Underground Cinema | Buy at Underground Cinema | Review by Sinferno
As Monty Python once said: "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition," but in the case of this S+M exploitation flick from Underground Cinema the expectations were surpassed in every way. THE CHRONICLES OF THE INQUISITION is a seventeen volume set of S+M fetish detailing the exploits of poor women who undergo the cruel torment of torture masters in who delight in making them talk, admit their allegiance with the Devil. But first let me say, that whether or not, anyone admitted anything is still difficult to discern as the entire film is written in German with no alternate language track, but admittedly if there was a foreign language that I would be forced watch this sort of thing going down, German is perhaps the best choice as it's perhaps its the scariest dialect in existence. Moreover, screaming is a universal language all it's own and in this film it's spoken most fluently.
I am not going to provide a literal blow by blow account of the abuses of the women who were tortured with various blacksmith tools for the sake of plot and dark exposition in CHRONICLES. Not only does such detailed exposition really offer nothing to a compilation XXX title, but as mentioned before, I had no idea what was going on in any one scene yet I could always assume the torture masters wouldn't like the answers they were given every time they questioned a different female prisoner, causing them to respond with all kinds of torments and tools that would stretch, pinch and bind their victims in ever increasing cruel and unusual ways. Guess what? I have just given away the entire plot as I have told you nothing. In some ways I suppose this makes inquisition into kind of an obscene, sadistic pantomime. In other ways it gives you exactly what you wanted if you ever thought the love story, escape attempts, and sexual bargaining for favors in an unrated exploitation flick just took too much time away from the actual onscreen depictions of violence, punishment and torture of hapless innocent women. The action in this one is so cold, so relentless so dark it not only bests any torture sequences in any unrated film I have ever seen, it beats them bloody.
And yet oddly enough the blood is used sparingly, almost to the point of exclusion. Perhaps this is the dark beauty of Inquisition. While every other film in the genre seems to thrive on the same tired old technical stage trick of coating a stage whip with blood and striking a victim struck with it, thus leaving a bright red lash, the inquisition series actually thrives on subtle nuance. The soundtrack sounds like it was sung by Gregorian monks on a really bad day, the sets have ambient noise (such as the bleating of sheep in the barn) and the props themselves look like they were made hundreds of years ago, wielded by dirty, filthy men who look too authentically medieval to ever work at a modern Renaissance festival. All the actors are covered with filth, boils and the occasional sore; soft little touches that made the hard senseless abuses of the accused seem all the more real and horrible. There was even some CGI work when they branded one of the victims with a hot iron. Granted, it wasn't realistic and the visual effects seemed like something out of a 90's video game, but I applaud them from bringing some digital special effects to a genre (adult film) that sorely needed them.
Did I like it? One man's personal feelings say so little about a finished product, especially one as unique as this. Let's just say that if you regularly enjoy adult film where women "having a great rack" has nothing to with the size of her bosoms, you will delight in the awesome suffering of this. Good presentation, lots of abrasion, no copulation and yet all manner of violation through loveless forms of penetration. True S+M fetishists will proudly show this one off to their close circle of friends like a bruise on their butt.
| Yucko/Neato Factor: If harsh physical abuse makes your heart fawn. This will help you get your "bleak" on. |
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| Production Values: So gritty that the models even had random flies crawling on them. More brutal and realistic than many classic beloved exploitation movies from the seventies. Only the modern tattoos on the actresses themselves and a few glitches in the computer graphics kept it from getting perfect score here. |
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| Realism: The actual historical inquisition torments were much worse than this and had only an incidental sexual quality to them and often resulted in death. As I am not a fan of snuff films sometimes less is more. |
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| Value for Price: $70.00 is a lot of money, but remember this is an adult fetish film and you are paying by the pound, and the slap, and the lash... |
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| Plot: Compilation. Every scene had no connection to any other scene, but in it's defense I could understand nothing that was said throughout its duration except the word "Nein". Which is ironic enough as it that is roughly how many times per minute it is uttered. |
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