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99 Women (1969). An inescapable women's prison fortress. An unscrupulous prison warden. A beautiful new prisoner, number 99. She is not a number, she will be a free woman... When approaching Jess Franco's 99 Women its best not to go into it expecting a cauldron of his usual sleaze. For one thing 99 Women is a Harry Alan Towers production. Towers was instrumental with Lew Grade in bringing commercial tv to England. Towers worked with John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, and Orson Welles, who later played Long John Silver in Harry’s Treasure Island (1972), so lurid close ups of Lina Romay's pubic hair is instantly a no no for poor Jess. In fact for 99 Women Romay herself is a no no. Franco instead has the luxury of working with established film stars in Oscar winner Mercedes McCambridge, Herbert Lom and Maria Schell as well as bevy of International beauties including Rosalba Neri, Lucianna Paluzzi and Tower's wife Maria Rohm. In fact Franco is so restrained that nudity is kept to a bare minimum and the one major lesbian sex scene is filmed in extreme close up and often out of focus. The film does have hardcore scenes in some countries, however as Franco says in the interview on the disc, they were not filmed by him, nor do they feature any of his cast. So anyone opting to seek out those versions are not actually seeing the film as it was intended by the director, producer or anyone with anything to do with the production. Being a Tower's film, what the film lacks in depravity it makes up for in fabulous international locations, this time Brazil. Franco makes full use of some lovely beach and jungle filming. The up market feel of the film brings out the best in Jess Franco the director as he keeps the story tight, even to the point of adding tension to proceedings. In fact this is probably Franco's greatest achievement in technical accomplishment, so for those wishing to find out if the great sleaze master could direct would do well to look here. Those after basic WIP thrills should probably venture elsewhere. The UK release from Mediumrare offers a nice anamorphic 1:66:1 widescreen print and extras including an interview and deleted scenes. I would suspect its a port straight from Blue Underground's Unrated Directors Cut release. |
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__________________ My Video Nasty Podcast (Born Nasty) and "Let's Play..." YouTube Channel: http://tinyurl.com/hyphk7u |
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Just don't bother with the UK versions. Trimmed is putting it mildly.
__________________ [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] [B] "... the days ahead will be filled with struggle ... and coated in marzipan ... "[/B] |
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Also watched OHMSS. Diana Rigg!!! Cough. Aaand Historia Sexual de O(1984, JF) & Vampire Killer Barbys(94, JF) Two films that yet again, couldn't be further apart. O is an exemplar of the banality of perversion, as a fairly youthful actress is fingered blah blah. I now realise that i'm becoming jaded....if the sight of Paul Mueller licking a corpse in Hot Nights of Linda didn't get my juices flowing etc, what chance has this seedy wannabe? ho hum, as always i'l rewatch when less pissed. VKB I enjoyed, due to a high grade of cheese, a silly little confection of a film, and far better than Suck ('09)
__________________ [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] [B] "... the days ahead will be filled with struggle ... and coated in marzipan ... "[/B] |
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Can't wait for Amazon to ship my steelbook. I'm interested to see if Arrow's version is better than the one I have on Blu
__________________ If I'm curt with you it's because time is a factor. I think fast, I talk fast and I need you guys to act fast if you wanna get out of this. So, pretty please... with sugar on top. Clean the ****ing car! |
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Back home so I watched Siberian Education an interesting film marred by John Malkovitch's ridiculous accent.
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And soon the Darkness never seen this before but heard off it, Boy what have I missed a very good film in lots of aspects, a slow burner that keep you interested because of the atmophere, tension and how well it's made, It's films like this along with Twisted nerve, peeping Tom, psycho and several other films that where made in the 60/70 that they simply don't make films as good as they use to and you don't need loads of money, special effects, gore, shock value, big actors etc etc to make a very good film, all you need is the film to be potrayed well with a nice build up and a good music score. Can anyone recommend me any other films along these lines ? that I might have missed out on. |
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