Inquisition

 Inquisition

1976

Director- Paul Naschy

Cast- Paul Naschy, Daniela Giordano, Mónica Randall, Ricardo Merino, Tony Isbert, Julia Saly, Antonio Iranzo, Juan Luis Galiardo,

From Spain

            Paul Naschy plays Bernard de Fossey, an inquisition judge traveling through a plague ravaged land to find and execute witches. Like most movies of this type, the inquisitor is far worse than whatever supernatural terrors they are trying to root out. The first half of this movie follows the same formula as most of these other films; the inquisition arrives in town, beautiful girls are erroneously accused of being witches, they are tortured and finally executed. Compared to Mark of the Devil, the torture scenes in this film are quite tame. However, what it lacks in gore it makes up for with gratuitous nudity.

            The second half of the film, though, takes a different direction and helps it to stand out against some of the earlier films that it imitates. Bernard (Naschy) becomes infatuated with Catherine (Daniela Giordano), the beautiful daughter of a dying village nobleman. He convinces the nobleman to give him guardianship of Catherine and her sister, Elvire (Julia Saly). Naschy fans will recognize Julia as the Bathoryeaque vampire from Night of the Werewolf and also costarring with Naschy in The Beast and the Magic Sword. You might also recognize her from the excellent Night of the Seagulls.

           One impediment to Bernard’s romantic progress (besides his inconvenient holy vows) is the fact that Catherine has a boyfriend. Her boyfriend gets himself murdered and Catherine is convinced that Bernard is behind it.

It is at this point that the film starts to venture into new territory. Most inquisition films have witch hunters but no actual witches. However, Catherine, who is definitely not a witch at the start of the film, seeks out a witch and the Devil as her only recourse. She visits a local witch and the portrayal of the “witchcraft” is actually probably pretty accurate. The spells consist of potions and ointments that send Catherine into a trance where she attends a Black Mass attended by Satan himself (also played by Naschy). Of course, whether any of this actually happens or is just a product of drug induced hallucinations is for the viewer to determine.

            Emboldened by her recently bestowed Satanic power, Catherine sets out to seduce and destroy Bernard and frame him in the eyes of the inquisition as a Satanist himself. This is one of Naschy’s best villains and you can’t wait to see him get his just deserts! Naschy’s portrayal of a fallen clergyman is convincing and subtle (for this type of film). He goes from imperious to love stricken to finally pathetic and broken.

            This is a fun film for fans of Paul Naschy or inquisition movies. Though formulaic at times, it veers off the path enough to keep it interesting and entertaining. The idea of the inquisition actually driving people to witchcraft is pretty clever. The film is not as sophisticated as Ken Russell’s The Devils and lacks the charm that Vincent Price brought to Witchfinder General. But it is literate enough to rise above the typical exploitation movie. One of Nachy’s better non-werewolf films.

The Devils

The Devils

1971

Director- Ken Russell

Cast- Oliver Reed, Vanessa Redgrave, Dudley Sutton, Max Adrian, Gemma Jones, Murray Melvin, Michael Gothard, Georgina Hale, Kenneth Colley

            

     The movie is based on the real life case of Urbain Grandier, a French priest who was accused of sorcery and blamed for the possession of several nuns by demons. His “trial” involved torture and ended in an execution. Whether he was really a sorcerer, or just one of the thousands of innocents caught up in the witchcraft hysteria of the period, is a question for the historians. His trial did produce a rather sinister contract where he supposedly sold his soul to Satan, signed by the devil and several important demons. Whether the contract is genuine or contrived is, again, a question for historians.

            

    

    The Devils paints Grandier (portrayed by Oliver Reed) in a much more sympathetic light. Grandier is a womanizer who doesn’t seem to have any problem violating his vows of celibacy, including carelessly tossing aside a girl he gets pregnant. To say he is amoral would be inaccurate. Grandier seems to operate according to his own morality, a morality that is tainted by a self-destructive urge. Although he seems ambivalent about being the spiritual leader of his town, he has a genuine interest in helping them maintain their independence from the French crown and that eternal villain of The Three Musketeers, Cardinal Richelieu. This makes him some political enemies.

            

     Father Grandier’s reputation as a womanizer seems to be the worst kept secret in town and several of the Sisters in the local nunnery lust after him, particularly the Mother Superior, Sister Jeanne (Redgrave). Jeanne is a pathetic figure, a hunchback who dreams only of being beautiful and finding love. To her, Grandier has taken on Christ like significance in her mind, even though she has never met him.

            

     Grandier meets Madeline (Gemma Jones), a young girl whose love convinces him to give up his philandering ways. They are “secretly” married but word spreads eventually to Sister Jeanne who feels spurned and rejected. She accuses him of sorcery and this is just what Grandier’s enemies need to engineer his downfall. The entire convent degenerates into debauchery as the various nuns are “possessed” and debased by their interrogators.

