The Appeal of WIP-ped Flesh: Jess Franco’s 99 Women (1968) at the Box Office

Abstract

This research investigates in detail the surprisingly successful US box-office performance of Jess Franco’s first women-in-prison (WIP) production, 99 Women (1968), which for one week in May 1969 had topped the Variety Top-50 box office chart. It documents the unusual production history of this Franco film, the role of UK producer Harry Alan Towers in enabling Franco’s pipeline of productions at the end of the 1960s, 99 Women’s international distribution, and the various reasons that have been hypothesized for its box-office success. It then briefly examines the box-office performances of two other proximate Franco productions—Succubus (1967) and Venus in Furs (1968)—and outlines the contributions made by Vienna-born actress Maria Rohm to the success of 99 Women and various other Franco-Towers films that had featured her in major roles such as Eugenie … The Story of Her Journey into Perversion (1969).

Keywords::

• 99 Women (1968)
• box office revenue
• Jess Franco
• Maria Rohm
• sexploitation
• women in prison (WIP)

Notes

1. As was often the case with Franco films of this period, there exists a longer XXX version of 99 Women with 8 minutes of additional inserts, including some hardcore sex scenes made with entirely different actors.

2. The term white slavery is of course loaded in various ways because (in historical terms) not all women who were forced into prostitution in the early part of the twentieth century were white, and not all prostitutes were (or are today) forced into the profession against their will. In one recent estimate, only around 2 percent of prostitutes working in the UK had been identified as being trafficked specifically for sex work (Barnett” Economics,” 4).

3. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), file number 65-68218, p. 63.

4. See www.ultimatemovierankings.com/1968-movies.

5. Erotic content had first begun to be popular in the United States at the very end of the 1950s (see Izod 148-49).

6. See www.the-numbers.com/market/1969/top-grossing-movies.

7. Box Office, May 12 1969, p. 14.

8. See www.boxofficestory.com.

9. The Jess Franco interview on the DVD of 99 Women that was released by Blue Underground in 2005.

10. Eugenie … The Story of Her Journey into Perversion (1969) starring Maria Rohm should not be confused with Franco’s later production Eugenie de Sade (1970) starring Soledad Miranda.

11. Christopher Lee became so concerned about his involvement in Eugenie … The Story of Her Journey into Perversion (playing the narrator Dolmance) that he concocted an implausible story about not knowing at all about the film’s explicit sexual content, which would have probably been unnecessary if the film had sunk without an artistic trace.

12. The Jess Franco interview on the DVD of Eugenie … The Story of Her Journey into Perversion that was released by Anchor Bay in 2002.

13. Towers had previously worked with Orson Welles on The Lives of Harry Lime (see Tavares 167–81).

14. Maria Rohm admitted in an audio interview that The Girl from Rio was a poor film: see the DVD release of Venus in Furs from Redemption.

15. Continental Film Review, May 1970, p. 30.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Vincent L. Barnett

Vincent L. Barnett is an independent scholar based in London, United Kingdom, who has published various books and journal articles on the economic history of the film industry, including on Elinor Glyn in Hollywood, on Hammer Film Productions Ltd, and on the role of organized crime in various media industries.