L'abbesse de Castro

Another Italian example of "Nunsploitation", this one supposedly scores a few more points in prestige over its contemporaries for being 'inspired' by a Stendhal source…although, frankly, it seems to share some of its storyline with an earlier – and better-known – film, THE NUNS OF ST. ARCHANGEL aka THE NUN AND THE DEVIL (1973)! It is perhaps just as well that these kind of movies were mostly ignored upon original release because otherwise I fail to see how the Vatican can have permitted such squalid and potentially sacrilegious depictions of its members: in this film, Barbara Bouchet is driven to a convent by her ambitious mother in order to squash an affair she was having with an undesired adventurer; once enrolled, she quickly claims the top spot because her mother's wealth finances the convent's operations – thus incurring the hatred of her rival Evelyn Stewart, who loses no opportunity to inform on Bouchet to an influential Cardinal when the former catches the eye of the womanizing warrior-bishop who, eventually, impregnates her!! This is not to mention the fact that the bishop clearly feels only contempt and disgust for the famished beggars who hover outside the convent walls; moreover, the solution for the prevailing draught is sought in the throwing-snakes-in-the-fire rites of a traveling charlatan whose arrival somehow serves to erotically arouse the repressed nuns, leading to some barnyard shenanigans between a lowly priest and a novice who are subsequently hypocritically persecuted to their death by the all-but-innocent bishop himself! Lead actress Bouchet looks great in and out of the cloth (who, for some reason, keeps asking her feeble-minded maid to strip her stark naked for bedtime!) but, at just 31 years of age, she is too young to be believable as a Mother Superior. The rest of the cast is not very well-known or even all that interesting, except for Stewart (amusingly misspelled as Eveline Sthewart!) as Bouchet's nemesis within the cloister and a red-headed Mara Venier as the ill-fated novice. As for the crew, cinematographer Gabor Pogany and composer Carlo Savina are, respectively, prolific Art-house and Euro-Cult exponents; on the other hand, obscure director Crispino only has a handful of intriguingly oddball genre flicks to his name.

A young woman falls in love with a notorious bandit and is put in a convent by her family. When she hears that her lover has been killed trying to visit her, she decides to remain in the convent and rises to position of Mother Superior surprisingly quickly. However, due to her sordid past (not to mention the fact that she is played by uber-sexy Barbara Bouchet), she arouses the lust of the local bishop, and, after an unplanned pregnancy, ends up becoming a pawn in simmering Vatican intrigue. . .

This is an early 70's "nunsploitation" picture, which means it is neither supernatural like a lot of the later, post-"Exorcist" ones (i.e. "Alucarda"), nor is it a total softcore sex romp like those made closer to the end of the decade (i.e. "Images in a Convent"). It also differs from contemporary "nunspolitation" entries like "Story of a Cloistered" and "The Nuns of St. Archangel" in that it doesn't really have an ensemble cast--instead of having a voluptuous older woman (Anne Heywood, Suzie Kendall) as the Mother Superior and a nubile lovely (Eleanora Giorgi, Ornella Muti, Jenny Tamburi) as the young initiate committed by her parents, the two roles are kind of combined here in Barbara Bouchet, who pretty much carries the whole movie. In this respect, the movie mostly resembles "Flavia, the Heretic" with Florinda Bolkan, but with a lot less graphic violence.

The movie does make some serious criticisms of the Church as they hypocritically indulge in their vices and schemes, isolated from the ignorant, superstitious people who are suffering from a terrible drought in the medieval Italian countryside. There's a very interesting, and no doubt metaphoric, scene where a "snake man" shows up at the convent and throws live snakes on a bonfire while all the nuns dance around in orgasmic ecstasy. The director Armando Crispino ("Autopsy", "Frankenstein all'Italia") is definitely as talented as anyone else that worked in this genre. Of course, the movie doesn't neglect to get the lovely Bouchet naked at the slightest pretext. This hurts the realism a little--none of the actresses mentioned above were especially believable as nuns (if they were, I would have enjoyed Catholic school a lot more), but a habit-less Bouchet, barely 30 at the time, is especially hard to buy as a "Mother Superior". Still, she's tries her best, and I'm sure no one then or now is going to complain.

It seems there were two kinds of films in the strange "Nunsploitation" genre; the trash films, produced for the sole purpose of showing as much sex, nudity and general depravity as possible, and then there were the high brow productions, that featured quality scripts, fine acting and gorgeous cinematography. Movies that fall under the former style were the ones directed by Joe D'Amato, Bruno Mattei, and Jess Franco, (although his "Love Letters of A Portuguese Nun" is a good film, even though it is packed with graphic sex and torture.) "Abbess of Castro" is definitely of the latter, with it's beautiful production values, and a script (based on the classic writings of Stendhal) is rather low on exploitative elements. Starring the gorgeous Barbara Bouchet, the film begins with a rape behind convent walls. Bouchet is the unwilling Abbess, given that title because of her important family lineage, and a title she didn't even want. A strange affair begins with the criminal thief, after he forces himself upon her, in a plot device that you would never see in a movie today. The rape results in a pregnancy, which forces the sordid affair out into the open, and rather than naming her lover Giulio, which would result in his death, Sister Elena keeps quiet, enduring the archaic torture involving bloody whippings of the other nuns involved in the scandal. Even when her baby is born, she keeps her lover's identity a secret. Although "Abbess of Castro" does show scenes of nudity and torture, this is actually a movie that can be watched by most casual viewers without offending or shocking them, unlike the movies of Joe D'Amato and Bruno Mattei, which really are basically trash films. Sadly, those are the movies that get all the attention, while the quality productions like this one, and "Devils of Monza" aka "Sacrilege" are completely neglected for being too tame for the sleaze crowd. The result of this is that there are no decent prints of these superior titles, while stuff like "Images in A Convent" get the full restoration treatment for Blu Ray release. So these wonderful films are all but lost, or can only be seen via terrible, cropped prints with awful voice dubbing. "Abbess of Castro" in particular is almost impossible to find. Considering this was filmed in the super wide angle lens, it is a tragedy that it isn't available, as the original must be visually stunning to look at. Hopefully the participation of cult erotic actress Barbara Bouchet, will result in the much deserved restoration of a movie very deserving of rediscovery..