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Italy
/ 1979
Directed by Joe D'Amato
Starring
Paola
Senatore
Marina (Frajese) Hedman
Donald O'Brien
Color / 94 Minutes
/ Not
Rated
Format:
DVD (R1 - NTSC / 2-disc set)
Exploitation
Digital
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Paola
Senatore (Eaten Alive) plays Countess
Isabella, a feisty (and horny) young noblewoman kept prisoner
in a convent by church authorities in league with her family.
When forced to wear a nun's habit she protests by exposing her
breasts. This doesn't exactly endear her to the strict Mother
Superior (Aοchι Nana). The Countess' arrival has a different
effect on one of the younger nuns, however. Sister Lacinia (Paola
Maiolini) sneaks into her room at night, then gets busy as Isabella
lies sleeping in the throes of an erotic dream
in which she's shagging her handsome uncle. (Supposedly that's
why she's been locked up in the convent.) Lacinia is caught
by Sister Marta (Emanuelle In
America's Marina Frajese), who "cannot forgive"
this lustful sin. Sister Marta takes Lacinia to the cellar and
whips her with a rope as punishment, then proceeds to fondle
and go down on the girl. Later, after much softcore sisterly
lovin' (with the nuns retaining their headgear and black stockings,
but nothing else), sexual tensions are further escalated when
Guido (Angelo Arquilla), a hunky young man wounded in a skirmish
with bandits in the surrounding woods, is brought to the convent
and nursed back to health. Isabella hopes to enlist his help
in escaping but the Mother Superior won't let her get anywhere
near him. Using her knowledge of Marta and Lacinia's lesbian
couplings, Isabella blackmails the two nuns into passing messages
to Guido for her.
These lascivious events seem to be related to a strange, ancient
statue on the nunnery grounds. Depicting a horned, Pan-like
being, it is said to be the only surviving remnant of a pagan
temple that once existed on the site of the convent. It's as
if the arrival of the lusty, free-spirited Isabella has set
off a pulse of erotic energy, emanating from the statue and
gradually affecting all the nuns. When an apparition of the
statue appears before the nuns as they enter the chapel for
devotions, a worried Mother Superior sends Sister Marta to fetch
an experienced exorcist (Zombie
Holocaust's Donald O'Brien) from a nearby monastery...
Eschewing
torture, violence and gore, cinematographer/director Joe D'Amato
instead emphasizes sleazy sex in his stab at the Nunsploitation
genre, 1979's Images In A Convent
(Immagini Di Un Convento). In fact, the movie is virtually
wall-to-wall nudity and lesbian sex. This was just before D'Amato
began making hardcore porn flicks nearly full time, with Porno
Holocaust and Erotic
Nights Of The Living Dead being the most famous of his early
"triple X" endeavors. So I was surprised to encounter
hardcore sex scenes in Convent.
D'Amato waits until the 65 minute mark before truly getting
nasty; until that time I'd been lulled into thinking this was
just a "Hard R" softcore exploitationer. Passing up
numerous opportunities during the previous hour, it isn't until
a rape scene that an actor suddenly whips out a boner and proceeds
to stuff it down Marina Frajese's throat. Another hardcore scene,
towards the end, involves two nuns and a wooden dildo. This
is D'Amato using porn to shock the audience much in the same
way as he would a particularly squishy gore effect. (It's telling
that the only explicit non-lesbian scene in the film is the
rather disturbing, misogynistic rape sequence.)
Images In A Convent
plays like a half-written script, content to rely on copious
amounts of female flesh to flesh out the half-baked ideas and
threadbare story. Its supernatural element is given short shrift
at the expense of nudity and sex. Is this a bad thing? Well,
no, if what you're chiefly interested in is voluptuous Eurosluts
in the buff. (Amidst all the stripping, licking and diddling
I had to wonder why an obviously demonic statue would be allowed
to sit on the grounds of a convent for centuries without being
torn down.) Nun fetishists of which D'Amato obliquely admits
to being in the documentary accompanying the feature will
be in their own special kind of heaven with this film.
Quite conveniently there's only one old and ugly nun in the
bunch (whom we thankfully never see naked), and even the middle-aged
Mother Superior is jumped by the amorous Guido! (He'll roger
anything in a habit, apparently. Or is he an avatar of the devilish
statue?)
Those
less enthralled by naughty nuns (the stockings work for me,
just not the holy headgear) and more inclined to European flavored
cheese and/or gore won't find much here to satisfy them. For
a low budget endeavor it is well-shot, with D'Amato using his
limited interior locations to good effect. When the film isn't
focused on the mostly girl-on-girl action, which takes up about
70% of the movie, he conjures a simple but effective mood of
gothic horror. (Not that very much is done with that mood...)
There is absolutely no gore whatsoever, and the fact that the
version presented here is the original Italian (with English
subs) precludes any cheesy laughs due to ridiculous dubbing.
This one's for the horn-dogs out there, pure and simple. They
won't be disappointed.
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Unexpectedly,
Media Blasters (under the Exploitation Digital imprint) have issued
Images In a Convent as a two-disc
set. Perhaps all the extras would've fit on a single DVD, I just
don't know... but since the set is priced under $20, it's actually
less expensive than many of MB's single disc titles.
Disc 1 contains the film, a newly created promo
for it, and four trailers seen on other Media Blasters DVDs (Yellow
Emanuelle, Porno Holocaust, SS
Girls and SS Hell Camp). Letterboxed
at 1.85:1, the print generally looks quite good, with minimal
damage, although since D'Amato used inexpensive film stock it
has a slightly hazy, almost soft-focus appearance at times. (While
the menu screens are anamorphic, the film itself is not despite
the claim on the packaging.) The mono audio track is no great
shakes; it's the typical flat-sounding but otherwise serviceable
mix that's the norm for obscure Eurotrash. The yellow subtitles
are easy to read and contain few grammatical errors.
The meat of Disc 2 is a 65 minute documentary,
Joe D'Amato: Totally Uncut Erotic Experience, also in English-subtitled
Italian. Reportedly this is a truncated version, glossing over
D'Amato's work in the horror genre to focus almost exclusively
on his sex flicks. (The packaging lists the doc's running time
as 90 minutes.) Film clips some of them hardcore from scores
of D'Amato's movies are interwoven with extensive segments from
the last major interview the man gave before his death in 1999.
Even if this doesn't represent the documentary in its complete
form it is highly worthwhile for fans of D'Amato's Eurosleaze
ouevre. (It would appear to have been taken from a less than ideal
videotape source but is watchable.) Also to be found on Disc 2
is a brief photo gallery (nudie shots of Marina Frajese and Paola
Senatore) and a trailer reel consisting of 9 trailers, some for
D'Amato titles not yet released on R1 DVD. (One of 'em is for
Caligula 2: The Untold Story, which
looks totally over-the-top outrageous. This is one I gotta see!)
7/05/05 |
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