INQUISITION (1976)

Diving back into the bootleg pile I come up with a Naschy film again. INQUISITION is pretty typical of the Naschy scripted period horrors of the 70s and this one was also directed by Mr. Molina. They don’t call him Triple Threat for nothing! (Actually I’m the only one that calls him that but….)

Taking a page (or two) from WITCHFINDER GENERAL Naschy plays Inquisitor Bernard de Fossey in 16th century France rooting out witches and devil worshippers. He sets up shop in a small village and takes up residence in the local Lords castle. Working off hearsay and the standard religious self-righteousness he and his men start torturing confessions out of suspects and then publicly burning them. Nashcy’s host is a very progressive middle aged man who doesn’t believe that any of the poor folks imprisoned and killed are really in league with Satan, but he wisely keeps his opinion to himself as the carnage continues. The fellow has two lovely daughters and soon enough Nashcy has his eye on the younger one named Catherine (Daniela Giordano). And after her fiancée is killed on the road Naschy begins to press her father to become both sisters guardian. But Catherine is troubled by dreams that seem to indicate that someone paid bandits to kill her lover. She becomes obsessed with discovering who ordered his death and is even willing to sale her soul to find out.

I enjoyed this one quite a bit. It has the usual lazy/sloppy scripting I expect from Naschy where we are ham handedly told things we’d be much better off seeing. So often in his stories plot developments are introduced so clumsily that it often seems as if scenes were removed and stilted dialog was substituted to cover up. But this is part of the charm of these movies for me along with the sometimes terrible dubbing, sex and violence!

On the violence front there are some real shockers. Some real MARK OF THE DEVIL style sadism is on display but I was very surprised by the nipple removal scene! I must say that was one realistic looking nipple and having it pulled off the breast in close up was impressive. And sickening. Stack this one up there with the BURIAL GROUND breast munch scene for shocks.

Which leads us to the nudity and boy is there plenty of it! Lots of shots of very attractive ladies in various states of undress with my favorite being a completely pointless skinny dipping sequence. Of course all the women who are tortured are lookers (no ugly witches?) but I was disappointed that the lovely Julia Saly never showed any skin. Playing Catherine’s sister she shines as the more attractive of the two and she is one beautiful lady. I’d have given up seeing any other five girls here for a few seconds of her. I know she was in a few more Naschy films but I’ve not seen them yet. Time to break them out!

So overall I give this one a 6/10 and recommend it to fans for the star. Those looking for a variation on MARK OF THE DEVIL might enjoy it as well even with the standard Naschy romance subplot. Plus you get to see him play Satan himself in a couple of Catherine’s nightmares! The 1970’s were a good time to be Paul Naschy.