Love Letters of a Portugese Nun (1977)

aka Liebesbriefe einer portugiesischen Nonne
Cartas De Amor a Una Monja Portuguesa
Cartas De Amor de Una Monja
Lettre D'Amour D'Une Nonne Portugaise
De Portugaise Non
Confessioni Proibite Di Una Monaca Adolescente
Tuhansien Himojen Luostari
The Love Life of a Portuguese Nun

Jess Franco directed this nasty nun film, and it's actually one of the best in the subgenre. This is heavy, though occasionally silly, stuff. Anyone who considers themselves even somewhat easily offended by religious blasphemy will want to steer as clear as humanly possible from this one.

Now that that's out of the way, let's get our hands dirty. This has all the strong and dirty feeling imagery you could want in a movie. It's all encased in a hypnotic and often incoherent story line. We begin with young Maria being caught kissing a boy by Father Vicente. Vicente urges Maria's mother to send her off to a convent as he sees that as the only way to save her soul. The financially burdened mother is finally convinced, and off Maria goes. Well, without going through a complete plot synopsis I'll list a brief summary of her exploits within. To begin with the evil Mother Superior checks her hymen to ensure virginity. A disturbing side note to this scene is how the Mother's eyes roll back as if in pleasure while doing so. From here on in she tries to salvage her soul but after suffering through several bouts of severe sexual degradation [including a surreal scene where she is forced to mate with Satan (Herbert Fux with a horn in the middle of his forehead) and told that she is in love with sin] she loses all hope. Eventually she writes a letter to God and throws it out her cell window. From here fate intervenes, and we are actually left with some substance to chew on (from Franco!).

So many aspects of this film are powerful that they greatly overshadow most of the silly aspects that are inherent in this type of movie. While Franco's cinematography is always interesting, here it has more artistic credibility (no Lina Romay bumping into camera lenses). The acting is generally above par too, even if it does suffer from some lackluster dubbing. The actors shine in spite of this, mostly through contemplative or sadistic expressions. William Berger's Father Vicente is one of the sleaziest screen villains this side of David Hess. Susan Hemingway is excellent as the imperiled teen, lending a good amount of much needed sympathy to the role. Not only does she show an exceeding amount of skill in her role, but she looks so young and innocent. She really appears to be 14 or 15 which is going to make this even tougher for some to swallow given the circumstances she finds herself in.

Unfortunately, this shares the same story as so many other movies of this sort- piss poor distribution. This has never been released in the US and is likely not to be anytime soon. The only chance it has lies in Franco's name to draw attention to it from companies like Anchor Bay or Image's Redemption line. So that means we're stuck watching dubs for a while if you want to see it. Both Luminous and Cinebizarre carry this title and they both have good reputations as far as quality is concerned. You could shop around ebay for better prices but you would also run a pretty high risk landing a murky, unwatchable 10th generation dub from some swindler.