joseceles What led me to watch this film was the deceptive link it affects to have with the mysterious and hitherto debated origin of a series of letters written by a Portuguese nun from Beja in the Alentejo region, Mariana Acoforado, to her French lover Marquis De Chamilly. The original letters have been lost but they circulated in translations into several languages and were even published anonymously in Paris in 1669. Mariana's letters became synonymous with ardent love and passion, qualities attributed to Portuguese women for a certain time in those European countries where the letters were being read, with morbid curiosity no doubt. But the title is the only thing Jess Franco, the film's director, manages to salvage from what is otherwise a fascinating and mysterious relationship between a military man of aristocratic origins and the daughter of a well-to-do Portuguese gentleman who was placed in a convent at the early age of 11; her father's intentions were to assure her safety during the turbulent years of the Portuguese Restoration Wars (1663-68). This sad story of seduction and abandonment has its fruit in a literary genre of the letter. Franco's film could not possibly have strayed any further from the original tale of love gone wrong. Had the film industry existed during the time of the Reformation, the film would have been an excellent pamphlet of anti-Catholic propaganda. The film is a German production which somehow corroborates my suspicions that it could well be aimed at perpetuating a number of clichés concerning convents. We don't have secret tunnels connecting convents to the priest's residences; according to one of the clichés, skeletons of babies had due to illicit intercourse between priests and nuns littered these tunnels hidden from the eyes of the God-fearing populace. However, Franco's film presents us with an evil priest/confessor at a convent who obliges through lies to have a 15-year old girl, Maria Rosalea, put into the custody of nuns who turn out to be lesbian devil-worshipers whose plans for the little girl are mating her to the very devil himself during a nocturnal ceremony at which the rest of the community of nuns, dressed or rather undressed in cutaway habits receive the devil with frantic baring of their breasts while obscenely rubbing themselves with their wooden crucifixes and smacking their lips in sexual anticipation, avid to take the poor victim's place should Satan so require of them. As this does not happen they turn to one another for sexual solace. The priest had already been seen masturbating while listening to Mariana's confession. Later he forces her to give him head. He doesn't actually dare deflower her as her virginity is destined as an offering for the prince of darkness. Just in case anyone is wondering, the Inquisition makes its inevitable appearance in a confusion of events. While winding its ludicrous way towards the end the film suddenly changes genre. What seems destined to become a tragic ending with our innocent Mariana burnt at the stake, undergoes an unexpected turnabout and our heroine is saved by none other than the prince; a fit ending to a fairy tale. Had I not decided from the outset of the film that I would write a few lines for IMDb, I would not have been able to watch it till the end. If not the worst movie I've ever seen, it certainly occupies a very high place in the list.

BRENDAN The plot of the movie, involving a girl being forced into a convent that was really run by Satanists was intriguing, and persuaded me to watch this (a decision I would come to regret). What sounded like it could be an interesting Nunsploitation/Witch hunting move instead turned out to be the worst example of either of those genres I have yet to see. The bulk of the movie consists of a bunch of vaguely connected scenes in the convent, some of them involving the so called satanic rituals, which were less than shocking to put it mildly. There is a fair amount of nudity, but don't expect anything even remotely erotic, all it does is make the movie seem progressively more and more sleazy (Not that sleaziness is necessarily a problem). The movie progresses at a glacial pace, and remains very uninteresting despite the potential of the subject matter. The trial sequence is very brief, and does not manage to capture any of the madness of such proceedings anywhere near the effectiveness of other witch-hunting movies. The ludicrously happy ending feels as though as they tacked it on at the last minute. All in all, it felt as though it was going through the motions of what a nunsploit/witch movie was supposed to be, but had nothing of its own to add.The only thing that saved this movie from a 1/10 is the surprisingly decent production values and locations. (Although I doubt anyone but the medieval super-rich could have afforded to live in such splendor relative to what was common at the time.) 2/10

Michael_Elliott Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun (1977) *** 1/2 (out of 4)Fifteen-year-old Maria (Susan Hemingway) is caught by Father Vicente (William Berger) playing with her boyfriend in an innocent manor. The Father tells the girl's mother that she is possessed by Satan so the mother turns her over to a convent. Once there the girl realized that the Father as well as the main mother (Aida Vargas) are in pact with Satan and plan on turning her over to him. This isn't your typical nunsploitation film because it actually has a very strong message bashing the Catholic Church. A lot of these films are just out there to see lesbian nuns mess around and while we do get some of that here, the sexuality isn't the main goal. Franco is certainly trying to show the evils behind the walls of Catholic priests and this subject matter is certainly going to offend a lot of people just like it did when the film was originally released but after all the stories from the past five years it's easy to say this film and Franco were ahead of their time. Both Berger and Vargas turn in very strong performances and truly nasty ones as well. The entire film belongs to Hemingway who is simply brilliant here. Hemingway made a total of seven films in her career and all of them were with Franco, which I've watched six of. She's certainly a very good actress and it's a shame she got out of the business or was dumped by Franco but I've yet to hear any stories about what happened to her. She was around 15-years-old when she made this film so the scenes of her naked or being raped are going to turn a lot of people off but I think it brings a realistic nature to her performance as well as the film. There's nothing hardcore here but the scene where she is offered up to Satan is pretty disturbing. It appears Franco was working on a larger than normal budget here and he manages to turn over a very good looking film with some nice cinematography as well as a great music score. Franco has made a lot of exploitation films in his career but this isn't one of them. The message of the film is quite clear and very strong and in the end this ranks as one of the director's best films.

The_Void Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun is a surprisingly professionally made movie from the king of sleaze, Jess Franco. Usually with Franco, you can count on a very thin plot and loads of sex (usually involving lesbians), but this time it's the other way round. Of course, there's still lots of room for sex (no need to worry, Franco fans) but it's definitely a secondary element to the plot. This film fits into the corner of the horror genre known as 'nunsploitation'. This is my first ever taste of nunsploitation, so I cant comment on the niche on the whole; but if it turns out to be as interesting as it's title, it should be pretty good! This film follows Maria, a sixteen year old girl that is forced into a convent after the convent's leader manipulates her mother into thinking she's in league with the devil and destined for Hell. However, this isn't a Christian convent and rather than worshipping God, these guys are actually a band of Satanists! After being forced to perform sinful acts with various members of the convent (including the Dark Prince himself...), Maria tries to escape the convent.The message in this film is actually rather potent, and it exposes the hypocrisy of religion and, more specifically; the Christian church. The film manages to go even further than that too, with the idea of a sex scandal being pretty much timeless. Sex scandals are still a big part of our society's news stories, and I'm sure that they will continue to be; which gives this film an element of immortality where it's plot is concerned. The sex scenes are surprisingly brief, which is very surprising after watching the likes of Vampyros Lesbos and Bare Breasted Countess. The photography is smooth and nice to look at, leading me to believe that Jess Franco actually wanted to make a film, rather than just another of his usual quickies. Jess Franco made a lot of films over his career, a lot of which are forgettable rubbish; but this film hints that the man may have a lot more talent than his list of directorial credits suggests. Despite some silly sequences (such the Devil love making scene), this film is professionally handled and just well done on the whole. Maybe if Franco had put more effort into the quality of his films rather than the quantity, he would have a few masterpieces under his belt.