Kung Fu Cult Master (1993)

KUNG FU CULT MASTER (1993)

(aka “Lord of the Wu Tang”, aka “Kung Fu Master”, aka “Evil Cult USA”, aka “The Evil Cult”)

Dir. Wong Jing

No title translation? That's racist.

Review by Goat Scrote

     “Kung Fu Cult Master”  has all of the essential ingredients I look for in a kung fu movie, which is actually just three things. I want lots of exciting fights, cool stunts, and badly translated subtitles. This movie totally delivers. Bonus points for wire-fu superpowers. Double bonus points for the fact that this particular film mixes vulgar dick jokes with the quest for martial arts enlightenment. 

     The movie was directed and written by Hong Kong legend Wong Jing, from the novel The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber by Louis Cha Leung-yung (pen name Jin Yong). This novel has spawned several film versions and a TV mini-series. The fabulous Sammo Hung directs the action sequences, handles the fight choreography, and also has a part in the movie. Jet Li leads the cast.

Swords are crossed but balls aren't touching.
Verdict: not gay.

     Wong Jing’s public statements seem to mirror my feeling that no matter what other virtues or faults a film possesses, it absolutely must not be boring. The only way that a film (or any artwork) can truly fail is by failing to engage the viewer. By that standard, Mr. Wong rarely fails. In this case he has made a fast-paced, funny, weird movie packed with spectacle. “Kung Fu Cult Master” is a flawed but highly entertaining fantasy wuxia action epic. It runs too long and it’s very confusing, but it’s also a lot of fun and definitely worth a look.

     If you can accept that super-awesome kung-fu magic fights are happening, and you don’t need to know too much about exactly why they are happening, this is a movie for you. Some of the flicks we review are a real chore to watch over and over again, but I didn’t mind so much with this one. The plot is one of the most convoluted I’ve ever tried to review, and I couldn’t understand it until I found three different versions - an excellent English dub and two different subtitled versions - and watched them with a lot of comparison, rewinding, and note-taking. Figuring out who was who in the sprawling cast was a minor nightmare. It is really difficult to make sense of the complex political conflict behind the action, which involves at least ten different clans plus the Yuan government, all intriguing against one another.

I will now explain why I'm divorcing you
through interpretive dance.

     The thing to focus on is the personal journey of the hapless protagonist from bullied orphan weakling to ultimate master of kung fu. The epic scale of the movie remains grounded in the human story of a kid who’s had a hard life finally growing up by collecting kung fu “Ievel ups". I'm not sure that's very practical as a life lesson, but fortunately, I also don't care.

     The film begins with a lot of exposition. There are two main groups vying against each other. The “orthodox” faction is composed of six different martial arts clans allied under the leadership of Shaolin. The other five members are Wudang, Emei, Kun Lun, Hung Tung, and Wah San.

     The second faction is the Ming Sect, aka Evil Cult, aka Fire Clan, headquartered on Bright Peak. They are outsiders from Persia who want to bring down the Yuan government. The Ming Sect is led by four elders: Queen of Purple Dragon; King of White Eagle; King of Gold Lion; And King of Green Bat.

"My beard will eat your mustache."

     The minions of the different sects are conveniently color-coded, which is good because otherwise there would be absolutely no way to tell who is fighting whom. The Shaolin have saffron robes with shaved heads. The Wudang have blue robes and hair in topknots. The Emei are nuns who wear white or light brown. The Kun-lun dress all in brown. The Hung Tung wear red hooded robes. The Wah San wear black. The Ming Sect robe colors tend to match their elders’ colors, purple, silver, gold, and green, but one of the Ming armies also wears red so I don’t know what that’s about.

"Fame! I'm gonna live fore-e-ver..."

     The factions are seeking the knowledge contained in an artifact called the Lunar Scroll, which will make its possessor the greatest martial artist in the world. Two magic swords, Dragonslayer and Starcatcher, each contain half of the scroll. Dragonslayer is in the hands of the Golden Lion clan elder Tse Shun (Yan Huaili) of the Ming Sect, who slew its rightful owner. A wicked Emei sect nun called No-Mercy (Sun Meng-Quan) has the sword Starcatcher.

