Let me write up a review of this 1973 nunsploitation film.....
First off, the DVD quality was good, and Redemption Films is getting a good rep at quality releases of really sleazy B movies. "The Sinful Nuns of St. Valentine" is a prime example of their fare. And the redemption flms short at the front may have been better than the movie.
"SNoSV" starts off with a man in white on horseback, being chased by some guardsman. He's unhorsed, having been shot in the arm, and gets into a swordfight with the guards. After one of the more pitful sword fights I've seen on film, he's victorious. He flees into a local convent, St. Valentine, where it just so happens the groundskeeper knows him.
Seems our hero, Esteban, has been framed for killing a bishop, and has been declared a murderer and a heretic. And it just so happens that the convent happens to have his beloved, Lucita, who was placed there by her father in punishment for wanting to marry Esteban. How lucky. Anyway, Esteban is hidden away to recover from his wound, (though he never seems to get a clean shirt, because he wears the same torn shirt with a bright red bloodstain for half the freaking movie.)
After finding out that her beloved is there, and checking on his safety, Lucita goes back to her cell, to find another novice keeping her bed warm. The naked novice, Josefa, does her best to seduce Lucita, but Lucita resists her attempt and lies there, still and unmoving.
The next day, we're treated to the senior nuns whipping a topless nun for some unspecified transgression. Josefa seems to get off on watching the Abbess whipping the other nun, as the Mother Superior later asks her to report to her for special counciling. Josefa later sees the Abbess, runs into her arms - and is rather unconvincingly stabbed to death.
Lucita is framed for Josefa's murder and is sent to the local Inquisitor, Father Onorio, who seems to be of the Fred Phelps school of theology. A topless Lucita is suspended from the celing in an attempt to make her confess to Josefa's murder, after which her father comes in to try to convince her to plead guilty so that they may be merciful. (Yeah, right, we're talking the Inquisition here.) She finally confesses to keep the Inquisitor from discovering Estaban’s hiding place. As a result, she's sentenced to be burned alive.
Meanwhile, back at the convent, the Abbess finds Esteban and his amazing unhealing wound, and orders him brought from the place he's hidden to her quarters. Here he's given a bed and has a talk with the Abbess, along with watching the Abbess strip by firelight. After the groundskeeper sneaks in to warn Esteban that the Abbess is "evil encarnate", Esteban decides to get on the Abbess' good side by seducing her. This works well enough that the Abbess tells him where Lucita is.
Next morning, after his night of hot Abbess loving, Esteban finds the dead body of the groundskeeper, and discovers the Abbess murdered him. Esteban and the Abbess wrestle around, (not the same type as the night before, then he overcomes the Abbess and flees. Esteban runs off to rescue his beloved, after getting the help of a friend, (AND FINALLY CHANGING HIS BLOODY SHIRT!!!!), and Lucita's father. Esteban also makes an anomyous denoucing of the Abbess and her convent. (Some gratitude.) They sneak into the dungeons to rescue her, only to find out she's been moved.
Where to, one may ask?? Why, to St. Valentine, where the crazed Inquisitor, after having found the body of the groundskeeper and a couple of others stashed in the garden, denounces the Abbess and the entire convent. (Okay, the fact that he found the Abbess nude in bed with two other nuns may have not helped things much.) He decides that the convent is beyond redemption, and orders all the doors and windows bricked up, trapping the nuns and Lucita inside. At which point, the Inquisitor rides back to Seville.
Lucita's father goes into the Inquisitor's office and demands to see his daughter, after getting permission to do so from the bishop. Alas, the Inquisitor says, Lucita is dead of a quick illness, and has the prison doctor confirm it. The mourning father is led to Lucita's "grave", and there laments his actions, including having falsely accused Esteban of the Bishop's murder to keep him from marrying Lucita. Esteban finds him there, and they dig up the grave, finding the body of a crazed woman from the dungeon inside. Where oh where is Lucita?
Esteban and his friend kidnaps an aide to the Inquisitor and theaten him with torture unless he tells where Lucita is. The aide tells all, and he's left tied up in a small grass hut until Esteband and his friend return. In a brillant example of how the law of natural selection improves the human race, the aide manages to knock over a brazier while trying to escape, and is burned alive as a result. Meanwhile, Esteban and a whole batch of friends ride to St. Valentine's to free Lucita and the other entombed nuns.
Meanwhile, two days after having been walled up in the convent, the nuns have managed to improvise some digging and chiseling tools and are trying to work out the two-day old, still dampish mortar from the entrances and windows. Oh, I'm sorry, that's what they would have done if this movie had actually made any sense! No, instead, we're treated to a batch of crazed nuns and novices, most of the topless or nude, running around like they're suffering from a bad case of ergot poisoning, rooting around in the ashes and candlestick holders for scraps of anything to eat, and licking the moisture from the walls to drink.
After one of the crazed nuns hangs herself from the bell tower, the Abbess leads a pack of nuns and novices to break into Lucita's cell, blaming Lucita for all their woes. Just when the Abbess is about to claw Lucita's eyes out, Esteban manages to stick her hand with his blade, (and amazingly enough, doesn't go though the hand and into Lucita's face. Wow, what control. He rescues his half-clad ladylove, and they flee the convent, leaving his friends to assist the remaining nuns and novices. The Abbess, losing all her marbles, flees, and attempts to learn to fly by throwing herself at the ground and missing. She doesn't miss.
Cut away to the Grand Inquisitor of Seville's office, where the nun that was whipped by the Abbess is being proclaimed as the new Abbess of St. Valentine. Most of the other nuns and novices are also going to be sent back to rebuild the convent. (You know, giving them a new one that they weren't walled up in may have been a better idea.) The ex-Inquitsitor, Father Onorio, is led into the Grand Inquisitor's office, where, in a rambling discourse that shows he's completely loony tunes, he reveals that he was a former Muslim Moor that was saved by the Bishop who was murdered, converted, and became a complete zealot for the faith. The Grand Inquisitor, after delivering an ironic ramble on the dangers of fantatism, declares that Esteban is innocent of murder and heresy.
After Esteban and Lucita visit her father, who is wearing monks robes and is about to be sent to a monstery to atone for bearing false witnesses against Esteban, (no doubt annoying Lucita's mother), they ride off into the marriage and the distance.
All in all, cheezy. Not really racy or particularly naughty for the nunsploitation genre, still, an amusingly bad film romp.
Hmmmmmmmmm. The story line is vaguely familiar. Got it!!!! It's a rip off of another sexually-repressed-nuns-obsessed-mother-superior-themed movie, "The Devils." (Ken Russell, 1971).
Posted by: GeorgetownJD | August 01, 2009 at 09:09 PM