Review by Dan Taylor
As
the opening song plays over the credits,
a boatload of babbage makes it's way to
the Island of Prisons: on one side we've
got the chick hole, run by warden Mercedes
McCambridge (the voice of the possessed
Linda Blair in THE
EXORCIST). The other side features a
male prison presided over by none other
than Herbert Lom himself. Boy, I bet he
was glad when the PINK PANTHER films turned
into a series... it saved him from having
to star in 100 WOMEN! At the women's prison
they are treated as nothing but animals,
addressed only by their numbers (hence the
title). And it's good to see that Mercedes
and Herbert are doing their best to provide
a progressive penal system. As they have
their weekly dinner meeting (to discuss
new prison reforms I suppose) she mentions,
"There's a little blonde... she might
interest you." Shit, I can't believe
that Herb would be that picky.
CATFIGHT #1 occurs when the
chicks are down by the ocean doing some
menial task like moving sand from one part
of the beach to the other... sure seems
like a hell of a way to spend 5 to 10! Well,
the fight only lasts about twenty-seconds
as the black-haired chick and the "little
blonde" get into a pretty good, if
brief, wrestling match. We see lotsa leg,
but sadly no breast action.
CATFIGHT #2 isn't so much
a catfight as it is a female-on-female lesbo
rape with Herb watching in the background,
steaming up his eyeglasses somethin' fierce.
Normally this would be pretty great, starting
off a serious LF (Lesbo Frenzy). However,
Franco – inept director that he is
– gets so damn close that you
have absolutely ZERO clue what part of the
female anatomy you're looking at! ("It's
an earlobe!" "No you fool... it
must be her ass..." "No, it can't
be... it's really hairy!") Only JF
and his super-obsessive zoom could possibly
turn me off to a lesbian scene... well,
I'd be turned off if the two chicks were
Tyne Daly and Linda Lavin, but that's a
whole different nightmare!
Pretty soon the prisoners
are being forced to do The Dances of Excitement
("I'm not excited... do I get my money
back?"), and Mercedes looks more and
more like she's going to have a nervous
breakdown right on camera. Then again, if
she did we might have been more lenient.
CATFIGHT #3 is brief, and
broken up by the Divine Miss M, who bellows,
"You are all pigs!" Yikes, talk
about the pot calling the kettle black!
But, like a fellow viewer said, "Give
Franco credit. The girls really do get thrown
around."
As is usual with just about
any Women in Prison flick, the chicks get
to escape, but not before they are attacked
by members of the men's prison on the other
side of the island. They don't give a shit
about escaping – they just want some
'tang!
99 WOMEN has all the elements
to be a classic, but it seems that Franco
holds back and doesn't deliver the goods
often enough.
Could've been better, but
it's still an entertaining little sleazer
with a couple decent catfights.
