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Delving into the mire of
Euro-sleaze and exploitation can dredge
up some reprehensible, taboo busting
sub-genres of film and there's nothing
quite so troubling as the Catholic
baiting wonder of a full bodied
Nunsploitation flick.
At their best these glorious examples of
sacrilegious cinema attack the church on
an intellectual level as well as filling
their running time with enough sex,
nudity and torture as possible. It's
little wonder that the epicentre of this
kind of heretical filmmaking was Italy,
the headquarters of Catholicism.
After the world wide success of Ken
Russell's The
Devils, an art film that
pushed the boundaries of acceptability
with its marauding, nymphomaniacal
sisters raping effigies of Christ and
Oliver Reed as a horny priest with a
libertine streak and a permanent
erection. True to form, the exploitation
movie producers saw an opening in the
market for films that combined soft
porn, horror and a healthy dose of
irreligious church baiting. After all,
horror is by its very nature a genre
that must test its audience's limits in
order to succeed. What better way to
shake up the sensibilities of an Italian
or Spanish crowd than to lampoon and
insult a church that is central to the
lives of a large percentage of the
population. For lapsed Catholics
throughout Europe in the 70s, the
Nunsploitation genre must have offered a
lot of illicit thrills as one sat in the
flickering darkness of a low heeled
fleapit.
Alongside the Nazi Exploitation films of
the same era, which again came mostly
from Italy where Fascism ruled during
the war years, the cycle of Nun films
are a strange and fascinating chapter in
the history of extreme cinema, one which
holds surprising and jaw dropping visual
rewards for film fans with strong
stomachs, loose morals or a healthy
disregard for religious dogma.
Flavia the Heretic is an example of
Nunsploitation with a message. Ok, its
a rather preachy, heavy handed point
about the folly of conceding to god
fearing rhetoric and allowing those with
power to break you down, mixed in with a
big dose of by-numbers 70s feminism that
sits rather oddly with the films 1400s
setting, but, the message is still
there...Among the flaying, pig sty rape
attacks, crotch-to-head spear impaling,
horse castrations, ecstatic sexual
frenzy and eroticized dream sequences.
In the film, Flavia is a woman forced
into a life of virginity and sacrifice
by her rich father. Becoming a Nun, she
at first allows the convent to dominate
her will, acting out the role of the
good little sister. But the turn of
events makes her confront her own
feelings of rage and revenge. After
seeing the new lord of the land rape a
young girl in front of her and having
witnessed the treatment of a young
novice, who becomes possessed by a weird
sex cult called the Tarantulas, at the
hands of priests and torturers (the
unfortunate girl loses a nipple...),
Flavia runs away with a local Jewish man
she has befriended, only to be caught
and lashed.
After her return she befriends the
twisted aging lesbian nun Agatha, a
woman half crazy and bent on anarchy. So
mad that she thinks she could be the
next pope, this wired old lady stirs up
trouble and makes Flavia realize that
the way of the Heretic is her only
escape.
So when a traveling band of Moslem
warriors led by a handsome prince
arrives, she beds their leader and takes
them to attack the nunnery. When the
place is at her command, she drugs the
nuns and they are whipped into a sexual
frenzy. Wild!
Flavia is played by Florinda Bolkan
(familiar to cult film fans from two
Lucio Fulci Giallo flicks, Don't Torture
a Duckling and Lizard in a Woman's
Skin), who approaches the role with
gusto and commitment. Even though the
film is pure exploitation, Bolkan's
performance shows a real connection with
the material and the message, elevating
the sometimes odd dialogue and general
sleaziness of the material.
Obviously, political correctness has
altered what is acceptable in the movies
these days, so a fleeing population
screaming "The Moslems are coming!
The Moslems are coming! "probably
wouldn't cut today, but it did raise an
unintentional, albeit nervous, titter in
our house. The film is vehement in its
condemnation of all faiths, whether it's
the heathen pillaging of the film's
Islamic aggressors, the weak willed,
meek Israelites ("What can I do, I
am but a Jew..." is a
representative line) or the rampant
hypocrisy, sexual repression and total
corruption of the Christians, no
religion is left unscathed. Those of a
sensitive nature when it comes to
sacrilege (or equestrian neutering) in
all it's forms would do well to avoid
this one...
Raising the film still further above its grimier contemporaries is
its
haunting score, a mixture of religious
themes and dreamy softcore lounge, and
expert cinematography, that puts this on
a different plane to fun, sex and shock
exercises like The Killer Nun or
The
Sinful Nuns of St. Valentine. Decent
performances that shine through the
sometimes off-putting dubbing, good
attention to period details and an
edge-of-your-seat atmosphere where you
really don't know what nasty path the
film is going to take you down next,
combine to create a genuine classic in a
genre that by it's very nature garners
little respect.
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find Flavia the Heretic at adultvideouniverse.com
