Behind Convent Walls (1977), Part 2 of 3: Into the Lower Depths

Previously on MMMMMovies:
Yesterday the Duke and I began our meticulous discussion of Walerian Borowczyk's infamous nunsploitation effort, Behind Convent Walls. (Click here to read Part I.) When we left our excellencies, we had just finished discussing a scene in which a near-unconscious Sister Clara is taken by the bare-bottomed cad Roderigo, in a long, lingering love (?) scene. Today we pick up where we left off in the transcription of the raw audio, with the Duke and the Vicar deeper in their cups and more free with their glee.

Today--the Capenter Nun's prize-winning project, a consideration of what makes nuns so darned sexy, and some completely tangential yet entirely appropriate Naschy love.

Warning: the even remotely religiously reverent should stop reading now and go to the 700 Club website or something. We'll all be happier.

Really. I'm not kidding.

Okay. You were warned!

PART TWO BEGINS HERE!

Religious Ecstasy

V: But Roderigo's questionable seduction of Clare is not the only explicit scene we had—I know you’re a big fan of the whittling girl.

D: Yes, yes.

V: What happens is, the Meat Man is outside, and he’s chopping wood—IYKWIM—and a piece of the kindling flies up, because he’s such a ramrod strong guy he could put his cock through a wall—

D: Everything is a metaphor in this movie.

V: Everything is innuendo.

D: There’s nothing left unturned; every scene has a purpose.

V: So he is chopping his log, as it were, and a piece of his wood flies up through the window, IYKWIM.

D: AITID!

V: And one of the nuns grabs the LONG, HARD piece of wood—

D: And thinks, “Oh my God! This could TOTALLY be a phallus!”

V: She gets a piece of glass to cut with, and then goes back to her room and whittles herself a dildo.

D: And this isn’t any normal dildo—we’re talking about a cucumber-esque, 3-inches in diameter wooden phallus. But the CAPPER, as it were, is a perfect rendition of the face of Christ on the base of the dildo!

"It's not what it looks like..."

V: The craftsmanship is really amazing.

D: I can just imagine the props guy for this movie. “Now what we need is a dildo.” “All right, I can carve a wooden dildo. I can knock one of those off in half an hour.” “But what we need on the base of it is, THIS!” And they hold up a picture of Jesus!

V: Our Lord and Savior.

D: Yes. I can imagine this guy back at his wood shop, carving Jesus into the base of a dildo, thinking, “Yep—it’s Hell for me!”

V: Especially an Italian guy!

D: Exactly! “There’s no escaping this—I might as well not even confess, because I’m just going straight to Hell!”

V: There’s no penance, for this.

D: “There’s no amount of Hail Marys or Our Fathers that could POSSIBLY make a difference now.”

V: Let’s go ahead and talk about the scene—because I know you want to—where the Christ Dildo gets put to use.

D: Oh, my god—not only do we get explicit penetration, but we get BLOOD. Which, I was like, “Holy fuck!”

V: Literally!

D: Not only are they showing this thing going into this nun, but there’s BLOOD on the thing…

V: She throws the thing into a basin of water, I believe, and there’s these clouds of blood rising…

Cleanliness is next to Godliness

D: And there’s some ON it, as it’s going…

[The Bar Wench returneth, a shocked look on her face]
BW: Something else?

D: You know, for some reason I really feel like some chili cheese fries.

BW: Um …okay. [she leaveth, in haste]

V: We did get a very explicit scene there, and it just went ON and ON. Not only was she using the Christ Cock in such a blasphemous and AWESOME way, but she was…it wasn’t enough for her to feel it—

D: Oh no no no! She had to see it, going into her! Through the ingenious use of a hand mirror, she watched in various positions. What killed me was, she watched for a while lying on her back, you know, and then, “Well, you know, I wanna get on my knees,” so she turns over, tries to look in the mirror, but she can’t really see what’s going on.

V: And that’s not gonna work.

D: So she keeps maneuvering around, trying to get the best view…of, basically, Christ fucking her. Which you’d WANT TO SEE, right?

V: I mean, you’ve GOTTA see that!

D: I mean, Christ is carved on the base for a reason! You want to know that it is in fact Jesus fucking you. And let’s be frank here--who doesn’t want to be fucked by Jesus?

V: I know *I* do.

D: Exactly! Sign me up! [laughs]

V: It’s a gift from God, really.

D: Just think what would take hold, from His seed spilled into your rectum. What unholy thing would spring forth!

V: [long pause] I…I just really don’t know where to go from there, man. You’ve rendered me speechless, and probably damned by association.

D: It’s a talent I have, and a curse.

V: Moving on... So later the Mother Superior comes in, and she discovers the Christ Cock—

D: And she wants to know what’s going on.

V: Yeah, “What *is* this thing?” Because she’s never seen anything like it, I mean, she’s never—

D: No, she wouldn’t have!

