La settima donna

This may not be quite as explicit or in your face as, 'House at the Edge of the Park', but it is still seriously nasty affair and most compelling. I found the pacing tight and the action fast moving. 'Action', of course includes, stripping, raping and torturing the various youngsters who are in a desolate house practising a play for their catholic church school with their nun. Florinda Bolkan does very well in her role as the nun, at first stoical and gradually coming around to a more vigorous defence of herself and her girls. Ray Lovelock is excellent as the more charismatic of the baddies who intrude upon the ladies, but everybody helps to make this a most entertainingly brutal and sexy outing. 'Guilty pleasure' I think is the apt description.

A group of pretty, female Catholic school girls and their teacher, Sister Cristina (Florinda Bolkan), are terrorised by a trio of armed bank robbers (Ray Lovelock, Flavio Andreini and Stefano Cedrati) who opt to hideout in the beach-front property where the girls are studying (when they're not sunbathing topless by the pool).

Franco Prosperi's Last House On The Beach is, rather unsurprisingly, another Italian rip-off of Wes Craven's Last House On The Left, which wouldn't bother me one bit if only it wasn't such a tame affair, the director clearly wanting to disturb, but reluctant to get his hands dirty when necessary.

Rather than wallowing in the depravity that such films demand, Prosperi merely dips his toe in, withdrawing quickly whenever things start to get interesting. The rape scenes are extremely mild, the murders are tepid, and the power of the film's most extreme scene—the fatal penetration of a young woman by a large piece of wood—is severely diluted by a laughable POV shot of the leering thug brandishing the weapon.

I'm not saying that the film has to show every last graphic detail to be a complete success, but for the audience to be 'on board' with the revenge part of the film, they must first be shocked by the abuse suffered by the victims—and Prosperi repeatedly fails to do so.

4/10, bumped up to 5 for the song that sounds suspiciously like Roxy Music's 'Let's Stick Together', but with different lyrics, and for the scene in which the thugs watch my favourite part of dodgy giallo 'Eyes Behind The Wall' on telly (if you're given the choice, watch that film instead).

While my copy reads "The Terror", the Italian translation "Last House on the Beach" clearly identifies this as a tribute to (or rip-off of) Craven's early 70's Last House on the Left. Both films involve the revenge victims inflict on their kidnappers and tormentors.

I had high hopes for this film as I enjoy the stylistic violence of Italian horror. Wes Craven, however, was more creative with his movie. The Terror may take the torture to extremes, but it's a less powerful film. Craven's cast was also more convincing.

The camera work is excellent and the movie is well directed. Still, I was left unmoved at the conclusion and maybe that was because I'd seen it done better before.

A trio of obdurate bank-robbers who are barely evading the authorities hole up in an incommunicado beach house where several girls from a parochial school are having a field trip with their drama teacher. Instantaneously, the girls are sucked into a living nightmare of sexual assault, inexorable degradation, torture, and death. At one especially disturbing point in the course of events, one of the brutes becomes seriously injured, and callously demands to be cared for by the very people he has been so cruelly tormenting.

This film is often compared to LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, though despite axiomatic similarities in the general mien, little else between the two films is consonant. LA SETTIMA DONNA is an emotionally exhausting steamroller of tribulation, pathos, and senseless inhumanities...highly unpleasant, but effective, like a hard punch to the gut.

6.5/10

Not a surprise that The Last House on the Left would have remakes. This is one of them with a twist - it is also a nunsploitation film.

Florinda Bolkan (Flavia the Heretic) is Sister Cristina, who has some Catholic schoolgirls in a beach house rehearsing a play when some dastardly evildoers crash the party.

The maid (Isabel Pisano) gets killed almost immediately and this serves to terrorize the group. When they strip the nun and make her put on her habit, the camera is on everyone but her. They even rape her off-camera. They did brutally rape one of the schoolgirls (Sherry Buchanan - Zombie 3), and raped and killed another with a stick.

Sister Cristina has had enough. As one of the thieves is suffering and pleading for help, she put him out of his misery. She then shows her capability with his gun. All the girls join in and have their fun with the last one.

Not nasty enough to be banned by Britain, but nasty enough.