Strong and Moving!

one of my absolute favorites!

I gave it a 7.5 out of 10

Great Film overall

There's something liberating about watching a movie with many scenes so dark you can't tell what's happening. You get to make up your own movie. And brother let me tell you no matter how terrible your idea is, it's miles better than this trash. It's not all dark though. There are dimly lit scenes where you can tell what's going on. Savor these moments. Memorize each person's clothing as that will be the only way you can tell them apart when the darkness returns. The most well-lit scenes take place outside. Perhaps the sun should receive a lighting credit. As with every Ted Mikels movie, there's a little bit of cheesecake. But unless you're really hard up its nothing to get hot & bothered over. Avoid this crapper.

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.

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.

Flabbergasting is the word for this mighty entry in the canon of Ted V. Mikels, the Grade Z journeyman of 30-plus years of schlock. His films are so terrible, and not necessarily in an endearing kind of way, that you don't know whether to deify or damn the man for persistently, self-reliantly, churning out such endless truffle... his way or no way. Perhaps Mikels is the last of the true independents...Anyway, this amusing piece of tedium concerns the exploits of some high-kicking gals (and there are eight, not ten, by the way) who, after they get even with some pervert slob at their job in a mine (in a real "Huh?" of an opening), decide to have some more adventure by plotting an intricate heist of a jewelry store and then rip off a "fence", which proves to be their undoing. As the picture lumbers along, the number of women in this club begin to dwindle. Finally, there are two left, who get sent to a tough women's prison (actually, a boiler room, but never mind) where they become at odds with a stereotypical butch lesbian warden (who probably has an 8mm copy of SEVEN BEAUTIES in her desk), and plot to escape.I have not mentioned the names, nor any distinguishing traits of the girls. So -uh- "impressionistic" is this "uncompromising testament of women getting even in a male-dominated society" full of "dramatic irony" when they meet their retribution in the form of a woman (who is actually more male)... oh to hell with it. There is zero characterization; faint names are dropped here and there, but good luck matching them to the proper girl. In fact, the solely solid character in the entire piece is director Mikels himself, ironically, in his wonderful cameo as the fence whom the too-confident female mob attempts to rob.But otherwise, this is yet another Ted Mikels home movie that actually got sold for release (if perhaps only on home video). The best attempts at artistry are the Neo-Realistic prison love scenes, which are so simply because they had no lights! That scene alone accounts for the dreariness that pervades this picture. The elusive tone of 10 VIOLENT WOMEN is interesting-- although it attempts to appease the R-rated audience with sex and violence, the movie is actually quite juvenile in its approach.The completists of the wide wonderful world of Grade Z cinema will probably want to check this film out anyway. (Why else did I sit through Larry Buchanan's MISTRESS OF THE APES?) But for the sane viewer, their Ted Mikels fix will be abetted with THE DOLL SQUAD instead.