(1960)
Dir - Roger Vadim
Overall: MEH
Rober Vadim's Blood and Roses, (Et mourir de plaisir, All Die of Pleasure), was not the first or last cinematic interpretation of Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla, but it was the first in color and the first to make its lesbian story components more prominent. Vadim and cinematographer Claude Renoir shoot Italy's Hadrian's Villa beautifully, briefly and memorably even indulging in an artsy dream sequence near the end that mixes black and white photography with bright, blood-red Technicolor and people swimming upside down outside of windows or something. Sadly, the movie is flat-lined by dispassionate performances, most of all from the lead and Vadim's wife Annette Strøyberg who is about as emotive as a dry erase board. It also does not bask in enough atmospheric, vampiric moments, outside of a small handful of superstitious townsfolk scenes right out of a cliche book. While it is the most sexually awoken version of the source material then filmed and not that it needs to cross over into exploitation territory, it nevertheless lingers in a sort of awkward form that is too tame and pretentious in place of being perhaps more graphic.
MOTHER JOAN OF THE ANGELS
(1961)
Dir - Jerzy Kawalerowicz
Overall: GREAT
A logical contender for the first unequivocal nunsploitation film, Jarzy Kawalerowicz' Mother Joan of the Angels, (Matka Joanna od Aniołów, The Devil and the Nun), is a rather masterfully made, evocative look at human adversity. As one of the prominent members of the Polish Film School, Kawalerowicz uses the historical backdrop of the Loudun possessions and Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz' novella about the same, examining the voluntary struggling of a severely humbled priest and a willingly possessed abbess. Characters frequently stare directly into the camera and exhibit behavior that is conflicting with the positions that they are desperately struggling to uphold, raising questions for the viewer about dual human nature and perhaps the alluring need to self-torment. Completely void of incidental music, much of the film plays startlingly quiet, but the sounds that are utilized, (such as church bells, self-flagellation, whispered prayers, and one character singing a song about preferring to be a nun over being an abused house wife), speak volumes as to the symbolic nature of the story. It would primarily take Ken Russell's The Devils, (which was also based on the Loudun possessions), to more heavily influence the exploitative, golden age of nunsploitation, but the genre's origins here were far more metaphorically challenging and in many ways more rewarding.
(1961)
Dir - Jerzy Kawalerowicz
Overall: GREAT
A logical contender for the first unequivocal nunsploitation film, Jarzy Kawalerowicz' Mother Joan of the Angels, (Matka Joanna od Aniołów, The Devil and the Nun), is a rather masterfully made, evocative look at human adversity. As one of the prominent members of the Polish Film School, Kawalerowicz uses the historical backdrop of the Loudun possessions and Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz' novella about the same, examining the voluntary struggling of a severely humbled priest and a willingly possessed abbess. Characters frequently stare directly into the camera and exhibit behavior that is conflicting with the positions that they are desperately struggling to uphold, raising questions for the viewer about dual human nature and perhaps the alluring need to self-torment. Completely void of incidental music, much of the film plays startlingly quiet, but the sounds that are utilized, (such as church bells, self-flagellation, whispered prayers, and one character singing a song about preferring to be a nun over being an abused house wife), speak volumes as to the symbolic nature of the story. It would primarily take Ken Russell's The Devils, (which was also based on the Loudun possessions), to more heavily influence the exploitative, golden age of nunsploitation, but the genre's origins here were far more metaphorically challenging and in many ways more rewarding.
(1969)
Dir - David Cronenberg
Overall: MEH
After making two short films while gaining his bachelor degree of arts at the University of Toronto, David Cronenberg took on his first full-length project with Stereo. Shot without sound at that same university and in black and white with a rented Arriflex 35 camera, it is a typical arthouse debut in most respects. There is no dialog, only a series of narrations in the form of a faux educational film that concerns telepathic subjects who undergo an experiment by an unseen doctor. Cronenberg's first leading man Ronald Mlodzik is on board, but his is the only recognizable face and the actors serve more as props than actual characters anyway due to the avant-garde presentation. Ambitious and pretentious yet done on a shoestring budget of course, Cronenberg handles every level of production and his photographic eye still comes off sharp, making use out of sparse, contemporary scenery that manages to have a mysterious and futuristic slant under such a cold atmosphere. Sadly, the narrative is uninteresting and takes itself too seriously, causing the movie to feel much longer than its mere sixty-five minute running time. It is interesting though that even at the onset of his career here, Cronenberg was already examining human evolution, just on low-scale and psychic means instead of in body horror form.
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