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14 out of 16 people found the following review useful: OTT Lesbian Japanese Nunsploitation Masterpiece, 14 November 2005 Author: Scott_from_Modesto (danofthedead80@yahoo.com) from Bear, Delaware
Just picked this film up yesterday and it's a keeper. Cult Epics has put out another fine DVD from a lovely print.Gotta say that, like many Asian films, this Japanese exploitationer tries hard to be un-PC and does it very well. But it does it so lightly that you have to admit it's pretty damn fun. Some people will be put off by the blasphemy, but if you're like me, it's the movie's biggest turn on.School of the Holy Beast is more exploitation than horror liberally peppered with an astonishing level of violence and bloodspray and the fact is that it plays out like a very sleazy giallo. I don't know too much about nunsploitation so let me make that known right off the bat. If they're all as good as this one, though, I'll have to check some more out.So the story kicks off by having Maya, the main character, living it up and getting drilled by an anonymous man on the day before she enters a convent. Now, it's illustrated over and again that nuns are sexually-repressed deviants who are driven to self-flagellate (topless, before the other nuns) for having impure thoughts. And if they don't police themselves, no worries, cuz the other nuns have no problem punishing one of their own for any sin. Most of their sins, btw, are sexual. You can see where this film is going.As soon as Maya shows up at the convent, many of the junior nuns keep getting ratted out and punished. And boy, they sure don't like that. Rebellious nun Ishida confronts and clashes with Maya on several occasions, but the rat-outs persist. The entire run time of this film is devoted to the perverted goings-on of the nuns, including the vice abbess, as well as revealing the hidden motives of Maya and some of the higher-ups in the convent. I don't want to spoil any of the goodness for you. I can only say, go get this bad boy. It's trash of the most exquisite variety. And I have to mention that every perverted set-piece this movie employs is better than the one before. I give this film my highest recommendation.
12 out of 14 people found the following review useful: Nunsploitation from Japan, 3 October 2000 Author: white pongo (wap@nyc.odn.ne.jp) from tokyo japan
Movies involving suppressed sexual desires in a convent erupting into violence/rape/bizarre sexual behaviour (y'now,like THE DEVILS) are usually of European origin.But this cracker from Japan is one of the best of it's kind.It has some of the most disturbing yet hauntingly beautiful scenes of blasphemy i've ever seen.It has been screened in English as CONVENT OF THE SACRED BEAST,but i'm not sure how you'd track it down.But if you can,it's well worth seeing.
8 out of 8 people found the following review useful: Wonderful Japanese nunsploitation flick., 16 March 2006 Author: HumanoidOfFlesh from Chyby, Poland
When a young woman named Maya(Yumi Takigawa)decides to investigate her mother's death by entering a convent school,she discovers a horrific den of pleasure and sadomasochistic activities.Encounters with a randy archbishop and a lesbian mother superior lead to episodes of torture,which include the poor girl being bound topless by thorny vines and beaten with long-stemmed roses.Norifumi Suzuki's "School of the Holy Beast" is a chock full of sleaze,violence and blasphemy.Still the film is visually stunning and the use of colors is execellent.The script pulls no punches in criticizing the hypocrisy of the Catholic church.The story is interesting,the nudity is expicit and there is plenty of symbolism.Overall,I enjoyed this film very much and you should too,if you are a fan of sleazy nunsploitation sub-genre.9 out of 10.
8 out of 9 people found the following review useful: The absolute best of the genre, 15 October 2006 Author: asgardsrei1 from Deutschland
Norifumi Suzuki's "School of the Holy Beast" is a masterpiece in it's own right. This film about a girls journey into depravity is one of the most erotic films I have ever seen. With each new scene, it gets more beautiful, like an exotic, poisonous flower opening to reveal it's center. Filled with breathtaking color and endless mystery, this is the first film i have seen featuring the amazing actress Yumi Takigawa. She plays her part of Maya with a delicate and subtle perfection rarely seen in this genre of film. Maya is a modern Japanese woman, who enters the "Sacred Heart", a convent shrouded in lies, hypocrisy and sexual power games. It seems as if everyone has something to hide. This film seems to be a direct attack on the Catholic church. The beginning of the film is a bit deceptive, as we are led to believe that there will not be much in the way of a real story here. But when we find out the reason why the beautiful Maya has entered this place, the tension begins to mount. To hear certain people referring to these films as trash, and exploitation, saddens me greatly, as it is so undeserved here. This film is top-notch in every way. The camera work, the editing, the beautiful, dreamlike cinematography, is far superior to anything coming out of Hollywood these days. Sadly, this style of film making is a thing of the past. We are fortunate however, with the advent of DVD technology, that these little-known 1970's masterpieces are again available. One of the classiest, and most elegant Japanese "pink" films ever made. I give this one the highest rating.