            

     

     The film has a salacious reputation that is frankly unearned. There is some nudity, but not nearly as much as some of the more prominent exploitation films of the era. There is almost no violence until the last few minutes of the film. What the film does have in spades is a clear disdain for the Church and a few instances of sacrilegious imagery. The film has undergone severe censorship and finding an unaltered copy is rather difficult since it has never been in print for the home video market. Various versions of 103 to 109 minutes have been released. Apparently the full original cut was between 111 to 117 minutes. The version I saw was 114 minutes and I have to assume it was complete as it had all of the scenes that I had read were cut out, including the “infamous” scene where naked nuns cavort upon a crucifix.

            

     This film illustrates the danger of censorship. Taking out even a single scene can drastically alter a film’s artistic vision. Imagine Empire Strikes Back without “I am your father” or God forbid, Ben Hur without the chariot race! You’d think the important actors and the director involved would be enough to justify preservation of the film for posterity’s sake. But such is the world we live in.

            

     The Devils is not a great film. It is a good film however. It is artistically done and features sympathetic, dynamic characters. I don’t normally advocate movie piracy, but a bootleg copy is the only way, as of this writing, that you can see the movie as it was meant to be seen.

 

 

The contract from Urbain Grandier's trial.

School of the Holy Beast (Holy Beast Academy)

School of the Holy Beast (Holy Beast Academy)

1974

Director- Norifumi Suzuki

Cast- Yumi Takigawa, Emiko Yamauchi, Yayoi Watanabe, Yōko Mihara, Fumio Watanabe

            

     Maya (Yumi Takigawa) is a young girl who takes her vows and enrolls in a local nunnery. We soon find out that Maya is surreptitiously trying to gather information about her mother, who was also a nun and died there mysteriously. Maya crosses paths with Ishida (Emiko Yamauchi), a rebellious nun who delights in questioning authority and seems intent on getting herself kicked out.

Throughout the convent Maya finds a combination of repressed sexuality and religious abuses.  Along with the cruel nuns, the convent is visited by a sinister priest. Father Kakinuma (Fumio Watanabe who genre fans may recognize from his role as the villainous Yagyu in Lone Wolf and Cub) is a charismatic figure who the older nuns adore. He carries on affairs with the nuns and Maya learns a horrible truth; that she is his daughter. When her mother got pregnant, the Father abandoned  her and she was abused by the jealous nuns (who secretly wanted the Father’s attention) until she committed suicide.

The senior nuns learn Maya’s true identity and warn her to leave but she refuses. Maya is intent on destroying the convent from within and gets help from the rebellious Ishida. To deal with her, an Inquisitor is brought in on the pretext of sniffing out any heretical witches. Another nun is tortured to death and Maya herself is condemned but is able to turn the tables. She seduces Father Kakinuma, and reveals to him (after the sex) that she is his daughter and he has committed the damnable crime of incest.

Most examples of “nunsploitation” have two recurring themes; religious abuse and lesbianism. The best examples of both of these combining artistically in a movie are the Mexican films Satanico Pandimonium and Alucarda. School of the Holy Beast is not as sexually graphic as those films or other examples of 70s lezploitation. This is Japan after all with their taboo against showing genitalia (an odd taboo considering the other things that they are quite OK with; school girl tentacle sex anyone?).  

What the film lacks in graphicness it makes up for in creativity. We see two young nuns make love in a garden, a topless nun flagellate herself, two topless nuns forced to whip each other for stealing food, and the most memorable scene in the film, where Maya is bound with rose vines, the thorns digging into her naked breasts.

As for the religious abuse, this film seems much more relevant than perhaps it did when it was made. The abuse in other similar films is of the more abstract kind; accept our way of thinking, bow down to our authority etc. With the subplot of the Church covering up the Father’s sexual excesses, perhaps this film was rather prescient.

As is true with any nunsploitation film, School of the Holy Beast is filled with sacrilege. The most shocking is when a nun is forced to drink water with a crucifix between her legs until she urinates on it, which then serves as proof that she must be a witch. This is definitely not a movie for anyone who is offended easily.

Now, from my description, you might be expecting some bit of soft core torture porn along the lines of Ilsa She Wolf of the SS. Despite the themes, however, School of the Holy Beast is not really that prurient. While there are a fair amount of naked breasts, the nudity is only a means of storytelling and not the story itself. The movie reminded me of another Japanese film from the same era, Lady Snowblood. That story also involves a woman seeking revenge for something done to her mother before she was born.

I think maybe the most important thing about the film is that it’s a nunsploitation film NOT told from a Western point of view. In the West, most people are mono-religious, often seeing believers of other religions as (at best) naively ignorant or (at worst) an out-right threat to their own beliefs. But not so in Japan. As the expression goes, “Born Shinto, Married Christian, Buried Buddhist.” School of the Holy Beast gives us an East Asian slant on what has traditionally been a Western sub-genre.

Superstition

 Superstition

1982

Director- James W. Roberson

Cast- Jim Houghton, Albert Salmi, Lynn Carlin, Larry Pennell, Jacquelyn Hyde, Robert Symonds, Heidi Bohay, Maylo McCaslin, Carole Goldman, Stacy Keach Sr., Kim Marie, Joshua Cadman

            

     An old, dilapidating house sits on a rural grounds owned by the local church. An old woman, Elvira, and her seemingly idiot son are the caretakers, the latest in a long family line of caretakers. Teenagers use the grounds as a place to get into shenanigans.  The film starts with two of these kids meeting their grisly ends in the house. One is decapitated and gets his head microwaved. The other gets bisected!