     One of the students of the orthodox Wudang, Chang Tsui San (Frances Ng) defies the rules and befriends Tse Chun of the Ming Sect. He also falls in love with the daughter of the King of White Eagle, Yan So So (Sharla Cheung). When Tse Chun obtains the Dragonslayer sword by killing its rightful owner, all three go into hiding on an island. There Chang Tsui San and Yan So So have a child named Mo-Kei who is the god-son of Tse Shun.

Portrait of the martial artist as a young man.

     The couple has come out of hiding to celebrate the 100th birthday of the Grandmaster of Wudang. A pair of kung-fu fighters known as the Two Jinxes show up (Leung Kar-Yan and Zhang Chun-Zhong). They ambush the family and take ten-year-old Mo-Kei hostage. The Grandmaster of Wudang, a fellow named Chang San Fung (Sammo Hung), flies onto the scene like Superman and tries to settle the situation down. When the Two Jinxes have the audacity to threaten the Master, he opens up a can of Sammo-sized whup-ass on them. The bad guys really ought to know better than to fuck with a 100-year-old guy who has white eyebrows down to his nipples. Haven’t these dumb fuckers watched Kill Bill? A serious butt-kicking ensues and I can already tell I am going to like this movie, because it is  full of wire-fu stunts and magic.

Want to see me crunch off the front of his skull
and slap his brain out through his face?

     The bad guys manage to hit Mo-Kei with a poisonous move called the Jinx’s Palm. The Grandmaster is away getting an antidote for Mo-Kei when the other five clans show up in force, each trying to leverage the situation to get their hands on Tse Shun’s magic sword.  The elders of the kung fu world and their armies of minions clearly have the advantage over Mo-Kei’s family. Mo-Kei’s father laughs at all of them and uses the power of pure spite to blow his own heart open all over his enemies rather than betray his friend.

     Mo-Kei’s mother tricks the elders into arguing amongst themselves, and lies about where to find the King of Golden Lion. She commits suicide while hugging her young son. She drenches him in her blood just moments after she tells him to avenge his father and warns him to never trust a woman. That is some fucked up parenting right there and psychiatry won’t be invented for a few centuries… so I guess you just walk off, little traumatized Mo-Kei.

This image haunts my nightmares.

     Whew. That brings us to the 15 minute mark, only 1 hour and 25 minutes to go.

     With backstory out of the way, the movie fast-forwards seven years. The grown up Mo-Kei (Jet Li) still suffers ill effects from being poisoned as a child. He lives at Wudang Mountain with Grandmaster Chang San Fung, the incredible 107 year old virgin. Sifu claims that retaining all of his sexual energy is part of his power, and he likes to talk about the outrageous throbbing potency of his morning wood.

     The students at Wudang like to bully Mo-Kei because his health prevents him from fighting back. His rotten cousin Sung Ching Su (Collin Chou) orchestrates the abuse. A visiting girl from the Emei sect, Chow Chi-Yu (Gigi Lai) joins in, playing a prank on Mo-Kei which leads to his being seriously beaten by the students. Sung Ching Su threatens to chop off Mo-Kei’s hand and murder him.

Mellow yellow.

     Without warning a mysterious woman in red shows up on the rooftops and helps Mo-Kei. She uses long chains binding her wrists together as weapons to fight with. He and his mystery ally are flung into a vine-filled ravine by Chow Chi-Yu with the power of the sword Starcatcher. Scummy cousin Sung Ching Su and sadistic nun Chow Chi-Yu cover their tracks by telling the Wudang elders that Mo-Kei was attacked and murdered by the woman in red, and they exacted justice by killing her.

     It turns out the woman in red, Siu Chu (Chingmy Yau), is sworn to serve the family of the King of White Eagle, Mo-Kei’s grandfather. Her hands are chained together because she offended White Eagle. Sleeping next to Siu Chu in the ravine, Mo-Kei wakes up with his very first boner and worries that he might have made her pregnant simply by getting morning wood in her vicinity.

