Le Couvent de la bête sacrée

School of the Holy Beast (1974)

*** (out of 4)

Notorious Japanese nunsploitation film from director Norifumi Suzuki has a simple storyline but borrows heavily from the Euro erotic genre. A rebellious woman enters a convent so she can learn the truth behind her mother's death eighteen years earlier. Her rebel attitude doesn't sit too well with the higher up nuns who aren't afraid to resort to torture by whip. The first half of the film is mostly an erotic movie and I'm not going to lie, Japanese women are quite sexy so the erotic nature of the film worked for me. Japan censorship laws were pretty heavy back in the day so the director comes up with a couple very good scenes to get his point across without having to resort to hardcore scenes, ala Euro flicks. There's an oral sex scene, which isn't shown how you'd expect but it's highly erotic and gets its sexuality across better than most Euro films of this genre. The second half of the film slows down quite a bit as the "mystery" surrounding the mother's death is revealed. The direction is quite strong and the cinematography is excellent.

School of the Holy Beast is a weird concoction of exploitation who's very unusualness makes it worth watching. A girl enjoys her last night of freedom before entering a convent. The convent, of course, turns out to be a hotbed of immorality that de Sade might have scripted. Expect plenty of flagellation, lesbian trysts, and displaying of breasts – all in a style that crosses Hammer Horror with Russ Meyer mammary voyeurism. But throw in a script that plays hard and loose with Christianity in a way that only a foreign country could and it starts to appeal for its sheer audacity. I found the scene of one of the nun's punishment - being tied with rose briers and then whipped with bunches of red roses particularly aesthetically pleasing.

It's pretty difficult to fully comprehend the background to this movie, when you contemplate about it. "School of the Holy Beast" is a nunsploitation film but there are as good as no Catholic people in Japan and most of the actresses probably didn't knew what the hell a convent was! The only thing director Norifumi Suzuki knew for certain was that sex movies with nuns were extremely popular in Europe around that time and he saw this as an open opportunity to do the same for the Japanese exploitation-market. Maybe that's why "School of the Holy Beast" isn't anything like those void and trashy Jess Franco movies, but actually a very stylish and reasonably well-scripted film! "School..." doesn't feature the textbook plotting of nuns worshiping the devil and even the lesbian interactions between the young girls aren't the film's main events. This merely is a good old-fashioned tale of revenge, set within the walls of a convent and compellingly criticizing the abuse of Catholic power. Despite obviously enjoying her sexuality in the outside world, young Maya seems determined to become a nun in one of Japan's strictest convents. She never knew her parents but she discovered that her mother also was a nun here who died in mysterious circumstances. As the plot develops, Maya's only interest seems to be unraveling the convent's hypocrite network of sexual perversion, torture and murder in the name of Catholism. She and rebel nun Ishida become good friends who bring men into the convent and encourage other oppressed sisters to stand up for themselves. Don't get too frightened by this rather ambitious-sounding plot, as the film features more than enough sleaze & violence to satisfy even the most demanding exploitation fanatic. The girls get severely whipped, raped by a Raputin look-alike priest, tied up with thorny stems and beaten with bouquets of roses (that's not as pretty as it sounds). Things get even more sadistic when French/Japanese über-nun Nathalie Green shows up, since she immediately implements some of the vilest torture tricks ever, including a bizarrely fascinating ritual to decide whether or not a girl is a witch. "School of the Holy Beast" is astonishingly beautiful to look at, with imaginative cinematography and an excellent use of color shades. The set and costume designs are magnificent, and surprisingly surpassing the quality of most scenery used in European nunsploitation movies! The music is enchanting and the nudity, although plenty of it, is always illustrated with flair and good taste. The young starlets here, especially Yumi Takigawa Emiko Yamauchi, belong to the prettiest and most talented Japanese actresses I ever beheld. This movie now ranks among my favorite nunploitation-efforts, along with "The Devils", "Flavia – The Heretic", "Alucarda" and "Behind Convent Walls". Highly recommended!

Or as with any other Nunsploitation movie: She'll have nun of that. Works every time like a charm, though I reckon this may only be the third or fourth one of these that I have seen. Still I'll keep believing (pun intended) in finding the ultimate one. This one right here isn't really bad. Most of the time it doesn't make much sense (I guess you have to be nude and show off your breasts for some reason), but it is sort of fun. If you're into bondage that is.

Apart from the already mentioned, that goes way deeper than 50 shades went (at least the movie, haven't read the book yet), this attempt on making a somewhat coherent story is really convoluted and it will be difficult to actually stay with it. Just pray you don't lose yourself. Then again it seems like those who lost themselves are doing mighty fine. Though they didn't expect the main actress to appear (something she didn't expect either, if you were to believe her interview on the disc).

I already wrote more than I thought I would, but somehow the whole thing was intriguing. Especially the innuendo, sometimes explicit (tongue between fingers symbolizing what? Yes exactly that) sometimes not so much. Also the main actress is really beautiful, with clothes, without and even as a nun. Do I have to mention that if you are religious you probably don't want to watch this? Though some would argue, that if you like good movies you'd also avoid it ... fair enough

You'd be forgiven for thinking a Japanese nunsploit flick helmed by snazzmeister Norifumi Suzuki would be cheap schlock with shower scenes to pad out the running time. No, this is a well made film as much concerned with inverting and subverting religious imagery as it is with aesthetics and sensuality. Certain set-pieces stand out as a testament to that: a nun flagellated in slow motion with roses, rose petals falling all over her bloodied body, a procession of nuns holding candles walking through the convent's corridors, a church interior photographed like a Mario Bava set, a priest falling dead in the shape of an inverted cross, stabbed with one no less.

Although School of the Holy Beast is definitely blasphemous in the imagery it employs and the way those who preach God's word are portrayed (a convent hiding vice and corruption the perfect hiding ground), it's never outrageous enough to shock because everything is done with a sense of artful style that will have all but the most fundamendalist of christians accepting it for what it is. There are a couple of false notes, like the 'witch trial' scene where a nun suspected to be a witch is forcefed salt water then forced to sit upon an image of Christ; if she pees, she's a witch. The method is so medieval that it's hard to picture taking place in the contemporary world the movie is set. Overall the film is enjoyable, mildly violent and sleazy, with perhaps a dash of religious angst that comes out as juvenile, but in good taste and a worthwhile watch.