           

      Revered Thompson is a minister recently assigned to the church. The local police want him to do something about the property, pronto. They suspect Elvira’s idiot son, Arlen, is the killer. A detective is assigned to tail Arlen and follows him down to a brackish pond on the property. While nosing around, a monstrous hand comes out of the water and drags the detective under. The body can’t be found and Reverend Thompson decides that he’ll have the pond drained, which drives Arlen crazy and he runs off.

            

     The Reverend speaks with Elvira but she only gives a vague warning that she has lost her son and that he is in the service of some mysterious woman and she makes reference to losing her husband to the same mysterious woman. Elvira tells Reverend Thomas that the property has a history of violence going all the way back to 1692.

            

      A new Reverend, Lahey, is moving in with his family. As the house is getting fixed up, people are killed in accidents. The drowned detectives body is finally found, or at least part of it. While swimming, one of Lahey’s daughters feels something grab her leg. When she emerges from the pond, the detectives severed hand is grasped around her ankle.

            

      The cops tell Reverend Thompson that (no surprise) in addition to everything else that has happened, another family tried to live in the home and each member was killed gruesomely. 

            

      Reverend Lahey’s son “disappears” (though we know that he has met his end). While looking for the boy, Reverend Thomas just happens to find a copy of the Malleus Maleficarum, the Inquisition’s manual for how to persecute witches (because people just leave things like that lying around). At this point, you may want to check your brain at the door. Despite the book being written in 15^th century Europe, it just happens to recount a tale from 17^th century America. Well, I guess we’ll consider it a new edition. Anyway, Reverend Thomas learns that 300 years earlier, a Reverend Pike had overseen the trial, and death by drowning, of a witch. She wasn’t one of those falsely accused witches either. She was definitively in league with Satan and she cursed everyone before she died.

           

     As we discover, that witch has returned, and is responsible for all of the gruesome murders, with assistance from the missing Arlen. Now the two Reverends have to stop her as she goes on a murderous rampage.

           

    The movie isn’t great but it has some entertainment value. It seems to have a hard time figuring out what it wants be; either a slasher or an occult thriller. Some of the plot elements either go nowhere or are left dangling. Though it was a theatrical release, the production values are about on par with the television movies of that day. It’s not scary but does have some horrific elements with the murders. In fact, the creative gore is probably its standout quality. In addition to the microwaved head and bisection at the beginning of the film, we get one man perforated with a saw blade, a girl gets a spike hammered through her forehead and more.

            

     Not for those looking for a thoughtful supernatural thriller, but if you want some creative, video store era horror, it can offer an evening’s entertainment.

Twins of Evil

Twins of Evil

1971

Director- John Hough

Cast- Mary Collinson, Madeleine Collinson, Peter Cushing, Damien Thomas, David Warbeck, Katya Wyeth, Luan Peters

“We walk the Earth, but we exist only in Hell.” That line lets you know that you are in for more than a standard vampire film. Intended to be the third installment in Hammer’s “lesbian vampire” Karnstein trilogy (proceeded by Vampire Lovers and Lust for a Vampire), this film proved to be so much more with its successful combination of two different horror genres.

Peter Cushing is a puritanical witchfinder who leads “The Brotherhood” on nightly escapades to capture and burn young girls. For younger fans who only know Cushing as the villainous Govenor Tarkin from Star Wars, they may be surprised to know he was famous for his portrayals of heroes like Abraham Van Helsing, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Who. It’s a good thing he took on the role of the villain here because he was fantastic. Cushing was dealing with the recent death of his wife and he may have poured himself into the role as an escape. His witchfinder, Gustav Weil, is the prototypical religious zealot, but also seems to have a genuine belief in the rightness of his actions.

His social rival is the hedonistic Count Karnstien (wonderfully played by Damien Thomas). The count is the latest in a long family line of sinister aristocrats. Bored with the pleasures of the flesh he endeavors to sale his soul to the devil, and is turned into a vampire, which is fine by him.

Enter into this, Gustav’s twin nieces (the beautiful Collinson twins Mary and Madeline). They have just arrived into the care of their uncle Gustav and he views their cosmopolitan upbringing as a sure sign of their sinfulness. Maria (Mary) tries to abide by Gustav’s strict rules and fit in. Frida (Madeline) rebels and is drawn to the evil Count. She is seduced and brought into the vampire fold.

Gustav and the Count eventually come into conflict with Frida as the Count’s partner and Maria as a pawn. Added to this is a local school teacher (David Warbeck) who is the voice of reason and also the resident expert on vampiric folklore.

The Collinson twins (who do an admiral job and are quite believable) are the main attraction here, but everyone does a good job. The twins are beautiful and possess a youthful, voluptuous sexuality that seemed more common of sex symbols of that era, but much less common today. It’s a well put together movie and works as both a vampire and an inquisition movie. Highly recommended.