V: She’s never put anything in her cooch, her entire life.

D: Her cooter is dry as a bone.

V: So she asks the young nun, “What is this for? What were you doing right before I came in here?” And the killer for me is that the nun completely shows her! She’s like, “Well, okay, I was doing THIS! I was fucking myself with Jesus!”

D: “I think I got a splinter! But it was worth it!”

V: [laughs himself to damnation, takes another sip of his beer] God damn. The Avery Reverend is kicking my ass.

D: You can see why “feared by Satan” is on the label.

V: Talking of which, I was surprised that Satan didn’t show up in this movie.

D: Yeah, because usually there’s at least some kind of imagery, if nothing else.

V: Right. For instance in Malabimba…

D: THE MALICIOUS WHORE?

Ask for it by name

V: The same. She was…[distracted by shininess outside pub window] Okay, a hearse just went by.

D: Driven by what looked like Keith Richards. In fact, it may have been!

V: Keith Richards is actually dead, you know. It’s just that the drugs haven’t worked their way through his system yet. If he ever cleans up, he’s just going to disintegrate, like in the Poe story, "The Case of Msr. Waldemar"…

D: Right.

V: Or, not Waldemar, I’m thinking of Daninsky. Naschy—we can’t go through a session like this without Naschy coming up.

D: No—it’s been almost 30 minutes, without a Naschy reference. I think that’s a record.

V: I don’t know whether Naschy ever made a nunsploitation movie.

D: No, but he SHOULD have. Oh my god…

V: He’s still alive. There’s still time. He could direct one, *and* he could play Satan.

D: Agh…

V: For our readers, the Duke just made the “O” face.

D: I’d rather him play Satan, and it could be directed by Coffin Joe. Of course, that would be a world-ender.

V: Indeed—“starring Paul Naschy, directed by Jose Mojica Marins”…I mean, the Apocalypse would happen, right there. But it would be totally worth it.

D: I would watch it, and then kill myself.

V: Well, you would have to. Or maybe you couldn’t, because your eyes would be bleeding…

D: My brain would turn to mush, I’d let out a massive roar as I orgasmed into my robes, then I would expire.

V: It’s really a shame that Naschy and Mojica have not gotten together.

D: Yeah, it really is. Because that would be the perfect storm of awesome.

"The Horror! The Horror!"

V: I mean, I really—we’re getting afield of the topic, but I think we should record this for posterity—I really think that Naschy…you know I love Naschy. I mean, you know I would totally go gay for Naschy.

D: Oh yeah. Who wouldn’t?

V: Who wouldn’t, exactly. But I think that, as a director—Naschy, he’s got the childlike joy, he’s got the monsters, I love Paul Naschy. But I really think that Mojica is a better filmmaker.

D: Agreed. Naschy doesn’t have the depth of depravity that’s required to make the most truly unholy of films.

V: So if he were an actor in a movie written and directed by Jose Mojica Marins, then the world would have to end.

D: Exactly.

V: In my dream world, which is a much better world than the world we live in, that pairing would happen. Well, I guess we should get back to Behind Convent Walls…

D: Yes.

V: Now, there is a difference—we were talking about the Devil not showing up in this movie. There is a difference between nunsploitation movies in which—

D: I’m sorry, I have to pause here—I notice in the Vicar’s notes, he’s got in all-caps: “SWORD CANE!” [Laughs] That’s awesome.

V: Yes! The Mother Superior with the sword cane.

D: It’s so inexplicably awesome.

V: She’s stabbing through mattresses trying to find pornographic drawings…

D: It’s obviously the perfect device for a Mother Superior to have, but it’s the first time I’ve actually seen it put on film.

V: Now the Mother Superior meets a rather ignominious end, as she is poisoned with an overdose of opium from the drug-addled nun they have in there. They put opium in her tea, and for some reason it’s fatal.

D: It’s just a hot shot of opium.

V: And when she dies, it occasions one of the great scenes in the movie, because the nuns just completely FLIP OUT!

D: With absolutely no oversight.

[The Bar Wench returneth yet again]
BW: You guys doin’ all right?

D: Damn and blast your eyes, woman! Can’t you see we’re conversing here?

V: No, wait, my friend—I’d like to order a Xingu Lager.

BW: [pauseth] All right. [leaveth]

D: I apologize, but really, this insubordination among the help is inexcusable. [tents fingers, arches eyebrow] She must be punished.

V: Something tells me you were thinking of appropriate punishments well before her first transgression.

D: Some people are born needing punishment.

V: I think she arrived at her need sometime after puberty.

D: Let’s hope so, at any rate.

V: But moving on—when the Mother Superior’s death is announced in the convent, in a wild frenzy the nuns just dash out into the hallway, running naked up and down the corridors—as you do.

