This is the first video in a planned series on nunsploitation cinema. One of the most notorious and mischaracterized subgenres of exploitation film, nunsploitation movies offer complex and provocative treatments of themes like desire, taboo, and transgression.
For many years I was not a fan of these movies. The reason for this, I discovered a few years ago, was that I just wasn’t digging deep enough. Once I expanded my research, I discovered that these are some of the most fascinating exploitation films ever made.
This first video introduces nunsploitation film generally, identifying its key themes and characteristics, and also discussing the genre’s literary tradition and emergence in the late 1960s.
The remainder of this video provides an analysis of Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971).
Timestamps:
0:00 - Definitions, key themes, and essential features
2:24 - Cultural history of the naughty nun as medieval trope
4:39 - connections to the Marquis de Sade
6:16 - proto-nunsploitation in film history: Angels of Sin (1943); Black Narcissus (1947); The Nun (1966)
8:22 - conditions for the emergence of nunsploitation proper: Vatican II, Italian film industry, and The Lady of Monza aka The Awful Story of the Nun of Monza (1969)
11:03 - Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971) as the foundation and epitome of nunsploitation
21:22 - Conclusion
Future entries in this series will explore individual films in more depth. For those that would like to “read ahead,” the next part of the series will cover the following, which are four movies that I think represent some of the very best of the genre:
Story of a Cloistered Nun (1973)
Satanic Pandemonium (1975)
Alucarda (1977)
Killer Nun (1979)
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