You have successfully transmitted a baby into my body!

     A cannibalistic paraplegic with telekinetic kung-fu powers has lived in the ravine for decades. I couldn’t verify who played this part, but he is awesome. He flies around strapped to a giant boulder and makes all kinds of creepy threats. This section is surreal, funny, and just a little scary too. After Mo-Kei says he will never pollute his mind with the hermit’s kung fu, the magic hermit mind-rapes his own knowledge into Mo-Kei by clubbing him with vines and contorting his "student's" body. I don’t know how that works, but whatever. It turns out that this was the young man’s plan all along, since he knew about the hermit and what his powers could do. They fight and Mo-Kei is victorious.

Somebody hose off the 30 years of accumulated stink.

     Mo-Kei gets super glowy kung fu powers from the Great Solar School, the secret knowledge of the cannibal hermit. He becomes hard to hurt or kill, and he can shoot energy blasts out of his hands. This is also the key to completely curing him of the effects of the Jinx’s Palm. Now he can avenge his parents at last.

     At an inn, the pair encounters yet another mysterious woman, this one wearing a gold crown and leading elite Yuan government troops. Among her minions are the Two Jinxes, but there are far too many troops for Mo-Kei to start trouble even with his Solar Stance.

Harry Potter is so fucking jealous right now.

     Elsewhere, the elders of the six clans make plans to attack the Ming Sect at their headquarters on Bright Peak. The elders of the Wah Sah Clan (one played by Tenky Tin Kai-Man) are hilariously sleazy, letting slip their desire to steal both of the swords and molest the Emei nuns. The meeting is interrupted by one of the Ming Sect elders, the King of Green Bat, Wai Yat Siu (Richard Ng). He is some kind of living vampire. He can fly, drinks blood, and can turn into an actual bat. He is probably my favorite character in this movie, even though has a secondary part. He escapes and warns the Ming Sect of the coming attack by the six clans.

     There is a massive battle between the followers of the two factions. They use crazy cool battle tactics, nifty martial arts superpowers, magic, weird mechanical weapons, and more. The nun No-Mercy shows just how powerful a mistress of kung fu can be when armed with a magical sword.

BECAUSE I'M BATMAN!

     The Ming Sect has been warned to expect an assassin pretending to be the “dead” Mo-Kei, so when he shows up for real he ends up having to fight them with his brand new kung fu. Then No-Mercy recognizes him, and both sides of the battle are after him!

     Mo-Kei and Siu Chu are forced to flee to the tomb of the two masters who originally created the magic swords, a taboo place where the clans dare not follow. They find a monk there who reveals that he infiltrated the Shaolin 20 years ago, he’s working for the government, and he is using the Six Clans to destroy the Ming Clan. They fight and Mo-Kei punches the false monk so hard it snaps his fingers off. The injured villain uses trickery to make his escape.

"By the power of Grayskull!"

     Siu Chu helps Mo-Kei discover the secret of “Magic Stance” which is hidden in the tomb, written in Persian so that only Sui Chu is able to read it. The magic stance makes Mo-Kei even more powerful, since he is immediately able to absorb kung fu knowledge thanks to his Solar School upgrade. According to Siu Chu, the instructions direct the reader to deliver the secrets of the stance to Tse Shun. This raises the question of her motives. Is she also trying to find the sword Dragonslayer?

Meh, I've been on worse blind dates.

     Meanwhile the tide of battle turns agains the Ming Clan. Green Bat is injured, and White Eagle is impaled by at least half a dozen swords. He handles it like a boss, though, snapping the blades with his body and then pulling them out.

