Frauen für Zellenblock 9

This movie begins with a small group of women being transported by truck into a South American jungle so that they can join up with a band of revolutionaries. Unfortunately, they are captured by government soldiers and three of them are sent to a female prison hidden far from civilization. While there they are tortured in the hope that one of them will disclose information about the revolutionaries that the government can use. As far as this movie is concerned over half of the movie focuses on the torture aspects at the expense of everything else. To be sure there is quite a bit of nudity and it isn't all bad-especially with regards to Karine Gambier (as "Karine") and Susan Hemingway ("Maria"). But some of these torture scenes ran on much too long which resulted in a film that never realized the potential it clearly had. Additionally, some of those same scenes were just plain disgusting as well. In any case, I thought it could have been a better movie and as a result I rate this film as below average.

This sexploiter was quite clearly made for the sex & gore crowd. Thus we have here several beautiful women (nude most of the time), who are imprisoned and raped and tortured and raped and killed and raped. Completely lacking in this film is a source of reference, a coordinate system in which we could place any of these people. There are no answers to questions such as "Why?", or "Where from?", regarding any of the characters. They don't have a future, a past, a motivation, a connection to any kind of life as we know it. In a way, they are like some of these alien societies encountered once (and only once) by Captain Kirk in one of the Star Trek episodes.

We normally criticise movie characters as two-dimensional when they are underwritten - here even "one-dimensional" would give too much credit, as they don't move in space, time, or behaviour. Thus there wasn't much acting skill asked of the cast and thus they have no problems coping with this very limited demand; especially Howard Vernon is (as ever) excellent at portraying unpleasant people of the sinister kind.

Compared to other Franco flicks the cinematography is exceptionally good (none of his trademark out-of-focus zooms) and at times even inspirational. The sets are fine too, although it has to be said that torturing instruments that are meant to aid interrogation completely fail their purpose if they almost instantaneously kill.

Sleaziness and nudism abound in this movie with a lot of gory scenes , grisly killing and loathing frames . Somewhere in the jungles of South America mercenaries stop a truck which has supposedly loaded fruit. The cargo results to be six young girls (Karine Gambier, Susan Hemingway, Gouveia , among others) . Apprehended and handed over to the custody of the local prison wardens and jail chiefs (Howard Vernon , Dora Doll) . They are really villainous and heinous wardens who the prisoners really fear them . The unfortunate girls escape but are relentlessly chased by the most dreaded pursuers and they will stop at nothing to get their purports and at whatever means . Along the way , things go wrong . Beaten ! Shackled ! Raped ! Just another day in Cellblock 9 !

From the fevered , wonderfully perverted minds of Spanish filmmaker Jess Franco and Swiss producer Erwin C. Dietrich comes the notorious WIP shocker Frauen für Zellenblock 9 (1978) or Women in Cellblock 9 or Tropical Inferno . This is an extremely controversial movie , in fact it was and remains banned , nowadays , in the U. K. Stars Franco regulars Susan Hemingway , Howard Vernon and Karine Gambier and tells the tale of a gaggle of female freedom-fighters who are taken to a secluded women's jungle prison where they endure al manner of violent sexual humiliations . And with Howard Vernon and Dora Doll showing as two feared villain wardens at a death camp mistreating inmates and undergoing creepy criminal acts . Like all of the production in the prolific Franco/Dietrich collaboration cannon (most of which are represented in Full Moon's limited digitally and remastered uncut tranfer struck from Dietrich's own archival negative edition Jess Franco collection) this Zellenblock 9 or Cellblock 9 is a visually lush , erotic and exploitation work , armed with exotic locations , weird interpretations and dreamy musical score by Walter Baumgartner . Disagreeable movie stars the naughty as the evil doctor Howard Vernon and nasty warden Doris Coll enjoying the female prisoners and torturing them . Plot is incidental to violence , tortures and loads of nudism . Here the sinister entertainment is watching as the torture-loving wardens mistreat prisoners by using all kinds ordeals and tortures , as well as the subsequent getaway of the naked girls across the lush jungle . This is a below average and extremely sadistic film with lots of graphic gore , violence , guts and naked women.

Produced in short budget by Erwin Dietrich , the motion picture was lousily directed by Jesús Franco or Jess Frank with lots of skin and no acting , providing a boring flick in low budget with plenty of shortfalls , failures , flaws and gaps . In the Seventies Franco directed various WIP movies , such as : the revered classic ¨99 Women¨with Maria Schell , Herbert Lom , Elisa Montes , Mercedes McCambridge ; ¨Love camp¨ (1977) with Muriel Montosse , Monica Swinn ; ¨Barbed Wire Dolls¨with Lina Romay , Paul Muller , Monica Swinn ; "Wanda , The Wicked Warden" 1977 by Jess Frank with Dyanne Thorne , Lina Romay , Tania Busselier . Not for the easily offended (but what Franco movie is ?) Frauen für Zellenblock 9 (1978) is an essential and fundamental trash movie gem not to be missed for Uncle Jess enthusiasts. It is a 78 minutes of pure mind melting sleaze entertainment with no sense and for some fans being an exploitation gold .

