99 Women

Jess Franco doing the women-in-prison formula early, before the cycle even had a name, with more sleaze and more style than most. Women suffer in a brutal island prison under a sadistic governor (Mercedes McCambridge) until a reformer arrives, and Franco shoots it in his usual hazy, zoom-happy manner.

It exists in multiple versions of wildly varying explicitness depending on the territory, which is characteristic of Franco. Herbert Lom and Maria Schell lend it some class it does not entirely deserve.

An early, influential WIP picture from exploitation's most prolific director.