     Mo-Kei bursts through the wall like Kool-Aid Man and explains the conspiracy by the Yuan to make the clans fight each other. The Shaolin refuse to believe one of their masters was a traitor, and they send a champion to fights Mo-Kei. The good-hearted hero shows mercy after he beats the monk… so of course No Mercy steps up to the plate, because she fuckin’ hates mercy. Mo-Kei reveals his new Magic Stance by casually taking her sword, slapping her repeatedly, and cutting the chains the bind his friend Shiu Chu. The Emei continue to fight, and Mo-Kei is run through with a sword. This annoys him, and he blasts the offender away with chi power. The Wudang, out of respect for the honor and skill of their opponents, unite with the Ming to defend the injured hero. Mo-Kei entrusts the Wudang clan with Starchaser.

My eyebrows are invincible against your kung fu.

     The Ming Sect has a law that they must obey the master of Magic Stance, and they unite behind Mo-Kei as the new Clan Master. One oily advisor immediately appears from under a rock and tempts Mo-Kei with power... he could replace the Emperor! 

     The Wudang, while traveling home, are ambushed with a poison which steals their kung fu. All of the antidote in the town has been bought by one person, so Mo-Kei goes to Green Willow Villa where his true enemy is revealed. The leader of the Yuan government conspiracy is Princess Chao Min (Sharla Cheung, who also plays Mo-Kei’s mother!). She is  the woman he briefly saw at the inn earlier, commanding the Two Jinxes. She has been manipulating the clan infighting from the start. It appears that Chao Min has stolen the Starcatcher from the Wudang, but when the Ming elders try to recover the blade, it turns out to be a trick. The elders are exposed to poison which renders them helpless after they have traveled a short distance from the Villa.

Don't squeeze the Chao Min!

     Mo-Kei returns to confront the villainess. Chao Min gloats about the poison and performs a sneak attack with darts. Next she shoots spear-tipped strings from the musical instrument she is playing. The two go hand to hand and she proves to be a very formidable opponent. Mo-Kei throws people around Jedi-style, causes an earthquake, and strips off half of Chao Min’s clothes. She remains calm and composed the whole time, and demands that in return for the antidote he perform three favors for her, as long as they don’t violate his code of honor. Chao Min’s first spiteful demand is that Mo-Kei can never marry Siu Chu.

     The Emei nuns come across the helpless Ming elders. Siu Chu makes an agreement with No-Mercy. If Siu Chu can survive three strikes from the cruel nun, the Emei will spare the elders. Just as the lethal third blow lands, Mo-Kei leaps in to the rescue. Shortly afterward, the injured No-Mercy and the other nuns are captured by government troops.

No-Mercy and her Total-Lack-of-Humanity Dancers.

     The Shaolin turn out to have been slaughtered, and whoever did it left behind graffiti blaming the Ming. A fake Shaolin monk shows up at Wudang and attempts to assassinate Grandmaster Chang San-Fung. In the confusion, the scumbag cousin Sung Ching Su stabs his Grandmaster. Ching Su reveals he is working for the government. Government agents attempt to bribe the Wudang, but the injured Grandmaster fights them.

     Mo-Kei arrives and uses Magic Stance to go all Keanu Reeves on the government bad guys. He grabs their swords out of their hands with his mind and crushes them into a ball. Princess Chao Min shows up again and for her second favor, she demands that Mo-Kei refrain from using the Solar Stance or the Magic Stance while fighting the Two Jinxes. The Grandmaster gives him an instant Tai Chi lesson so he has a fighting chance. Eventually he prevails over the Jinxes in suitably melodramatic fashion.

Chime for me to send you to bell!

     Mo-Kei owes the princess one more favor. She wants him to come see her in the capital where she will allow him to fulfill his debt to her. It ends with this cliffhanger, and a whole lot of loose story threads dangling. Who is Siu Chu really working for? What happened to No-Mercy, Chow Chi-Yu, and the other Emei, Shaolin, and Wudang hostages? Will the swords be reunited and the secret of the Lunar Scroll revealed? Did they ever go back to help the crazy hermit like they promised? This movie was supposed to be the start of a trilogy but it wasn’t financially successful enough to earn a sequel and so we will never know what was in store for Mo-Kei.

Bonus nightmare fuel. Come sit on Santa's face!

Noooo-one expects the Spanish Inquisition!