I saw this a few years ago when I was living in Europe (it's currently unavailable in the US except as a bootleg or an import). It is a completely stereotypical and unremarkable Franco WIP film of the era. Four implausibly sexy "revolutionaries" in an unnamed South American country are captured and thrown into an isolated jungle prison (after they try to drive their caravan right by the prison). They are stripped naked, chained by their necks to the ceiling in the titular "Cellblock 9" and forced to stand hours on end. The "Ilsa"-like female and her bent doctor cohort (long-time Franco regular Howard Vernon) take great delight in trying to torture information out of them. Some of the tortures (like the "Spanish horse) are exceedingly unpleasant but also surprisingly non-graphic, and this movie doesn't quite approach the nastiness of Franco's earlier "Barb-Wire Dolls" and "Ilsa, the Wicked Warden". It also doesn't have the plot of the later "Women Behind Bars" (or feature the genuinely talented Lina Romay). The girls eventually bust out, run into the woods (still completely naked mind you) where the movie ends EXACTLY the way all these Franco WIP films do. Furthermore, despite the four girls having very nice bodies and being almost perpetually naked, the only time this movie approaches any real eroticism is when the heroines stage a four-way lesbian orgy (that goes on for some minutes) in order to trick a horny, dimwitted male guard into unchaining them. This movie is completely unremarkable in any way, EXCEPT. . .

The BBFC (British Board of Film Censors) recently banned this movie after they somehow discovered that one of the incredibly obscure actresses was underage (I'll let you figure out which one--she looks maybe 17 and a half at the youngest). I do NOT want to try to defend Franco on this particular count, but this is a perfect example of where what no one knew would not have hurt anybody. Now though thanks to the "vigilance" of the BBFC (you're about thirty years late, guys) this movie, widely available from continental Europe through importers and bootleggers, will become another "holy grail" for the perverts who obsess about this kind of thing. Worse for me though is the hypocrisy. The BBFC did not cut the gratuitous nudity of much more obviously underage girls out of the more recent and much more respectable movies like "American Beauty" and "The Hole", even while the girls in question (Thora Birch and Keira Knightly, respectively) were STILL underage. If you are not going to protect actual underage actors from exploitation, it is downright silly to try to "protect society" from us Franco fans who might unwittingly see a naked seventeen year old and presumably go on some kind of sex-crazed rampage. This movie sucks frankly, but not nearly as much as brain-dead censorship and the BBFC.

** Franco WIP again, though probably the softest of his excursion into caged women territory, Barbed Wire Dolls & Ilsa: Absolute Power especially being far crueler in their low budget visions of iron bar hotels for femmes. Still it's amazingly sleazy even for exploitation hell, where women spend ALL their time undressed & in a constant state of humiliation, a sheen of sweat adorning their nubile bodies, in a fast dash through the jungle or chained like dogs to a wall. It's strangely asexual but that pervy kink is always present, like the feeling you used to get sneaking downstairs to catch a late night baby blue while your parents were sleeping soundly. Naked women, power dynamics, sadism? No surprise this sub-genre found a kindred spirit in the likes of our director, zooming in on hairy crotches & pained-racked faces every chance he gets. Pulp adventure magazines filtered through the anything- goes 70's: that's Franco & it's genuinely unnerving because you can almost feel him getting off in staging these sick fantasies of submission & control. There's no budget to provide a slick sheen of commercialism, no blunt to the impact & its not like he's ever been very aesthetically formal either (to say the least).Its that jazz-riff quality that makes him invigorating & exotic for all his movies' awfulness, but also pervy-uncle creepy too; you don't have to look further than the bag-over-the-head bit from Ilsa to see what I mean, or the strapped-to-the-electrified bed, pi$$-in-the-chamber-pot from Barbed Wire Dolls. These are some dank psycho-sexual depths right here.

Again it's all lovably rinky-dink, paint blots for bullet wounds, sound effects for gunshots, Howard Vernon for depth. Its power derives from extremity, stark female objectification you don't see much outside of XXX. The women are denied even the dignity of clothing while at the whim of their evil keepers & its that kind of porno rationale that makes you envision Franco pissing himself happy staging these adolescent jerk-off skits, leaning over to fondle dear Linay while operating the camera. There's a weird kind of dedication here you won't see in the average impersonal WIP, something that lends a certain weight when usually these flicks are forgotten the moment you see them.

Otherwise the three or four women were all lovely to watch (Karine Gambier is so ethereal albino white she glows) & provided more of a presence than the usual non-Romay joint musters, adorable Susan Hemingway especially. I cared a bit more about what happened to this one dimensional lot & so the ending was very depressing but par for course.