That was an excellent one.

Best movie ever!

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

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.

After being wrongly accused of prostitution "Marie" (Maria Rohm ) is sent to an extremely harsh island prison known as the "Castle of Death" which is run by a sadistic director named "Thelma Diaz" (Mercedes McCambridge) and her immediate supervisor "Governor Santos" (Herbert Lom). While there she is subjected to all kinds of abuse which includes both torture and rape. However, her hopes of being treated decently are revived when a new director by the name of "Leonie Caroll" (Maria Schell) arrives and appears to have the interests of the prisoners in mind. Now, rather than reveal any more of this film and risk ruining it for those who haven't seen it I will just say that as far as Women-in-Prison (WIP) movies are concerned this one wasn't too bad. Admittedly, the addition of several beautiful women like Luciana Paluzzi (as "Natalie Mendoza"), Rosalba Neri ("Zoie"), Elisa Montes ("Helga") and the aforementioned Maria Rohm and Maria Schell had much to do with this assessment but that's an important ingredient with movies of this type anyway. Additionally, having established actors like Herbert Lom and Mercedes McCambridge helped as well. On the other hand there was at least one particular scene which the director (Jesus Franco) probably intended to be artistic but totally bungled as it was much too dark and blurry. Likewise, the film seemed to lack continuity from one scene to another which also lessened the overall quality to some degree. On a side note I should probably add that there are several versions of this movie out on the market and at least one of these has an X-rating. So viewer caution is advised. Along with that I should probably also point out that the movie I saw was filmed in French with English subtitles in case some viewers might need to know as well. In short, while this movie clearly isn't Academy Award winning material it still wasn't terribly bad and I rate it as only slightly below average.

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.

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.