Inquisicion

Paul Naschy, Spain’s ultimate horror star, did another genre dip in this mixture of Witchfinder General and Ken Russell’s The Devils. Naschy plays a witchfinder general who arrives to a new village, where he does his witch-hunting job and falls in love with Catherine, one of the daughters of the friend he is staying with. It mixes all these archetypes from witch-burning movies, and ups them up a notch by making it the sleaziest and most perverse I’ve seen so far. Seriously, it makes Mark Of The Devil look like a Universal picture, and there’s more bush in this film than I have on my head.

Still, I was surprised that it lacked gore, even though it delivers on the torture and sex. Even with all the madness going on, however, are some memorable scenes. When Catherine joins the Satanic cult, looking like a parody of the Last Supper with a goat-looking Satan in the place of Christ, looks like something out of an LSD trip. Then there’s a very WTF moment when a nipple gets ripped off that had me holding mine in cringing pain. It reminded me of the moment where the same thing happens in Ichi The Killer. All in all, one of the best in the witchfinder films, and one of Paul Naschy’s most memorable films.