Carmella (Eleonora Giorgi from Inferno) is a young, innocent girl just about to get married to a rich landlord, but instead has a loveaffair with a boy her age named Julian. When their secret is revealed Carmella is forced by her father to join a convent in order to become a nun in the service of our Lord. After spending thirty horrible days in a cold cell in a "cleaning process", forced to read the Bible six times a day, shit in a cup and lie on the cold floor moaning lines like "I'm nothing, reduced to nothing!", Carmella is then introduced to the rest of the Sisters. Soon she becomes close friend with Sister Elizabeth (Catherine Spaak from Cat O'Nine Tails) who in turn falls in love with the newcomer. So far so good. The real problem begins when the hypocrite Mother Superior (Suzy Kendall) also becomes obssessed with Carmella. "I do love God, but it doesn't erase the fact that I have feelings for another human being" she cries at one point, which, of course, justifies a few more scenes of gratuitous nudity. One day Carmella's boyfriend Julian comes to visit and Elizabeth doesn't plan to lose the love of Carmella...

Not much to get offended by here, but this viewer was, knock on wood, nevertheless glued to the damn TV-set for ninetysix minutes. Veteran director Paolella is not one of the more widely known names outside his home country, despite the fact that he began his career around the same time as Mario Bava. Guns of the Black Witch and Women Prisoners of the Devil's Island were both made as early as in 1961. Without being pretentious Paolella here manages, perhaps unintentionally, not to fall into the trap of doing some cheap exploitation. Instead he focuses of the emotional bound between women in general as well as managing to create characters that one could feel for thanks to likeable leads. Eleonora Giorgi is especially believable as Carmella and the sparkling performance by redheaded Catherine Spaak (who has done this before in Luciano Salce's Little Nuns) is nothing less than spellbinding. Even Suzy Kendall is good, even though she's overacting, as Mother Superior, a role far removed from the usual bimbos she used to play in The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and Torso. The script by Paolella and producer Tonino Cervi may be a little bit thin in places and some scenes are dangerously close to being pompous and hillarious. Especially the one where all the nuns, eager to protect Carmella, claims responsibility to her newly born child. Or when they get dressed up in beautiful clothes and party all night. But the film is still an admirable piece of lesbian melodrama and one of the very best examples of the genre. Observant viewers can find among the impressive cast pigugly Martine Brochard who also starred in the previous The Nuns of Saint Arcangel. Paola Senatore also had the lead in Joe D'Amato's naughty Images in an Convent and was of course eaten alive in Eaten Alive. As for a final judgement upon this film, if you can stand a film that in most video-guides is categorized as a drama, then you are recommended to pick this one up.

© The Inzomniac's Movie Madness Review.