D: Except for the wimples! They always wear the wimples.

V: Now, we haven’t discussed why it is that nuns are so sexy. And I know that you, as a connoisseur of the nunsploitation genre, would have some thoughts on this subject.

D: Hmm. [strokes chin thoughtfully] What is it? The innocence? The defilement of the good? The thought that these nuns are cloistered away, obviously indulging in these kinds of things behind closed doors? It has a certain power over the imagination.

Lingerie, 1700s Style

V: Another of our favorite nunsploitation movies of course is Alucarda, which for me is still the pinnacle. But the more I think about Behind Convent Walls, the more awesome it seems to me. I mean, basically it’s your standard “Randy Nuns in the Convent” kind of thing, but you add the explicit Jesus dildo scene, you add the explicit sex, the oral sex with Clara—

[The Bar Wench returneth—setteth down the drinks, leaveth most hurriedly]

V: [looks after her suspiciously] You don’t think she’s spying, do you? I mean, for THEM?

D: The Inquisitors? They wouldn’t dare! Not after the rogering I gave the Grand Inq last time. There’s a reason they call him “Tuck-a-mata” now.

V: Anyway—you’ve got Veronica, who’s the sorority girl type here, she goes kind of crazy at the end and starts believing she’s got the stigmata because she’s hurt her hands on a crown of thorns made of roses, which I think is a brilliant image. There’s a lot of stuff with the roses and the thorns, with Veronica especially. She gets blood on her finger early on from a thorn during the Frolic in the Chapel, and she sucks the blood from her finger VERY suggestively.

D: And awesomely.

V: After she finds out that her aristocratic relatives have gone to America and she has no power because they’re away, she goes CRAZY. She starts feeling up a statue of the Virgin Mary, for instance.

D: Also awesome.

Beautimous.

V: The blasphemy in this flick is really off the charts.

D: That’s another thing I wanted to touch upon, because obviously this guy Walerian had a bone to pick with the Catholic church.

V: IYKWIM! It seems to be something with the Italians especially, which is no surprise. I mean, they’ve got the Vatican City right there in the middle of Rome.

D: So there’s nothing more taboo than banging a nun. PURE SHOCK CINEMA in Italy would obviously have to include the defilement of the Holy Roman Church.

V: Now at the very end, as in many of these movies, we have THE INQUISITION coming in.

D: Which no one expects.

V: I was *completely* caught off guard by that. The guy who comes in, though, the Bishop, he looks a lot like Jack Palance to me.

D: He does!

"I crap bigger than you!"

V: And his whole thing is, at the very end he makes this prayer to the Lord, and he prays that “Whatever happens in the convent…STAYS in the convent!”

D: Just like Vegas.

V: Exactly.

D: You know, I just wonder in the real world how much convent lesbianry the Vatican has had to cover up.

V: All of it, I’d imagine. But it would be an interesting anthropological study.

D: It would be. Because you know it’s going on. It *has* to go on.

V: Well, yeah. Perhaps…I don’t know—how much of our perception is affected by these movies, or how much do the movies reflect reality?

D: Yeah. I’m sure if we went over to Italy, and dug up some remote convent, it would be full of old crones.

V: Indeed. The whole “real-life lesbian” story is generally not nearly as alluring as it’s been portrayed on film.

D: I mean, that may go over in some circles, but it’s not *my* “Images in the Convent.”

V: Oh, there’s another great one, Images in a Convent. You can read that one on Mad Mad Mad Mad Movies. [belch] The readers should know that the Duke and I have been partaking in *very* high alcohol beer for quite a while now. I actually have a beer standing here I haven’t even touched.

D: I have some Reverend squeezin’s to get rid of.

V: Oooer! But we need to return to our favorite character, The Meat Man. Because he meets a rather ignominious fate as well.

D: Yes, his demise is much celebrated.

V: When the Mother Superior ends up dead, unfortunately for our Meat Man he was inside the convent, banging one of the nuns over a crate full of chickens.

D: Which is an image *everyone* needs to see!

V: So he’s trying to escape the convent while everybody is trying to figure out who killed the Mother Superior, and of course *he* gets blamed, unjustly. He’s chased down by the villagers, and I believe he’s killed at that point, or if not he’s at least beaten very severely. And really all he wanted was to get his meat into the convent.

D: He just wanted to work his joint.

V: Put a hole through the wall. Bang a few nuns. And who among us hasn’t had similar thoughts?

Feeling Dirty Yet?

Thanks and thanks again to Tenebrous Kate for providing the copy of the film that both the Duke and the Vicar devoured with much rapacious hunger! And tune in tomorrow for the third and final installment in this, the longest review ever on MMMMMovies. Please read! Otherwise we will have been banned from our favorite pub in vain!

Click here to read Part I of the Behind Convent Walls double-team!
Click here for Part III, the FINAL CHAPTER!