FRANCO FEBRUARY DAY 29! 99 WOMEN (1969) (Blue Underground Blu-ray Review)

99 WOMEN (1969)

3-Disc Unrated Director's Cut 

Label: Blue Underground
Region Code: Region FREE
Duration: 90 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA MA 1.0 Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.66:1)
Director: Jess Franco
Cast: Maria Schell, Mercedes McCambridge, Maria Rohm, Rosalba Neri, Herbert Lom

Strap yourself in for a raucous mix of eurocult sexploitation and filthy WIP action with the yet another Jess Franco/Harry Alan Towers team-up! This time around we are watching 99 Women (1969), wherein a new female inmate Marie (Maria Rohm, Eugenie ...the Story of Her Journey into Perversion) arrives at the infamous "Castle of Death" island women for prison, a grim place ruled with an iron fist by the wicked prison warden Thelma Diaz (Mercedes McCambridge, The Exorcist), a cruel woman who strips the women of their names and gives them a number, poor blond Maria (Rohm) becoming number "98". 

We find out that Maria was convicted and sent to the island prison for killing one of her rapists, how dare she, right? She arrives at the island via boat alongside a prostitute named Helga (Elisa Montes, The Girl From Rio) and a drug addict in withdrawal named Natalie (Luciana Paluzzi, The Green Slime), though poor Natalie is not around for too very long, dying within minutes of the start of the movie. When nice girl Maria calls on the guards for help to assist the dying woman she is punished for her troubles by the Warden who locks her away in a secluded cell with rapey-lesbian named Zoie (a very sexy Rosalba Neri, Lady Frankenstein) who forces herself on Maria. Afterward she is pimped out to the corrupt official, Governor Santos (Herbert Lom, And Now the Screaming Starts). It turns out that the Warden has been treating Santos to a steady supply of the more attractive female inmates for his own sexual delights. It just wouldn't be a WIP movie without the rape, torture and cruelty of the women behind bars, and Franco is only too happy to oblige in all department with his usual array of kinky perversity and zoom-in auteurism. However, this arrangement in threatened when do-gooder prison administrator Leonie (Maria Schell, The Hanging Tree) arrives to investigate the recent string of inmate deaths, the most recent being the drug-addict Natalie. She is appalled by the conditions at the prison after witnessing the humiliation and abuses suffered by the women, including that of Maria whom she takes a liking too. Of course, the wicked warden and naughty governor are none happy with her idea of reformation, but it seems that the reforms have come too late, and a daring escape through the jungle is hatched by Maria and the other women who are fed up with the abuse.

Maria Rohm gives a good dramatic performance in a movie with no shortage of attractive women, all of whom are used and abused by the corrupt warden. The usual WIP tropes apply here with plenty of nude women, a bit of woman on woman love/rape, a couple of cat fights, and the tropical air is thick with jailer-corruption, but it's all in good fun. To be honest the movie is not all that brutal when compared to what would follow in the coming years, but it is a seedy slice of Franco-directed WIP that is hard to forget, particularly for the troubling sexual politics/crimes perpetrated on poor Maria, who is forcibly raped by an fellow woman inmate, only to succumb to her own lust as she begins to enjoy the rape! Peckinpah (Straw Dogs) would be proud, haha.  As a slice of WIP you sort of have to expect these sort of troubling and improbable male fantasies, right? The movie is visually pleasing on all fronts with some great set decoration and tropical locations with some nice Franco lensing, including a nightmare of the rape Maria endured, the one which sent her to prison for murder, and it has a nice arthouse voyeuristic quality to it, well done Mr. Franco.

While this must have been some of the worst filth to find its way into the cinema in 1969 I will say that 99 Women doesn't have a whole lot of shock value these days, it seems quite tame compared to some of the '80s WIP flicks, but the draw for me is the allure of Jess Franco's brand of delirious exploitation, and this was notably his first foray behind bars, but it would certainly not be his last, or even his best. Also pushing this movie along are the performances of Lom and McCambridge as the corrupt prison officials, Lom is sort of quietly corrupt with a stately demeanor, but McCambridge really gets to camp it up here as the authoritarian jailer, she gives a wonderfully wicked performance that made the movie for me and keeps me coming back time and time again.

Audio/Video: 99 Women (1969) arrives on Blu-ray with a fresh 4K scan from the original negative and colors are lush and nicely saturated, skin tones look natural and the black levels are decent. Unfortunately the image looks like it has been treated to a massive dose of digital noise reduction, wiping away trace amounts of grain and smearing away fine detail, leaving behind a waxy and plasticine image that takes away from the viewing experience, which for some will be a deal-breaker. Audio on the disc comes by way of a DTS-HD MA Mono 1.0 track which sounds damn good, dialogue is crisp and clean, no issues with hiss or distortion. Notably, the cool Bruno Nicolai score comes through strong with some decent depth, even that annoying pop/theme song, optional English subtitles are provided.

