Skip over navigation

Gifts  |   Help   |   Sign in

Story of a Cloistered Nun (1973) Certificate 18

Story of a Cloistered Nun

Sign up

Rated 1.5 stars
Average rating
(33%)
 
Starring: Catherine Spaak | Suzy Kendall | Eleonora Giorgi | Martine Brochard | Umberto Orsini
Director: Domenico Paolella
Studio: ARGENT FILMS LTD
Run time: 94 mins
Genres: Drama | World Cinema
Languages: Italian
Subtitles: English
Released: November 16, 2009

In this companion piece to his NUN AND THE DEVIL, director Domenico Paolella refines the genre, often imitated but never equaled, which denotes both the origin of Nunsploitation cinema and its artistic peak.

Eleonora Giorgi (Argento’s INFERNO) gives a powerful performance as Carmela, a young aristocrat who refuses an arranged marriage and is sent to a convent. Her arrival intensifies the power struggle between the decadent nun Elizabeth (Catherine Spaak, Argento’s CAT O’NINE TAILS) whose influential family maintain her debauched Sapphic lifestyle inside the cloister, and the stern but evil Mother Superior (Suzy Kendall – Argento’s BIRD WITH CRYSTAL PLUMAGE) as both women are smitten by Carmela’s beauty.

Highest rated reviews

8 out of 8 people found the following review helpful:

Rated 3.0 stars
Not brillant....but not that bad

benedictus2 from , 5th December, 2009

I'm surprised at the almost uniform one star reviews for this film, a lot of people must have been expecting something different. It's not great, but far from being as terrible as you might be led to believe. Purportedly based on a true story, a young aristocrat (Eleonora Giorgi) is sent to a convent for refusing an arranged marriage by her parents. There she encounters predatory bisexual Sister Elizabeth (Catherine Spaak), and the Mother Superior desperate for emotional warmth (Suzy Kendall). Apart from a gratuitous nude flogging scene, there's little here to justify the 'nunsploitation' tag, most of the film has a suitably repressed, austere medieavel feel. Ignoring the occasional overacting, there are also some memorable sequences, such as S. Elizabeth being forced to lick the floor of a room from one side to the other as punishment.

Read all highest rated reviews

Rated 3.0 stars
No Moral Danger

FrankIV from , 12th July, 2010

This treads a well-worn path with no cliche left untouched, but it is lifted by its visual quality as, in scene after scene, the costumes, sets, colour photography and, especially, lighting serve up something worth looking at. As for the rest, it's mostly business as usual, but in a very sombre tone, and, despite some gorgeous nuns engaged at intervals in nun-on-nun action plus a little light sadism, I found myself, disappointingly, in no moral danger at all.

Read all highest rated reviews

Check out...

Subscribers who liked this DVD also liked...

Venus In Furs
Venus In Furs

Le Paltoquet
Le Paltoquet

Fanny Hill
Fanny Hill