The Story: A group of women who are gold miners (As in, gold diggers, get it? har-dee-har-har), decide to ditch the life of hard labor in exchange for a life of crime. They rob a jewelry store, make off with the loot, including a scarab that belongs to a sheik. When they get to Vegas, a diamond fence tries to rob the jewels from them, but they kill him (stomping him to death with high heels), steal his drugs and take off. One of the girls get caught trying to sell the dope to an undercover cop, gets killed, and the other girls take the fall for the drugs and are hauled away to prison. While in prison they must deal with the atypical, hard-a**, lesbian guards and warden, as well as the other inmates. They meet a couple of girls waiting to make a break for it, and the girls plot their escape. Eventually, after a couple of beatings by the warden for being wisecrackers and not succumbing to her advances, the girls escape, go to their buried loot, and must deal with the sheik, who is still after his scarab and has been tailing the girls.

The Film: Ted V Mikels makes Herschell Gordon Lewis and Roger Corman look like Ingmar Bergman and Akira Kurosawa.

10 Violent Women makes Chained Heat or Gator Bait look like high art.

I've seen kindergarten plays with better acting, staging, and drama.

I love b-exploitation films, but I've always leaned toward one side of b-films. There is a big difference between b-directors- there are those who are good directors but make b-films, live in b-material, like Jack Hill (Coffy, Switchblade Sisters) and Sam Fuller (Naked Kiss, Shock Corridor) and then there are guys who consciously try to make bad movies, who sort of dumb everything up either on purpose or just because they are of limited lackadaze talent like Ted V Mikels. Guys like Jack Hill and Sam Fuller try to convey and inform, slip a message into their exploitation, and even have some great, innovative directorial flourishes, whereas guys like Mikels just try to entertain, make some money, and are not particularly skilled. I'm sorry, but10 Violent Women is so witless and badly staged, it is not funny, and Mikels cant even direct a simple T&A shot much less execute an action scene. I'm pretty sure back in The Movie Channels Drive-In Theater days I half watched Corpse Grinders and instantly forgot it, so the only Mikels film, besides 10 Violent Women I can say for certain I've seen is Girl in the Gold Boots because Mystery Science Theater riffed it. And, honestly that's the only way I can comprehend wanting to sit through this kind of dreck. There is inept that is funny, and there is inept that is just inept and boring.

Now, I've seen Mikels in interviews and he's a real amiable guy, who obviously has a great love for what he does, but I do not because 10 Violent Women is painful to watch. I know there are people who eat this kind of thing up, who like the bad, bad, bad, bad films most people find unwatchable, and collect cable access shows from Alaska, and home horror movies by German teenagers, but for the rest of the 99% of the movie going public... If you want to watch a women in prison movie that has some thrills, some snappy b-movie dialogue, and wont make you want to claw your eyes out, please go rent/buy The Big Doll House (arguably the one that started it all) or Reform School Girls.

The DVD: About as kind as a DVD can be to this kind of film. Its a bad movie, that looks,... bad, but it does have a pittance of extras, and one expects no one picking this title would be shocked at how low grade it is. I guess Image really did the absolute best with what they've got. Picture-Fullscreen, and heres the thing. This movie was filmed horribly, I'd say a large percentage of the film was shot at night with inadequate lighting , so most of the time you are just staring at characters vaguely walking around in darkness. Its rather hard to fault the transfer because, honestly, they didn't have much to work with. If its any consolation, it probably looked far worse on video. Sound- What can I say? Its once again, badly recorded, but at least it holds up better than the visuals- as in, it is audible. And of course there isn't any Dolby Digital Stereo Surround, just plain old mono. Extras- Mikels Filmography- Trailers for Mikels other masterpieces Worm Eaters, Girl in the Gold Boots, The Corpse Grinders, The Doll Squad, 10 Violent Women, and Blood Orgy of the She Devils. And, finally, Ted V Mikels Commentary. I listened to quite a bit of it, hoping, praying it would make the film more interesting. With what one assumes is a little old age (he refers to the girls as the Doll Squad once) combined with his department store Santa voice, Mikels commentary was so simple, basic, and unrevealing, it was like listening to a children's show host who is suffering from a head injury. He basically would just very sparsely chime in and point out exactly what was going onscreen and chuckle. On none of the spots I listened to did he ever say, how he cast the women, what their backstory was, why their numbers go from 8 to 5, to 4, but the film is called 10 Violent Women, or any interesting anecdotes. It was all, "Well, heres Sheila, 'chuckle, chuckle'... "Heres the part where they bury the loot"... "Boy, we sure did have a lot of locations 'chuckle, chuckle'..."We had to bring lights and a generator in there. Boy, you sure do have to have a lot of lights on these pictures, I'll tell ya' 'chuckle, chuckle'... "Right there is my attorney playing a cop. 'chuckle, chuckle'." You can actually watch the film very easily with the commentary on and not miss any dialogue because he doesn't speak much and when he does, he doesn't say anything that is very insightful. It was a disater to have him record the track alone; in order to prod more info or funny quips from him, they should have made it more of a Q&A with a fellow schlockmeister like Fred Olen Ray or a b-magazine editor.