Onto packaging and extras we have three discs housed within a clear Criterion-style keepcase with a sleeve of reversible artwork plus a 20-page collector's booklet with cast and crew info, CD track listing and chapter selection plus writing on the film from noted author Stephen Thrower adapted from his book  Murderous Passions: The - Delirious Cinema of Jesus Franco, which is a great read, no one writes about Franco with such intelligent passion as Thrower. 

Onto the discs, we have a DVD and Blu-ray with the same feature and extras, plus a third disc, a CD with the Bruno Nicolai score, licensed from Beat Records. Special features begin with a 2005 interview with Jess Franco who speaks about the production, cast and his collaboration with producer Harry Alan Tower, this is a carry over from the previous BU DVD release. New is a 16-minute interview with author Stephen Thrower who speaks about the film within the context of Franco's body of work, commenting the director's collaboration with the notorious producer who would apparently wine and dine the big name stars of the movies at the expense of the shooting budget! There's also a selection of three deleted scenes, including an extended rape scene and two other scenes sources from inferior VHS sources which don't add up to much. Finishing up the extras there's a poster and still gallery, the salacious original trailer, the collector's booklet and CD soundtrack.  

Special Features: 
- Jess' Women - 2005 Interview with Director Jess Franco (17 Min) HD
- Jess, Harry and 99 WOMEN - Interview with Stephen Thrower, author of "Murderous Passions: The - Delirious Cinema of Jesus Franco" (16 Mins) HD
- Deleted & Alternate Scenes (23 Min)
- Theatrical Trailer (2 Min) HD
- Poster & Still Gallery (70 Images) HD
- Collectable Booklet includes writing by author Stephen Thrower
- 99 WOMEN Original Motion Picture Soundtrack CD by Bruno Nicolai (27 Tracks)

A prime slice of Jess Franco WIP on Blu-ray from Blue Underground, this one slightly marred slightly by the unfortunate digital clean-up, but if you're a Franco-phile and enjoy his collaborations with the notorious producer Harry Alan Towers you're probably still gonna want to own this one. If you're a next-level perv Blue Underground have also released a 3-Disc Limited Edition Blu-ray containing the same extras and the director's cut, plus the notorious 98-minute French Version with hardcore sex inserts not shot by Jess Franco, which doesn't interest me. 3.5/5 

THE HANGING TREE (1959) (WAC Blu-ray Review)

THE HANGING TREE (1959)

Label: Warner Archive 

Region Code: Region-FREE

Rating: Unrated
Duration: 107 Minutes
Audio: English DTS HD-Master Audio 2.0 with Optional English Subtitles 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.78:1)
Director: Delmer Daves

Cast:  Gary Cooper, Maria Schell, Karl Malden, George C. Scott, Kar, Karl Swenson, Virginia Gregg, John Dierkes, King Donovan, Ben Piazza

Director Delmer Daves (The Red House) 50's technicolor western The Hanging Tree (1959) stars late-era screen legend Gary Cooper, in his final western, as Dr. Joseph Frail, who rides into the small gold rush community of Skull Creek, Montana, setting up shop on a hill overlooking the tented village. He enlists the help of a sluice robbeer named Rune (Ben Piazza, The Candy Snatchers) whom he rescues from an angry mob, he having been shot by prospector Frenchy (Karl Malden, Cat O' Nine Tails) while attempting to steal a nugget of gold from one of the sluices at the camp. The doc more or less blackmails him into being his indentured servant, lest he turn in the would-be thief to the locals, who didn't get a good look at the culprit, and they would surely hang him from the local hanging tree for his treachery.

Dr. Frail is not too well liked by the locals himself, earning the ire of a local faith healer named Dr. Grubb, played by George C. Scott (The Changeling) in his first ever on-screen role, it's a small but venomous role. Later when Swedish immigrant named Elizabeth  (Maria Schell, Jess Franco's 99 Women) is found near the site of a stage coach robbery, the sole survivor, she is dehydrated and suffering from exposure, she's temporarily stricken blind and the doc takes her in and nurses her back to health. Down in the mining camp unsavory rumors begin to swirl about the doc and the woman, also spurring more gossip about the doc's dark past, including an incident involving his wife and brother going up in flames, casting aspersions on the doc's moral compass. 

