Ten Violent Women

My review was written in May 1984 after a screening at Selwyn theater on Manhattan's 42nd St.

"10 Violent Women" is a strange women's prison film which will be of interest to followers of that specialized genre. Made in 1978, pic was released regionallly in 1982 and is reviewed on its belated firs appearance in New York.

Convoluted storyline (punctuated by freeze-frames and announcement titles-ove as gags) opens with eight women getting frustrated with their work and turning to crime. They successfully pull off a jewelry store robbery, but are nabbed (roughly halfway through the film) by narcs when they try to sell them cocaine obtained from Leo the fence (Ted V. Mikels, the director, in a support role).

Action in stir is generally routine, except for a memorably overdone turn by Georgia Morgan as the extremely butch head guard, who likes to doff her mannish uniform at night, put on frilly nightgowns and force the prettier inmates to submit to everything from humiliation to whippings. After a much too easy escape from behind bars, heroines Samantha (Sherri Vernon) and Maggie (Dixie Lauren) mark time unconvincingly until a shah whose sacred scarab ing they stole (in the jewel robbery) invites them onto his yacht, drops criminal charges and whisks them off in an absurd happy ending.

"Women" is the sort of odd B-movie that proliferated a decade ago for regional and drive-in circuit use (when budgets under $50,000 per film were possible), but since then tv action shows have obviated the production of such pictures. Filmmake Mikels, for example, made an interesting actioner "The Doll Squad" in 1972 with Francine York starring as the leader (named Sabrina) of a trio of tough female undercover agents, which was the prototype of "Charlie's Angels".

Though too kinky in spots for general audiences (Mikel as Leo is killed gruesomely by a "heroine" stabbing him repeatedly with her spiked heel), "Women" is technically adequate low-budget action fare. Its title defies precise calculation, since only three or four heroines are in the spotlight at any one time.

TEN VIOLENT WOMEN is a film that starts off as an all-female action movie before turning into a women-in-prison flick around the halfway mark. Whichever way you look at it, it's an awful film, which seems to be the norm for cult director Ted V. Mikels whose terrible BLOOD ORGY OF THE SHE-DEVILS I had the misfortune to sit through just last week. It's poorly shot throughout on cheap-looking cameras which shoot footage that is far too dark for the most part.

In any case, TEN VIOLENT WOMEN is an inane film with little plot and some truly terrible acting to behold. A group of women go around committing various robberies and the like before they're busted and sent to a sleazy prison. At this point all of the prison film clichés come out, like the cat fights, the butch guards, and the sadistic warden. Mikels throws a handful of grubby underwear and later topless scenes into his film in a bid to draw in the exploitation crowd, but as with BLOOD ORGY, this is surprisingly tame viewing. It's also a rubbish film with practically no redeeming values whatsoever.

Ten Violent Women (1982)

1/2 (out of 4)

Director Ted V. Mikels takes at least two different genres and throws them together but the end result is yet another deadly dull disaster. A group of women working in a dangerous mine grow tired of that so they decide to rob a jewelry store, which leads to an issue when a valuable jewel they stole is wanted by its crazed owner. Eventually the women get involved with a drug deal that soon leads them to prison where they're abused by the wicked female warden. TEN VIOLENT WOMEN is an utter disaster no matter how you look at it. I've said this countless times before but I really enjoy Mikels and his style and energy but sadly this very rarely transfers to the screen. If you've seen interviews with Mikels or even the documentary done on him then you know he's an interesting person and someone you'd love to hang out with. The problem is that the majority of his movies are deadly dull and that's certainly the case here. This thing mixes up several genres but sadly the result is just bad. The worse part is that this exploitation film contains very little exploitation and instead the director takes a fun genre (women in prison) and turns it into a kid's flick. I say this because of the lack of nudity and there's even a shower sequence here where the women wrestle but in their bra and panties. What the heck is that all about? There are simply way too many other women in prison films out there that offer much more than what we get here. The first portion of the film deals with the various robberies but these too are just boring and drag on forever. Obviously there's way too much filler going on here and with a running time of 96-minutes it feels longer than Roots. The performances are as bad as you'd expect but so is everything else here.