9 out of 11 people found the following review useful: Artistic even though it mixes sexploitation with Sade-like comments on the hypocrisy of Christianity, 5 February 2005 Author: Chris Docker (eyeforfilm) from Scotland, United Kingdom
School of the Holy Beast is a weird concoction of exploitation who's very unusualness makes it worth watching. A girl enjoys her last night of freedom before entering a convent. The convent, of course, turns out to be a hotbed of immorality that de Sade might have scripted. Expect plenty of flagellation, lesbian trysts, and displaying of breasts – all in a style that crosses Hammer Horror with Russ Meyer mammary voyeurism. But throw in a script that plays hard and loose with Christianity in a way that only a foreign country could and it starts to appeal for its sheer audacity. I found the scene of one of the nun's punishment - being tied with rose briers and then whipped with bunches of red roses particularly aesthetically pleasing.
5 out of 5 people found the following review useful: Nunsploitation at its best!!!, 30 September 2005 Author: mondo_schizo from North Carolina
Filled with violence, sex, and some downright gorgeous scenes of blasphemy, Norifumi Suzuki's 'School of the Holy Beast' is probably the best slice of nunsploitation I've seen so far, surpassing even my beloved 'Alucarda'.The film begins with a title sequence in which we see our leading lady, Yumi Takigawa (who oddly enough plays a character similarly named Maya Takigawa) gallivanting throughout the city, taking in a hockey game and later meeting a complete stranger whom she has fun with and later makes love to. The reason for all of this, as she tells her new found friend, is that the next day she's going to a place "where women are not women". The following day, we find Maya in a convent, where she is stripped down in front of all the sisters as she makes her Holy vows to God and is then given her white veil. The story quickly begins to form as we find out that she's not there because of any desire to serve God, but rather to find out exactly what happened to her Mother, who died there 18 years prior. What happens thereafter are some of the most artfully directed scenes of lesbian love, whippings, fights and absurd blasphemy your ever likely to see, all ending with a sinfully sweet climax. It doesn't hurt that this is all enhanced by some absolutely beautiful music either. The entire production here is top-notch, and just simply couldn't be any better. Norifumi Suzuki should be very proud.Highly recommended to all fans of exploitation!
3 out of 3 people found the following review useful: Japanese Nuns, 26 February 2008 Author: Michael_Elliott from Louisville, KY
School of the Holy Beast (1974) *** (out of 4) Notorious Japanese nunsploitation film from director Norifumi Suzuki has a simple storyline but borrows heavily from the Euro erotic genre. A rebellious woman enters a convent so she can learn the truth behind her mother's death eighteen years earlier. Her rebel attitude doesn't sit too well with the higher up nuns who aren't afraid to resort to torture by whip. The first half of the film is mostly an erotic movie and I'm not going to lie, Japanese women are quite sexy so the erotic nature of the film worked for me. Japan censorship laws were pretty heavy back in the day so the director comes up with a couple very good scenes to get his point across without having to resort to hardcore scenes, ala Euro flicks. There's an oral sex scene, which isn't shown how you'd expect but it's highly erotic and gets its sexuality across better than most Euro films of this genre. The second half of the film slows down quite a bit as the "mystery" surrounding the mother's death is revealed. The direction is quite strong and the cinematography is excellent.
