Women in Cell Block 9 (1977)

aka: Frauen Fur Zellen Block 9
        Tropical Inferno


Dir: Jess Franco

The government of an unnamed South American country fights the rebels with every tool at their disposal, even torture. Two of the deadliest tools are Loba (Dora MANIAC KILLER Doll) the commandant of a women's prison and her lover / partner in pain Dr. Milton (Howard 'of course I'll be in your next film Jess' Vernon). Dr Milton has just arrived back in the country after a self imposed exile of three years when the former regime disagreed with his proclivities. Acting on a tip that three women are being smuggled via truck to meet up with the rebels, they set a roadblock. A squad of soldiers from the prison intercept a fruit truck and discover a number of women hiding in crates. Loba and Milton only care about three of the women, Aida (Aida Gouveia), Karine (Karine Gambier) and Barbara (Esther Studer). The rest of the women are given to the guards to be raped.

Don't look at the camera, don't look at the camera...D'oh!

The women are taken to the prison and chained up by the neck inside the cell block of the title. One by one they are interrogated by Loba and the bad Doc and grilled as to the location of the rebels. The Doc employs torture methods as electro shock, lowering a naked chained woman onto a saw horse with sharpened steel plate overlays and a wooden horn repeatedly rammed into the vagina (the doc comments that most of the men he subjected to the horn became homosexuals). Another woman, Maria (Susan Hemingway), after being forced to perform cunnilingus on Loba, joins the naked and shackled women of cell block 9. Knowing that death at the hands of Loba and the doc is not far off, the women put on a lesbian act for a befuddled soldier, take him out with a couple of poorly performed karate chops to the neck, and make their escape into the jungle. Naked and weaponless. Loba, the Doc and soldiers track the escapees. The women's inevitable, gruesome deaths have only been postponed.

Loba has a go at the prisoners

Annie got her gun

Amazing special effects

There are Jess Franco films that I've enjoyed watching, THE BLOODY JUDGE, VAMPYROS LESBOS and its fantastic score and I'm willing to admit the man has talent. WOMEN is not one of those films. It falls into the category of sleep inducing tedium along with THE CASTLE OF FU MANCHU and everything I've seen that Franco directed after FACELESS. The signature Franco out of focus shots, close ups of female pubic hair and scenes that run far too long without a cut away can all be found. As most of the cast worked with Franco on his other epics from around the same time I would not be surprised to find out that Franco filmed WOMEN on days off from another film.

Can't even tell that's stock footage!

Dull.

* out of ****

Child Of God (2013)

Dir: James Franco

Child of God Lester Ballard (Scott PREY 4 ME Haze) watches from the barn of his soon to be lost family property as an auctioneer announces the sale of the property to the group of gathered prospective buyers. Ballard has lost his mother, his father, and now is losing his home. Unable to articulate the anger he feels beyond grunting, swearing and threathing those gathered for the auction with his ever in hand rifle, his rant is ended with a solid bit of wood smacked into the back of his head. Tennessee of the 1960's wasn't a place of understanding for the mentally ill and Ballard, with rifle, is left to his own devices.

Homeless, Ballard wanders the rugged mountainous terrain in the area of his boyhood home until he comes across a dilapidated abandoned cabin. Cleaning it as best as he can and scrounging or stealing a well used mattress he makes the cabin his own. Cold and hungry, Ballard takes to stealing to eek out an existence. Little by little the rules of society he followed whilst living on the family farm are stripped away. Not knowing there is a line he should not cross or a taboo that should not be broken, Ballard commits heinous crime after crime.

James Franco's film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's third novel is a darkly comedic tale of a put upon man who I was unsure if I should feel sorry for, hate, or admire for his rugged determinism. Neither Ballard's mental illness nor his predicament are his own doing (at least at first) and with his goofy grin and child like mutterings he is often sympathetic. We see him at his most primal and base and all that comes with it. I can't recall another performance by an actor where we see them defecating (and using a stick to wipe), snot running from the nose in great globs, spit spewing from the mouth in volumes unsurpassed by even the most drool inclined dog, ejaculate sprayed across the rear quarter panel of a car during a voyeuristic episode of two lovers, and all that is before Ballard's course takes a turn for the worse. Scott Haze certainly did not hold back on his performance of a man devolving into a force of nature.

Franco has created a film that is beyond my ken. Was I supposed to be laughing? Or was my laughter instead demonstrating that I was on the side of the town folk that drove Ballard from his home as if he was some mangy mongrel who should be put down? The ending left me dumb struck. What was I to take away?

An at times fascinating, in a horrific manner, film that may not be fully appreciated due to my ignorance of the message.

** 1/2 out of ****