & is yet another film by Franco that I can honestly say I hated. The sort of film that makes me want to give up watching films altogether.

Scarecrow-88 Welcome to hell. The prison is nicknamed "Casa de la muertez"(Castle of Death)and is ran with an iron fist to the chops by superintendent Thelma(Mercedes Mcambridge) . We are introduced to three young women who are being boated to this godforsaken place, sentenced to a female prison built by Spaniards overlooking an ocean, seemingly cut off from civilization. McCambridge is wonderfully lecherous as the strict disciplinarian whose abuse has trouble brewing due to a couple murders thanks to the harsh acts of those in charge. The prison itself looks as if it were cut out of stone, cells with cavernous walls, voices echoing when those within even speak in a normal tone. The salacious Spanish governor, with a doghead cane, (Herbert Lom) is always granted permission to have his way with the girls. During Franco's era with Harry Allan Towers he made some pretty successful pictures with the British producer's wife Maria Rohm(Venus in Furs). "99 Women" has Rohm as a sniveling weakling, Leonie, who is pushed around by the luscious Zoie(Rosalba Neri), with a pair of magnificent legs, quite open about her sexual desire for the new inmate. For a fan of lesbian erotica, I must say that I was more than a bit disappointed in the Neri/Rohm sequence as Franco's camera remains out of focus and never centered properly on the action..this is especially disconcerting when you have two such lovely creatures making love to each other. I could nit pick about how even when Rohm supposedly suffers in the punishment cell for "repeated insolence" she looks like a million bucks, only her hair a little out of sorts. I don't mind such things because women-in-prison flicks rarely depict such scenarios involving female inmates persecuted in the harshest ways with it showing in a realistic manner. A welfare worker, Ms Carol(Maria Schell, given star treatment), may be the only hope for the inmates under Thelma for she is appointed to see that they are treated with a reasonable care. But, despite her good will, Carol finds the task of helping the inmates difficult because they don't trust that she can make a difference.The movie establishes later that Rohm was possibly falsely accused of prostituting herself before being charged with murder when she claims to have merely defended herself against those who were trying to rape her. Staples of the genre are present such as catfights and a planned prison escape. Inmates are recognized by their assigned numbers not by name..there's a great scene where McCambridge slaps a new inmate for saying her name when asked, not her "new name", Number 98. I had always read and heard that Towers was a penny-pinching cheap producer constantly balking about having to spend money but Franco's movies in that partnership looked decently budgeted..at least he had a better camera and his movie looked to have had good production value. Interesting enough, there is a protracted jungle escape which takes up the latter portion of the movie detracting from the storyline regarding Carol and her troubles with the governor and Thelma..it worked for me because as Helga(Elisa Montés) and Marie are on the cusp of freedom, after surviving a hot, sweaty jungle and all it's many dangers(including male prisoners longing to rape them), we see that escape from their situation is pretty much hopeless. Carol's honorable intentions fall to the wayside and the denouement presents the fact that behind the walls of a cruel prison system humanity seems not to exist. I have a hard time not enjoying Franco's seductive camera capturing the ravishing bodies of his scantily clad ladies in nothing more than prison shirts and panties..color me an easy guy to please. I was impressed with Franco not going overboard with the zoom lens, although I like the use of the technique when you have interesting faces in frame. I really dug this cast.

slayrrr666 "99 Women" is a decent if uninspired example of the genre.**SPOILERS**Taken prisoner, Marie, (Maria Rohm) is assigned to the women's Castillo de la Muerte Prison, overrun by the harsh warden, Thelma Diaz, (Mercedes McCambridge) and her troupe of lesbian guards. Immediately upon her arrival, Marie is stripped of her clothes and issued a ratty prison uniform and a number, and quickly learns that the prison is in a rather poor state, lorded over by Diaz who sells the girls to the corrupt Governor Santos, (Herbert Lom) who also heads the island's male prison. After being thrown in solitary confinement for helping a fellow inmate and raped by her cell-mate Zoe, (Rosalba Neri) the arrival of a new inspector, Leonie Carroll, (Maria Schell) is sent to oversee the prison. Tired of being held against her will, attempts to escape with some fellow inmates, but the surrounding locales make it a difficult one.The News: This here is a really mediocre film, but there is a lot to like about it. One reason for this is the mystery behind the main character for, in having her tell her own story, it is impossible for us to tell whether or not she is guilty. Marie certainly makes herself out to be innocent, but we can never be completely sure, and, after all, why would she be convicted by a system that, for once, isn't being portrayed as particularly unjust. The screenplay is relatively simple and straightforward, and within its somewhat crude framework, it is imbued with a sense of drama and emotion. He especially revels in the sequences that depict the past crimes of the inmates. The visual aspects is at its best here. The film drifts with ease from very classy, classic professional cinematographic set-ups to "typically-Franco" scenes of delirious, poetic beauty, like soft-focus, over-zoomed sex scenes and the best is a hallucinogenic striptease before a high society crowd that plays in a large manner of moods, noticeably erotic, charged with class schisms and the toll of exploitation on all women that's reminiscent of Argento in its use of sumptuous colored lighting. There's also some really good scenes emerging that later form the basics of the entire genre. With the sadistic lesbian guard in charge events, the sleazy politicians in-cahoots with it all, the veteran that comes to like the innocent inmate, and the unfair punishment for a humane act, the conventions are here and well-established. In a rather shocking turn, the new inspector actually seems genuinely interested in the prisoners' treatment, making sure they are fed decently, treated humanely, and punished fairly. It's problems, though, come in the form of the X-Rated Version, which is about fifteen to twenty minutes longer and consists of hardcore footage that has been jammed in with almost no regard for continuity, logic and setting. There's just something bizarrely amusing about the fact that the porn shots have been so poorly inserted, as they are generally massively inappropriate for where they're being placed, and it seems like only the most passing attempt was made to get them to match the scene they're being stuck into. It's quite hilarious to see the new footage shot, as they quite alter the film drastically. The main flashback, which is supposed to be her being raped by four men, is replaced by some blonde girl and an old guy struggling in a dirt-patch. The earliest insert sets things off right away. It comes with a prisoner sleeping in their cell and cuts from her lying on the ground to a couple of women being together in what looks to be a suburban bedroom. Is this supposed to be a dream, a flashback, or is it just a really bad stand-in for the cell? A blonde woman has been thrown in, seemingly to stand in for the original performer, yet it's quite clear she isn't her, and no attempt is made to hide this fact. Best of all, the scene in which she spies on the redhead and her dead lover's friend's sexual counter now continues, with a couple of different women standing in and then a third escapee making love out in a forest. What makes this scene so fantastic is the fact that the two girls' prison uniforms are simulated by a couple of bath towels that mysteriously appear out of nowhere, with their ensemble being perfectly completed by matching fuzzy slippers. It also could've been a little sleazier, as it's quite tame and really not that exploitative, considering the theme and talent involved. The snake is quite laughable and doesn't even look right, coming off badly and making it's scenes a disappointment. Otherwise, this one wasn't that terrible.The Final Verdict: If the hardcore footage would've been inserted into it with any attempt at coherence, this might've been knocked up a couple notches on the sleaze scale, but it's still a fun, watchable Women-in-Prison film that offers up enough elements of the genre to allow fans a chance to enjoy it.Rated UR/NC-17: Several graphic sex scenes, Nudity, a Rape, some Language and Violence

Coventry 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.