Satanico Pandemonium: La Sexorcista

One of the most faithful nuns in her convent, Sister Maria finds herself obsessed by the Devil. Obsessed, not possessed, because Satan is an external force in this film. A strapping and vampiric lad, the Devil brings out Sister Maria's inner desires for both sex and blood. Plagued also by her devotion to God, she tries to fight these forbidden desires and lusts with prayer and penitence only to have them come back ten fold. Sister Maria is suddenly caught between Satanic submission or death.

Satanico Pandemonium is a good nunsploitation effort in the vein of, the more celebrated, Juan Lopez Moctezuma'a Alucarda. It has sex, nudity, lesbianism, child seduction, self mutilation, blood, and death(not necessarily in that order, of course). The ending is clever and surprising following a bloody and ravenous climax. If you're a fan of nunsploitation and offbeat cinema, do yourself a favor and check out Satanico Pandemonium. You won't regret it.

SATANICO PANDEMONIUM is a "good nun gone bad" film from Mexico about Sister Maria (Cecilia Pezet), who, after an encounter with the Devil (Enrique Rocha), goes on a mad spree of sexual deviance and bloody homicide.

The main reason for this film's notorious reputation is due to Maria's lusting after an underage boy. This was pretty shocking for its day, but is less so in this era of desensitization via the internet and trash TV. Whether she's inside or outside of the convent, Maria is relentless in her search for debauchery, ultimately committing several murders to cover up her sins. It's fascinating to watch her transform from a Julie Andrews / Audrey Hepburn-type nun, into a full-on, eeevil maniac!

Unfortunately, the ending is a swindle, tacked on to placate the church and the censors...

I watched this on Mondo Macabro's DVD of it, and the picture quality is very good - nice and sharp and colorful. For some reason it is a little scratchy in the last few seconds (perhaps appropriately enough, since Old Scratch himself is appearing at that moment).

A young pretty nun is wandering through the countryside picking flowers. She sees a naked man who greets her, and she runs away. When talking to a local boy, the man reappears in clothing this time, and he tries to get her to take a bite of a shiny red apple. She runs away again, and the devil (as he clearly must be) takes a bite of the apple while he watches her retreat.

The devil shows up against outside the convent window when the nuns are eating. He disappears, then appears as a small red thing (light, jewel, apple?), then even that disappears. The nun shows herself to be kind to the black nuns, who are discriminated against, and to be gentle and healing with animals.

When another nun comes to her room to declare her admiration and love for her, she immediately collapses on the bed accepting the seduction. Satan finally got to her. Her behavior becomes more satanic, as she seduces or kills people. Her clothing is frequently removed. Satan proves himself to be pretty powerful, while God seems absent.

The ending might have been a concession to censors, I'm not sure. There are a lot of nice extras on the DVD, including a short overview of nunsploitation and an essay on the subject, among other things. I haven't seen many such movies myself, apart from some weird nun movies like Alucarda, Dead Waters, and Demonia - hardly typical Catholic nuns.

Even though I have ambiguous estimations about this film on the whole, I can only say for sure that "Satanico Pandemonium" is a must-see nunsploitation Mexican flick for anyone who can be pleased about these kinds of movies for their evident ridiculousness. This is one of those flicks that have too many flaws and no plot whatsoever but it's still impossible not to like them, for some imprecise cause. The acting is not exactly Academy Award material and it causes unintended laughter. The special effects in which we see the concept of Satan and temptation itself represented on a laughable guy naked, is by far one of the most hysterical things about this film, along with the outrageously shabby sound effects during these strange apparitions. The whole thing just looks too tacky and the look on the guy's face is simply priceless, so how can anyone not love it?. I know some people could take it as a reason to overthrow the director's gracious effort, but I myself, found it too silly not to like it. Without offering an actual share of real horror, "Satanico Pandemonium" manages to get the attention, even if it is by some means erroneously advertised. There are some noble allocations of gore here and there, but the film mostly focuses on the drama and eroticism. The first half an hour happens to be ineffective in a way and that would be the only reasons why I felt compelled to turn it off throughout the first minutes and leave it incomplete. It contains no dialogs, no action and for the most part only a nice display of beautiful Mexican landscapes, which is not exactly enough to make it endurable. However, it is only a matter of persistence to realize that after the big unnecessary moments of silence and boredom, the story starts to develop some of the most astonishing states of affairs, in which we see lesbian soft-core sex between two nuns, a nun taking advantage of a teenage boy and some enjoyable bloody murders inside the convent. Without anything else to add, I can only recommend "Satánico Pandemonium" to anyone who is in the mood for a decent nunsploitation drama, with some utterly random sexual scenes, a couple of nice murders to attach at least a small share of horror to the story, a badly placed background story of racism and of course...lots of sexy and sinful nuns.

"Satánico Pandemonium" is probably best known as the name of yummy Salma Hayek's character in Robert Rodriguez' "From Dusk Till Dawn". What remains unknown to many, however, is the fact that when writing the script, Quentin Tarantino adapted the name from the title of this ingeniously deranged piece of Mexican Nunsploitation Horror. The main protagonist, a sexy nun, by the way, does things that easily compete in weirdness with feeding on bikers and truckers, I may add. People interested in Horror/Cult-cinema will sooner or later find out that Mexican Horror cinema has a very specific charm. This is especially the case with the fistful of weird Mexican Nunsploitation flicks, most prominently "Alucarda" (1978). And while "Satánico Pandemonium" of 1975 is not nearly as ingenious a film as "Alucarda" it is definitely a wonderfully deranged little film that is highly recommendable to Exploitation-lovers. "Satánico Pandemonium" delivers the elements we love about Nunsploitation cinema - lots of female nudity, lesbianism, all kinds of perversions, occultism, violence and gore, and, not least, an enormous portion of religious nastiness - all that in a highly bizarre manner. These elements are highly entertaining for my fellow Exploitation fans, and can easily make the viewer forgive that the plot is almost non-existent and most of the performances are awful. "Satánico Pandemonium" is about the kind-hearted nun Sister Maria (Cecilai Peztez) - certainly the sexiest nun I've ever stumbled upon - who, after the lord of the flies appears to her, changes her pious behavior radically... The film delivers all the sleaze and weirdness one could desire in a Nunsploitation flick. In-between it sometimes gets quite boring, however. Still the film is deranged and bizarre enough to be a delight to genre-lovers. Overall, "Satánico Pandemonium" is not one of the best Nunsploitation films I've seen (it has the coolest title though), but it is weird enough, and more than recommended to fans of deranged Exploitation. My rating: 6.5/10