Sure enough Gary Cooper plays the doc as a bit of a aging gambler and gunslinger, handy with a stethoscope and a six-shooter, and a guy not prone to taking guff from anyone, his rough and tumble demeanor and his earlier blackmailing of the criminal Rune feed into the character' supposed moral  ambiguity. Cooper is great in the role, coming off as a decent man with a dark past, even rebuffing the love-interest of Schnell's character, who is so irritated by his seeming disinterest in her that she forms a business alliance with Rune and the overly-lusty Frenchy out if spite, the trio's team-up pays off with a sweet glory hole of gold found beneath the roots of a fallen tree, leading up to a raucous finale, as the drunken villagers look to hang the doc for murder.

The Hanging Tree is nice slice of big sky western-Americana, the cinematography is great, capturing the mountainous wooded vistas, and the cast is top-notch, from Cooper's morally ambiguous doc Grail to Schnell's vulnerable but driven Elizabeth, add to that Karl Malden as a lecherous gold miner and George C. Scott as a venomous preacher and you have a nicely layered western I am pleased to have finally watched, this was a nice discovery for me.    
 
Audio/Video: The Hanging Tree (1959) arrives on Blu-ray from the WAC with a new 2018 remaster from a 4K scan of the original camera negative, and it looks great, lensed by cinematographer Ted McCord (The Sound of Music, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre) this has wonderful outdoor photography of the rural, wooded hillside community of Skull Creek, a lot of it captured from numerous crane shots offering treetops and big sky sights that translate well to HD with nice, crisp detail and vivid imagery.  The lone audio option is an English DTS HD-Master Audio 2.0 with optional English subtitles, the winner here is the dramatic western score from Max Steiner (Gone with the Wind), a clean and well-balanced track, the Marty Robbins crooned theme song is also corny fun. The only extra on the disc is a theatrical trailer for the movie. 

Special Features:

- Trailer HD 

While I do tend to steer towards the more violent and stylish Italian spaghetti westerns when left to my own devices, which are  more my speed, I must say that Warner Archive have been opening my eyes to some very cool American revisionist westerns of the 50's and 60's , this is right up there with Ride the High Country (1962), a welcome addition to by western library and a wonderful presentation from the WAC. 

99 WOMEN (1969) 3-Disc Unrated Director's Cut (Blu-ray Review)

99 WOMEN (1969)

3-Disc Unrated Director's Cut 

Label: Blue Underground
Region Code: Region FREE
Duration: 90 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA MA 1.0 Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.66:1) 
Director: Jess Franco 
Cast: Maria Schell, Mercedes McCambridge, Maria Rohm, Rosalba Neri, Herbert Lom

Strap yourself in for a raucous mix of eurocult sexploitation and filthy WIP action with the yet another Jess Franco/Harry Alan Towers team-up! This time around we are watching 99 Women (1969), wherein a new female inmate Marie (Maria Rohm) arrives at the infamous "Castle of Death" island women for prison, a grim place ruled with an iron fist by the wicked prison warden Thelma Diaz (Mercedes McCambridge, The Exorcist), a cruel woman who strips the women of their names and gives them a number, poor blond Maria (Rohm) becoming number "98". 

We find out that Maria was convicted and sent to the island prison for killing one of her rapists, how dare she. She arrives at the island via boat alongside a prostitute named Helga (Elisa Montes, The Girl From Rio) and a drug addict in withdrawal named Natalie (Luciana Paluzzi, Thunderball), though poor Natalie is not around long, dying within minute of the start of the movie. When nice girl Maria calls on the guards for help to assist the dying woman she is punished for her troubles by the Warden who locks her away in a secluded cell with rapey-lesbian named Zoie (a very sexy Rosalba Neri, The French Sex Murders) who forces herself on Maria. Afterward she is pimped out to the corrupt official, Governor Santos (Herbert Lom, Mark of the Devil). It turns out that the Warden has been treating Santos to a steady supply of the more attractive female inmates for his own sexual delights. It just wouldn't be a WIP movie without the rape, torture and cruelty of the women behind bars, and Franco is only too happy to oblige in all department with his usual array of kinky perversity and zoom-in auteurism. However, this arrangement in threatened when do-gooder prison administrator Leonie (Maria Schell, The Bloody Judge) arrives to investigate the recent string of inmate deaths, the most recent being the drug-addict Natalie. She is appalled by the conditions at the prison after witnessing the humiliation and abuses suffered by the women, including that of Maria whom she takes a liking too. Of course, the wicked warden and naughty governor are none happy with her idea of reformation, but it seems that the reforms have come too late, and a daring escape through the jungle is hatched by Maria and the other women who are fed up with the abuse. 

