In fact, compared to other films within the genre, the real joy of Satánico Pandemonium is found in the uneasy balance it strikes between mainstream drama and grindhouse tomfoolery. Certainly, Solares and co-writers Jorge Barragán (also producer) and Adolfo Martínez Solares (the director’s son).
In his ode to the nunsploitation genre, Anticristo: The Bible of Nasty Nun Sinema & Culture (FAB Press, 2000), author Steve Fentone also compares it to an even older source – Matthew Gregory Lewis’ 1796 gothic novel The Monk, which has inspired a number of films, plays, novels, and comic books. Gilberto Martínez Solares’ Satánico Pandemonium (aka: La Sexorcista, shot in 1973 and released in 1975) neatly represents this combination of smut and art, taking considerable cues from the colorful psychosexual melodrama of Black Narcissus. At least as long as they weren’t taking their cues from Nazisploitation movies and borrowing the Women in Prison (WIP) model, and trading sado-masochistic prison guards for sado-masochistic Padres or, in this case, the Devil himself. While they were obviously created to shock and incense exploitation-thirsty audiences, they tended to be elegant in their obscenity. These films gave the first couple decades of nunsploitation output something aesthetically impressive to aspire to. I assume this is because the genre has its basis in two genuinely great and celebrated motion pictures – Ken Russell’s aforementioned The Devils and, less obviously, Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger’s Black Narcissus (1947, based on Rumer Godden’s 1939 novel). Given its subject matter, one might assume that nunsploitation would be the most salacious of the exploitation subgenres, aside from the ever-grotesque Nazisploitation, but, on average, there might actually be more artistically laudable entries than gutter trash quickies.
SATANICO PANDEMONIUM MOVIE SERIES
In the film world, naughty nuns have existed since the silent era, when Benjamin Christensen’s occult pseudo-documentary Häxan (1922) portrayed a series of sinful sister activities, but it wasn’t until Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971, based on Aldous Huxley’s The Devils of Loudun and John Whiting’s stage play The Devils ) shocked censors and titillated international audiences that the concept of nunsploitation took off.
SATANICO PANDEMONIUM MOVIE MOVIE
And even though this movie lacks the explicitness seen in other notorious nunsploitation films, I still consider Satanico Pandemonium to be an excellent introduction into nunsploitation.Perverted, possessed, and/or evil nun stories have likely been around as long as Catholic women have donned the habit and pledged themselves to God. Though the movie ends with the kind of twist that I usually hate to see in movies, here, it's used to a satisfying effect resulting in a proper conclusion. Now realizing that there will soon be no escape for her, she is confronted by Luzbel who tells her that the inquisition will torture and kill her if she does not give in to him. The encounter between the two goes awry and Maria is now held accountable for a double murder. Her path to darkness continues when she purposely leaves the convent to search for Marcello for love. Including taking part in the assistance of a suicide of another nun. Now with sinful sex on her mind, Maria is led into more evil deeds. In a hallucination, the nun is revealed to be male stranger, who tells her his name, "Luzbel". But all this seems to do is invite more of the devil's temptation, which leads into a sexual encounter with a fellow nun. Now feeling that Satan is in her life, Maria begins to conitinously pray and whip herself. To make matters worse, she later recieves a lesson on the disguises that the devil often takes and what the signs are if he is in your presence. Maria, once again, flees in horror.īack in the convent, Maria can not seem to escape the image of the man offering the apple in her mind.
While exchanging warm words with each other, the conversation is interrupted by the stranger (Now clothed) who offers Maria an apple the same exact way Satan did to Eve. She later sees a familiar face belonging to Marcello, a teenager who lives nearby with his grandmother. Maria flees in horror and prays for forgiveness. Sister Maria soon gets a shocking surprise when she sees a naked man (Enrique Rocha) give her a greeting. In what looks to be 18th or 17th Century Mexico, A convent set in a countryside has one of it's nuns, Sister Maria (Cecilia Pezet) peacefully out in the woods, searching for flowers to bring back to the convent.
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