The Sinful Nuns of Saint Valentine (1974)
(Le scomunicate di San Valentino)
Country: IT
Technical: col/2.35:1 93m
Director: Sergio Grieco
Cast: Françoise Prévost, Jenny Tamburi, Paolo Malco
Synopsis:
Late fifteenth century Spain sees the activities of the Inquisition get out of hand under the fanatical governance of the demented Grand Inquisitor, a situation exploited by the head of one feuding family eager to keep his daughter from marrying the son of another. However, when he denounces the latter and walls the former up in a convent that is genuinely in the thrall of its vicious abbess, his scheme backfires.
Review:
Allegedly inspired by a Victor Hugo drama, this lip-smacking piece of 'nunsploitation' is far more obviously indebted to Ken Russell's The Devils and Michael Reeves' Witchfinder General, the latter of whose crucial triangle of inquisitor-victim-avenging soldier is replicated here, while both are flipped to provide a happy ending. The unlikely ease with which this is engineered is at one with the leering handheld cinematography whenever a nun all too conveniently loses her habit: sex and violence having been enjoyed, we can sweep aside all antagonists and be cleansed by a triumphant Romeo and Juliet. Thus the irony of one totalitarian system's miscarriage of justice being cynically exploited by another is lost on a production which deploys the same moral equivocations in the name of entertainment.
(Le scomunicate di San Valentino)
Country: IT
Technical: col/2.35:1 93m
Director: Sergio Grieco
Cast: Françoise Prévost, Jenny Tamburi, Paolo Malco
Synopsis:
Late fifteenth century Spain sees the activities of the Inquisition get out of hand under the fanatical governance of the demented Grand Inquisitor, a situation exploited by the head of one feuding family eager to keep his daughter from marrying the son of another. However, when he denounces the latter and walls the former up in a convent that is genuinely in the thrall of its vicious abbess, his scheme backfires.
Review:
Allegedly inspired by a Victor Hugo drama, this lip-smacking piece of 'nunsploitation' is far more obviously indebted to Ken Russell's The Devils and Michael Reeves' Witchfinder General, the latter of whose crucial triangle of inquisitor-victim-avenging soldier is replicated here, while both are flipped to provide a happy ending. The unlikely ease with which this is engineered is at one with the leering handheld cinematography whenever a nun all too conveniently loses her habit: sex and violence having been enjoyed, we can sweep aside all antagonists and be cleansed by a triumphant Romeo and Juliet. Thus the irony of one totalitarian system's miscarriage of justice being cynically exploited by another is lost on a production which deploys the same moral equivocations in the name of entertainment.
(Le scomunicate di San Valentino)
Country: IT
Technical: col/2.35:1 93m
Director: Sergio Grieco
Cast: Françoise Prévost, Jenny Tamburi, Paolo Malco
Synopsis:
Late fifteenth century Spain sees the activities of the Inquisition get out of hand under the fanatical governance of the demented Grand Inquisitor, a situation exploited by the head of one feuding family eager to keep his daughter from marrying the son of another. However, when he denounces the latter and walls the former up in a convent that is genuinely in the thrall of its vicious abbess, his scheme backfires.
Review:
Allegedly inspired by a Victor Hugo drama, this lip-smacking piece of 'nunsploitation' is far more obviously indebted to Ken Russell's The Devils and Michael Reeves' Witchfinder General, the latter of whose crucial triangle of inquisitor-victim-avenging soldier is replicated here, while both are flipped to provide a happy ending. The unlikely ease with which this is engineered is at one with the leering handheld cinematography whenever a nun all too conveniently loses her habit: sex and violence having been enjoyed, we can sweep aside all antagonists and be cleansed by a triumphant Romeo and Juliet. Thus the irony of one totalitarian system's miscarriage of justice being cynically exploited by another is lost on a production which deploys the same moral equivocations in the name of entertainment.