Maria Rohm (Eugenie... The Story of Her Journey Into Perversion) gives a good dramatic performance in a movie with no shortage of attractive women, all of whom are used and abused by the corrupt warden. The usual WIP tropes apply here with plenty of nude women, a bit of woman on woman love/rape, a couple of cat fights, and the tropical air is thick with jailer-corruption, but it's all in good fun. To be honest the movie is not all that brutal when compared to what would follow in the coming years, but it is a seedy slice of Franco-directed WIP that is hard to forget, particularly for the troubling sexual politics/crimes perpetrated on poor Maria, who is forcibly raped by an fellow woman inmate, only to succumb to her own lust as she begins to enjoy the rape! Peckinpah (Straw Dogs) would be proud, haha.  As a slice of WIP you sort of have to expect these sort of troubling and improbable male fantasies, right? The movie is visually pleasing on all fronts with some great set decoration and tropical locations with some nice Franco lensing, including a nightmare of the rape Maria endured, the one which sent her to prison for murder, and it has a nice arthouse voyeuristic quality to it, well done Mr. Franco. 

While this must have been some of the worst filth to find its way into the cinema in 1969 I will say that 99 Women doesn't have a whole lot of shock value these days, it seems quite tame compared to some of the '80s WIP flicks, but the draw for me is the allure of Jess Franco's brand of delirious exploitation, and this was notably his first foray behind bars, but it would certainly not be his last, or even his best. Also pushing this movie along are the performances of Lom and McCambridge as the corrupt prison officials, Lom is sort of quietly corrupt with a stately demeanor, but McCambridge really gets to camp it up here as the authoritarian jailer, she gives a wonderfully wicked performance that made the movie for me and keeps me coming back time and time again.   

Audio/Video: 99 Women (1969) arrives on Blu-ray with a fresh 4K scan from the original negative and colors are lush and nicely saturated, skin tones look natural and the black levels are decent. Unfortunately the image looks like it has been treated to a massive dose of digital noise reduction, wiping away trace amounts of grain and smearing away fine detail, leaving behind a waxy and plasticine image that takes away from the viewing experience, which for some will be a deal-breaker. Audio on the disc comes by way of a DTS-HD MA Mono 1.0 track which sounds damn good, dialogue is crisp and clean, no issues with hiss or distortion. Notably, the cool Bruno Nicolai score comes through strong with some decent depth, even that annoying pop/theme song, optional English subtitles are provided. 

Onto packaging and extras we have three discs housed within a clear Criterion-style keepcase with a sleeve of reversible artwork plus a 20-page collector's booklet with cast and crew info, CD track listing and chapter selection plus writing on the film from noted author Stephen Thrower adapted from his book  Murderous Passions: The - Delirious Cinema of Jesus Franco, which is a great read, no one writes about Franco with such intelligent passion as Thrower. 

Onto the discs, we have a DVD and Blu-ray with the same feature and extras, plus a third disc, a CD with the Bruno Nicolai score, licensed from Beat Records. Special features begin with a 2005 interview with Jess Franco who speaks about the production, cast and his collaboration with producer Harry Alan Tower, this is a carry over from the previous BU DVD release. New is a 16-minute interview with author Stephen Thrower who speaks about the film within the context of Franco's body of work, commenting the director's collaboration with the notorious producer who would apparently wine and dine the big name stars of the movies at the expense of the shooting budget! There's also a selection of three deleted scenes, including an extended rape scene and two other scenes sources from inferior VHS sources which don't add up to much. Finishing up the extras there's a poster and still gallery, the salacious original trailer, the collector's booklet and CD soundtrack.   

Special Features: 
- Jess' Women - 2005 Interview with Director Jess Franco (17 Min) HD 
- Jess, Harry and 99 WOMEN - Interview with Stephen Thrower, author of "Murderous Passions: The - Delirious Cinema of Jesus Franco" (16 Mins) HD 
- Deleted & Alternate Scenes (23 Min) 
- Theatrical Trailer (2 Min) HD 
- Poster & Still Gallery (70 Images) HD 
- Collectable Booklet includes writing by author Stephen Thrower
- 99 WOMEN Original Motion Picture Soundtrack CD by Bruno Nicolai (27 Tracks) 

A prime slice of Jess Franco WIP on Blu-ray from Blue Underground, this one slightly marred slightly by the unfortunate digital clean-up, but if you're a Franco-phile and enjoy his collaborations with the notorious producer Harry Alan Towers you're probably still gonna want to own this one. If you're a perv (aren't we all?) Blue Underground have also released a 3-Disc Limited Edition Blu-ray containing the same extras and the director's cut, plus the notorious 98-minute French Version with hardcore sex inserts not shot by Jess Franco, which doesn't interest me.