Mubi Monday: The Sinful Nuns Of Saint Valentine (1974)

Having somehow not seen any other movies from writer Sergio Grieco (working here with writer Luigi Mordini), as far as I am aware, I must start this review of The Sinful Nuns Of Saint Valentine by saying that I look forward to anything else in his filmography that I might one day stumble across. This is a nunsploitation film that focuses on heightened emotional states and treachery ahead of simple sex and sleaziness, and it ends up being all the better for it. Not that I am a hater of sex and sleaziness in the right films. I just ended up being pleasantly surprised by this.

There are two “star-crossed” lovers at the heart of the plot. Jenny Tamburi is Lucita, confined to a convent and just days away from being forced into a commitment for life. Paolo Malco is Esteban, the man who loves her, but can only communicate with her in secret while he recuperates after a skirmish that saw him apparently kill a man. Between the two of them is the abbess (played by François Prévost), a woman who becomes aware of the whole situation, and schemes to have Esteban to herself. Meanwhile, the convent is being investigated and dark secrets are uncovered.

Taking very familiar elements of this sub-genre and tweaking them ever so slightly is enough to make this film both satisfying for those who know the tropes and more interesting than a film that might just slavishly mark them off a checklist. The power held by the abbess, for example, is soon shown to be precarious, at best, and affected by her unchecked impulses. The nuns being investigated from someone outwith the convent also shows a heirarchy of power that can ebb and flow, depending on who maintains their moral superiority (often while hiding their hypocrisy).

Malco and Tamburi are both fine, the latter doing especially good as the conflicted innocent, but the real star here is Prévost, who chews up her scenes as eagerly as she wants to chew up the man she has in her sights. She’s the kind of villain you can have a lot of fun watching, and her performance helps to ensure that. Corrado Gaipa is also good value, the “inquisitor” looking to root out evil and save the convent, if possible, and the rest of the supporting players do a good job of looking stressed, sanctimonious, or majorly struggling with their repressed desires.

There’s not much else to say about this, although it is worth noting that you watch it for the performances. The production design, score, etc. are all perfectly serviceable, I guess, but nothing stood out. That’s fine though, especially when you have such enjoyably twisted relationships and scheming to hold your attention.

Perhaps not nasty and sleazy enough for some, and I would point those people towards numerous Jess Franco movies ahead of this one, The Sinful Nuns Of Saint Valentine is still a bloody good nunsploitation flick, even if it doesn’t sit up there with the very best of them.

7/10

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Shudder Saturday: The House By The Cemetery (1981)

I love me some Lucio Fulci horror. The man doesn't give a damn for things like logic or reality, but he can create some absolutely wonderful set-pieces, and can also layer on atmosphere so thick that you have to cut through it with a chainsaw to even just see the screen. Unfortunately, The House By The Cemetery (the last in his "Gates Of Hell" trilogy) is one of his weaker films. There are still moments that will please fans, they're just too few and far between in the middle of a plot that's hard to care about.

And I'm not going to take up this entire review with space trying to explain the plot. Let's just say that a family moves into a new home, that home having also been the site of evil happenings, and it's not long until more evil happenings start to, ummmm, happen. That will do, trust me, that's all you need to know.

You get some familiar Fulci-isms here, of course, including a random prologue that becomes relevant a bit later on, someone with psychic abilities, spooky children, an animal attack (this time it's a bat), and an undead figure shambling around and killing people. There are moments of gore, moments to bewilder anyone new to the cinematic world of Fulci, and general oddness throughout, but it all feels like someone trying to emulate Fulci without really managing to get things right.

Part of this can be attributed to the script, which was written by the director, Dardano Sacchetti, and Giorgio Mariuzzo (developing the plot thought up by Elisa Briganti), but scripts have never been the main focus of a Fulci movie. Yet, even in comparison to others that he brought to the screen, this is particularly weak. There's no building of tension because the core of the story is so weak, there are no characters to really care about, or be interested in, and the dialogue is either clunky exposition or reactions to moments of horror that would send most people running for the hills.

Catriona MacColl and Paolo Malco are the two main adults, the latter being responsible for his family moving into "the creaky and creepy house of murder and death" (my title, not a name given to the location in the film, despite it being completely appropriate), and the main child, Bob, is played by Giovanni Frezza in a performance that is up there in the annals of most annoying movie children ever. Not that I blame Frezza entirely for that. It's a mix of the dubbing and however he was directed by Fulci. Ania Pieroni isn't onscreen long enough, playing a babysitter named Ann, while Giovanni De Nava is arguably shown too much in the second half, playing Dr. Freudstein, the character causing so much death and horror.

There are still moments here that make this worth your time, just, but it's probably the weakest film from Fulci to feature a shambling corpse, and it's not a patch on so many of his other movies that you could pick from the decades during which he gave us a pretty damn impressive number of memorable genre films.

5/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can buy it here.