There are plenty of directors who could make a crime comedy/women in prison movie as bad as "10 Violent Women," but only Ted V. Mikels could make it a chore to watch.

The titular women (initially eight, not 10) are working as gold miners (seriously) at the movie's opening, but when the one man on the crew detonates some dynamite and almost kills one of the women, they decide, naturally, to turn to crime—"with class"—for easy money. So they rob a jewelry store, though for all their talk of wanting easy money their plan is unnecessarily complex, involving decoys, disguises and one working on the inside (I think; the storytelling is only slightly less murky than the lighting). Usually when robberies have such elaborate set-ups the goal is to make off with the loot without the victim realizing she or he has been ripped off until the thieves are long gone. But apparently that's too stealthy for our violent women, so they end up holding the store owner up at gunpoint anyway, taking his "assistant" (who may—or may not—be one of the violent women) hostage. They ditch their wigs and stolen limo in an alley then, after stopping in a park for a lame water gun fight, our women head for Vegas to fence the stolen goods. Sheila (Sally Alice Gamble) is the one who seems to have some connections, in that she knows a guy who sorta knows another guy, so she arranges to sell the stolen jewels to Leo (Mr. Mikels himself, making a much better impression as an actor than director). When Leo tries to pay the women in bags of cocaine, they attack him and leave with the jewels and cocaine—but not before Sheila finishes him off by stomping her high heeled shoe into his chest.

Besides being the movie's high point, the death by high heels scene is the demarcation line when "10 Violent Women" goes from "so bad it might actually be kind of fun" to "Oh, God, when will this thing be over?" Sheila is the older one of the group (one online reviewer accurately described her as looking like Mrs. Roper on "Three's Company") but she's not the smartest. After getting blitzed on tequila, she approaches two men in a bar and asks if they'd be interested in buying the coke, even though it's so obvious they're cops they might as well be in uniform. In short order: Sheila is killed when resisting arrest, three more girls escape and the remaining four end up in prison, where they join forces with two inmates (so I guess it does add up to 10 violent women after all). The prison sequence should be where we find the movie's moneyshots. But in "10 Violent Women," it's when it becomes a tedious bore, skimping on all the WIP staples: nudity, sex and violence. Only Georgia Morgan as the obligatory sadistic lesbian warden makes much of an impression. A mature woman with a blond pompadour, dragon lady nails and a cigarette-cured rasp, Morgan delivers the movie's best performance and would have been a perfect addition to John Waters' stable of actors. Unfortunately for her, "10 Violent Women" is Morgan's only movie.

Predictably the girls escape, their plan so easily executed you kind of wonder why no one tried breaking out sooner. The movie ends as stupidly as it began, with a twist that's only slightly less ludicrous than a group of women dressed as "Charlie's Angels" rejects working as gold miners in the 1970s.

It wouldn't have taken much to make "10 Violent Women" watchable: replacing a few members of the cast, if not for acting ability then for physical attributes (most of the women are fairly average looking); better lighting (or even just lighting); and more—a lot more—sex, nudity and violence. Some character development and imaginative storytelling would be a nice touch, too. Instead, "10 Violent Women" is a slog, its primary redeeming feature being retroactively making Mikels' earlier work ("Girl in Gold Boots," "The Doll Squad") seem artfully crafted by comparison.

Having watched several of Mr. Mikels' films over the years for no clear reason, the only thing I can say about most of them is that they are not as cluelessly inept as Edward D. Woods Jr. This, unfortunately omits the goggle factor as you stop and rewind to make sure that, yes, indeed, Mr. Woods did indeed do that. Mr. Mikels never astonishes in that way, which means there's usually absolutely no reason to watch them, except to wonder how he continued to raise money for the next one.

Nonetheless, you may feel the need to look at one of Mr. Mikels movies for yourself. That's all well and good with me; I'm not often here to tell you what to watch, but more about what you'll see if you watch attentively. On that basis, I'd like to make your experiment a little less painful, and this one actually has some decent underlit cinematography by Yuval Shousterman. Perhaps this was a means of coping with a budget so small that they couldn't afford any lights, but then, a good lighting man can make a virtue of necessity.