Jesus Franco's 99 Women (1969) Review

At last a dream of mine has come true. Finally on British TV we have a channel that screens plenty of late night cult Italian cinema. That channel is the non subscription movie channel called Movies4Men that along with Zone Horror who recently screened Jungle Holocaust and Cat In the Brain have finally given British fans of Italian genre cinema something to watch. However tonights offering by Jess Franco only falls within the remit of Bloody Italiana on a technicality as it is a joint production by enough countries to organise a pan continental singing contest, one of which being Italy.

The film opens to a funky little kitsch score that suggests we are about to get something along the lines of Russ Meyer's Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill! but it turns out we are not going to get that at all, instead we are shown an ominous looking castle as the ominous sounding violins announce its ominousness to us. It turns out the castle thing is a prison so this must be a women in prison film.



As it turns out 99 Women is indeed a a WIP movie with 99 gorgeous women all locked up together and spending their time talking, smoking, making out with one another and having catfights. So far so good. However the women suffer at the hands of a sadistic and horny governor who walks with a limp and is portrayed by Herbert Lom and his equally fascistic superintendent (Mercedes McCambridge, the voice of the demon from The Exorcist).

As the film lapses from English to French with no subtitles the girls get tortured, some escape and go on a jungle odyssey, which was great, then get chased by a group of desperate male escapees for whom the concept of consensual sex is an anathema.

While all this is going on the prison regime is being inspected by a more liberal would be superintendent who decides that her liberal ways means she has too much humanity and so gives up trying at prison reform because after a breakout that was understandable given the circumstances she is spat at and is called names.

99 Women is a really good film, honestly. Lom is great as are all the performances, the pace of the film really picks up during the jungle sequences and the film ends as it begins with a funky little kitsch song. This was the non hardcore version so it was a little tasteful and was hour and half well spent.

Thanks to Movies4Men this film has been added to my ever growing shopping list.