Jet Li casts Cone of Cold on the Demogorgon.

Retroactive abortion is an actual thing, right?

Dark Waters

Dark Waters (Temnye vody) Directed Mariano Baino, starring Louise Salter (1993).

I decided to pick this Lovecraftian Nunsploit shot in the Ukraine from the catalog. No, it’s not the Japanese Dark Water by Ringu director Hideo Nakata, which was remade with Jennifer Connolly. In fact, I actually liked this one more. The Baino film, which is his debut, starts off on a blasphemous note as a priest is drowned and then impaled by a cross, while a nun is mysteriously pushed over a sea side cliff. I'm stoked to see what heavy metal wackiness will erupt forth next like the spirit of Nyarlathotep. No that’s not a typo because this one takes place in the briny terrain of an Innsmouth-like cult, minus the inbreeding and the fishy lips. This is all deliberate and Mariano was very much influenced by Lovecraft. He was also a big fan of Graham Masterton, the genius behind one of my all time favorite schlocky Indian backne midget demons The Manitou!   

A cracked Flavor Flav style Pazuzu-ish medallion is placed in a keep sake box by the nuns,

left there for some predictable foreshadowing later.

What time is it? Time to drop a shit ton of LSD

The last mainstream disparagement toward those punishment craving nuns I can think of was the “Shame” dungeon sister featured on the Game of Thrones religious cult.
The score is very Boswell sounding, which works out pretty good.

Down in the depths of a cave there’s flaming crosses and flagellant nuns, (meaning cloistered bippies whipping themselves for sexual kicks not those with bad gas)!

I'd be cautious around that open flame during pork and beans night at the convent

Louise Salter, a British actress all decked out in sexy red leather is eager to reach the island of the eyeless creepy nuns, she's there to lower the boom and cut their funding after the death of her father, who was a big supporter of their satanic shenanigans. Little does she know they have some wicked plans for her and it gets worse, considering there's devious connections between her parents and these horrid bitches.

This film is extremely wet and European, it's always raining and the characters all speak in a gruff Eastern block-ish dialect, the kind that warms the frigid cockles of the alt-right Putin lovin suck ups. One loony aboard the vessel feasts of entrails and looks as if he sorely regretted taking the 20$ for this shitty bit part acting gig!

In the catalog, Chas mentions the shopping cart Sam Raimi “shakey cam” and the atmospheric set design, I think this director is pretty talented and besides DW, he’s only put out short films.

These eerie nuns seem to never catch any ZZZZ's, they stay up all night with torches walking around from dusk till dawn. Some of them act like the blind dead, wearing robes and lunging forward to strangling the shit outta anyone within reach. Elizabeth has one tripped out freaky nightmare showing a crucified nun with a withered face and candy corn teeth who levitates forward behind two cackling bug eyed kids.

OK kids smile for school picture day!

It must be a bitch to charter a boat, (Fuck that shit, I would've fashioned a Gillian's Island one out of bamboo to escape this claustrophobic dump)! That aspect sort of reminded me of The Wickerman.

It gets worse after it turns out this little pirozhki has family connections to these island hags and her chickens all come home to roost or something, I was slightly confused there's an "unbearable lightness of being" amount of metaphorical subtext. I guess I shouldn’t keep bringing up Russian references, (that last one was Czech by the way), because this director only filmed in that location because it was the financier’s idea--Mariano is Italian. He mentions this in an interview with comingsoon.net.

FLOYYYDDDD!!!

Nuns still have no fun like the Mercyful Fate tune goes and what's worse they are pyromaniacs!

Definitely stick around for the bat shit crazy ending where the main character’s mutant naked twin makes an appearance and the Pazuzu puzzle piece grants her the fortitude to yank out nun guts and chew them up like snausages! I think I need intense therapy now! Even though this one is like a Catholic Innsmouth with a Sentinel (1977) type element, it’s more original, super weird and worth seeking out. There's a new special edition DVD with commentary and a featurette which seems cool, because I heard that they apparently filmed near radiation infected landscapes and the flaming crosses almost demolished the set. Worth a shot, check it out!

BUY HERE

The Devils

The Devils Directed By Ken Russell, Starring Oliver Reed (1971)

I was super stoked to find this rare gem at Amoeba records for cheap! Not only was the price right, but it's unbelievable to me that this film seems almost like it's banned in the U.S.! I mean yes, this is still sadly a cripplingly religious nation, we only find this bullshit out during election time when all the religious fascists crawl out of their loony bins. But come on, this is 2016, censorship is practically dead and it's a mystery to me as to why this film is unavailable when any kid can dial-up Cannibal Holocaust on Youtube or Hulu in pristine condition. Who cares though, I have a copy now that looks astoundingly good from the VHS version I had in the 90s. I remember lending my copy to Skunkape, which I got from Chas Balun's VHS catalog of course, when we were both in TV production school together and he didn't seem impressed. He later confided to me that this wasn't the case, it was more along the lines of what the fuck did I just watch and it took him awhile to process it. I'm not Catholic and have always enjoyed it when cinema takes the wind out of the sails of organized religion so I was onboard from the beginning. My oddball childhood in a Christian cult still makes me nervous about overly-religious people. 

Did you just beef, or is that my upper lip?

I love how immediately they establish how all of this really happened (it's based on The Devils of Loudon by Aldous Huxley and John Whiting's adapted play). It's the bizarre tale of Urbain Grandier, who's crime of being lusted after by all the sexually oppressed nuns condemned him to a painful death of being burned alive at the stake. The film begins with Baron Munchausen looking androgynous French men in gaudy make-up and lipstick, who praise the union of Church and State. The effeminate villains are based on the real Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu. Meanwhile, Father Grandier (Oliver Reed) presides over a funeral where Catholics and Protestants have stopped waring and he wants to keep the peace. The King and Loudun have an agreement that states they will not level their city and it's protected from witch-hunters waltzing in and taking over. Although once rumors of demonic possession hit the air, the security granted to the city all comes crashing down.

Lets trade funny hats, mine's hiding those delightful French macaroons

There's so many creepy crawly things to enjoy, beginning with "Dies Irea" (otherwise known as that song from The Shining). It's interesting to note that one of the most terrifying composers Krzysztof Penderecki who's music was used in the Stanley Krubrick film also based an opera on the Devils of Loudun.

Nobodeee knoowwws the trouble I seeen...

Some of the horniest nuns ever led by Sister Jeanne (Vanessa Redgrave), a psychotic hunchbacked one all seem to worship Reed's character. Just the sight of him sends this freak into a spooky sexual fantasy of flowing red hair as they show her deformed naked spine bursting at the back. Everyone seems repressed and on the verge of a psychotic breakdown--it's all so tense! Grandier (Reed) is very pompous and acts like a megalomaniac, he's just impregnated a topless mime girl and with a mouth full of flowery words basically tells her to fuck off. He lays on some freezing dialogue like "hold my hand, it's like touching the dead", translation: "don't be hitting me up for child support you clown-faced ho." There's some foreshadowing that he ends up paying for later, can this dude help it though, that he's so disgustingly charming I mean? I'm sure all those birthers and bible thumpers probably carry the same kind of infatuation for Joel Osteen.

I know I'm a Juggalette and all but treat me with respect 

Hardly a minute goes by when there isn't something ghastly that bashes you over the head, like two medieval surgeons fucking up and killing a woman by way of wasp stings, crocodile bites and who knows what else in the guise of primitive medicine. Grandier is openly defiant, hated and lusted after by most of the population.

It's time to Crocodile Rock BITCHES!

The convent looks like a mental institution, which is definitely not accidental. I like how there's always a stray dog wandering around in the background in almost every other scene. All females in this movie are nursing a boner for Reed, he's the luckiest rooster struttin around and taking advantage--that sly dog. This movie and The Brood are my favorite roles of Reed's and he's pretty incredible in both, very intense and yet also irrationally calm. 

The nuns sexualizing Christ's pain on the cross reminds me of something Mel Gibson might have wet dreams about. There are many scenes in this movie that are hysterically disturbing, but it doesn't get to that Bill Maher level of religious hatred toward everything Godly like you'd imagine. It's very blasphemous, but I found an underlying current of positivity when Reed's priest character seems to actually have faith in his own interpretation of God. Even though Grandier is really slutty and sins, he still carries a humanist approach to religion and doesn't preach at people, or threaten them if they don't fall in line. He has many flaws, but is a decent leader. The first inkling that everything is about to go down the toilet at the hands of the Catholic transgendered mimes seen in the beginning, arrives with a Flintstones style demolition machine operated by slaves with bloody raw feet in a giant hamster wheel. There's so many incredible flashes of medieval weirdness that are on a Bergman level of cryptic. The depiction of 15 Century France is pretty disturbing and seemingly accurate of the rich shooting Protestants dressed as birds on the courtyard. Who knows, maybe they did that shit, I wouldn't put it past them, it's wilding entertaining and I love almost everything from this time period of witch burning. Ken Russell's film had to be influenced by Michael Reeves' Witchfinder General, since it came out a few years earlier but he claims to have not liked the Vincent Price film for some unknown reason.           

SPRING BREAK!!!!

Gemma Jones who plays Reed's wife Madeline, later on ended up in some Harry Potter films and this is her first role. I was delighted to find out that Graham Armitage who plays Louis XIII had a cameo in the horrid Cannon flick Going Bananas with Deep Roy as a talking ape. Think of that the next time you are terrified by the imagery of this film.

King Diamond was totally wrong though, "Nuns do have fun", these sisters bite on rosaries, put on mock weddings and hump statues, he's definitely not talking about this breed of cloth. I've never seen Vanessa Redgrave in anything else but she's captivating in this film and I dunno if it's just me and even though she's out of her mind, I sort of felt sorry for her. Her lustful obsession and jealously of Grandier's secret wedding with Madeline brings a shit storm of torture down on her head when she convinces the Catholic inquisitors that she's possessed. They start off by anally probing her (her robe is bloody and Ken Russell doesn't show anything going in thankfully).

One aspect I've never seen in a witch burning film shows that the priests have a shred of rationality before they unleash the pain train, this doesn't really mean anything though because once they get going, it never stops, they even pick through her barf for "evidence".       

The two creepy surgeons are my favorite characters, one of them looks like Christopher Guest when he played the 6 fingered man in The Princes Bride. One of the most unhinged male actors in the film who wears purple John Lennon type glasses through-out is Michael Gothard. the way he spits "CONFESS" at Oliver Reed's face and waves a torch at him like the Wicked Witch of the West makes you want to slap off his hippie hair. Sadly in reality, Gothard who suffered from severe depression, committed suicide at the age of 53.

Hold the phone, I think I left an Arby's beef and cheddar on the dashboard of my car

As Grandier and his bride ride off to the edge of the lake and take a nice vacation, some of the most perverted sacrilegious shenanigans get underway. What's even crazier is that all the insanity that goes on there's even a famous deleted scene that was cut (it's on Youtube however). Grandier should've never returned to the city because it's under siege by witch hunters and exorcists who basically use it as an excuse to whip up nuns into a sexual frustrat-athon and Caligula type debauchery rears its ugly ass. There's a perfect moment of levity that always sticks out in my mind when the executioner, who's the only person on Grandier's side, attempts to give him a slice of mercy by telling him "Don't worry, before the fire is lit, I shall strangle you".

before I tie you to that burning pyre can I interest you in taking an executioner survey

Sister humpback even feels guilty enough to try and convince the inquisition that she's made it up, but it's chalked up as evilspeak. I love this film and it's a crime that it's not available, someone get on the ball and release this shit already, in a world where The Green Inferno can play mainstream multiplexes this release should be mandatory. This is the film that all other nunsploits and witch burning flicks should be measured by and it doesn't get any creepier or masterful than this one--go out of your way to see it (if you can find a copy).