4 out of 5 people found the following review useful: La Schola de la Bestia Sangrada, 30 October 2008 Author: chaos-rampant from Greece
You'd be forgiven for thinking a Japanese nunsploit flick helmed by snazzmeister Norifumi Suzuki would be cheap schlock with shower scenes to pad out the running time. No, this is a well made film as much concerned with inverting and subverting religious imagery as it is with aesthetics and sensuality. Certain set-pieces stand out as a testament to that: a nun flagellated in slow motion with roses, rose petals falling all over her bloodied body, a procession of nuns holding candles walking through the convent's corridors, a church interior photographed like a Mario Bava set, a priest falling dead in the shape of an inverted cross, stabbed with one no less.Although School of the Holy Beast is definitely blasphemous in the imagery it employs and the way those who preach God's word are portrayed (a convent hiding vice and corruption the perfect hiding ground), it's never outrageous enough to shock because everything is done with a sense of artful style that will have all but the most fundamendalist of christians accepting it for what it is. There are a couple of false notes, like the 'witch trial' scene where a nun suspected to be a witch is forcefed salt water then forced to sit upon an image of Christ; if she pees, she's a witch. The method is so medieval that it's hard to picture taking place in the contemporary world the movie is set. Overall the film is enjoyable, mildly violent and sleazy, with perhaps a dash of religious angst that comes out as juvenile, but in good taste and a worthwhile watch.
2 out of 2 people found the following review useful: A love letter to debauchery, 23 November 2005 Author: fertilecelluloid from Mountains of Madness
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
Another audacious exploitation diamond from ace genre director Norifumi Suzuki.In the film's title sequence, a rich fog clears to reveal a distant convent, the home of a salacious order of nuns who not-so-secretly indulge in every "sin" under the sun. It is crystal clear, even at this point, that we are in the hands of a master cinematician who is an adept hand at creating authentic worlds within worlds.Suzuki directed the wonderful "Sex and Fury", another exercise in outrageousness, and gems such as "Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter", but the film that cemented his reputation for me is this beautifully and lovingly photographed love letter to debauchery and "Beautiful Girl Hunter", truly one of the finest and most confronting pink flicks ever made.What makes Suzuki's films so strong is his sincerity and the full commitment he brings to the inflammatory material.Scenes of violent flagellation become painterly portraits in blood. The use of slow motion during a scene in which a nun is whipped with rose bushes is simply surreal. The lesbian couplings are quietly volcanic and the prologue, in which a novice enjoys her last night in the outside world, establishes the film's ironic tone.The score by Masao Yagi is gloriously operatic and the art direction by Suzuki regular Shuichiro Nakamura is most accomplished and gloriously rich.Don't miss this stunning work of pop art.
3 out of 4 people found the following review useful: The Whip and the Japanese Bodies, 25 March 2006 Author: Coventry from the Draconian Swamp of Unholy Souls
It's pretty difficult to fully comprehend the background to this movie, when you contemplate about it. "School of the Holy Beast" is a nunsploitation film but there are as good as no Catholic people in Japan and most of the actresses probably didn't knew what the hell a convent was! The only thing director Norifumi Suzuki knew for certain was that sex movies with nuns were extremely popular in Europe around that time and he saw this as an open opportunity to do the same for the Japanese exploitation-market. Maybe that's why "School of the Holy Beast" isn't anything like those void and trashy Jess Franco movies, but actually a very stylish and reasonably well-scripted film! "School..." doesn't feature the textbook plotting of nuns worshiping the devil and even the lesbian interactions between the young girls aren't the film's main events. This merely is a good old-fashioned tale of revenge, set within the walls of a convent and compellingly criticizing the abuse of Catholic power. Despite obviously enjoying her sexuality in the outside world, young Maya seems determined to become a nun in one of Japan's strictest convents. She never knew her parents but she discovered that her mother also was a nun here who died in mysterious circumstances. As the plot develops, Maya's only interest seems to be unraveling the convent's hypocrite network of sexual perversion, torture and murder in the name of Catholism. She and rebel nun Ishida become good friends who bring men into the convent and encourage other oppressed sisters to stand up for themselves. Don't get too frightened by this rather ambitious-sounding plot, as the film features more than enough sleaze & violence to satisfy even the most demanding exploitation fanatic. The girls get severely whipped, raped by a Raputin look-alike priest, tied up with thorny stems and beaten with bouquets of roses (that's not as pretty as it sounds). Things get even more sadistic when French/Japanese über-nun Nathalie Green shows up, since she immediately implements some of the vilest torture tricks ever, including a bizarrely fascinating ritual to decide whether or not a girl is a witch. "School of the Holy Beast" is astonishingly beautiful to look at, with imaginative cinematography and an excellent use of color shades. The set and costume designs are magnificent, and surprisingly surpassing the quality of most scenery used in European nunsploitation movies! The music is enchanting and the nudity, although plenty of it, is always illustrated with flair and good taste. The young starlets here, especially Yumi Takigawa Emiko Yamauchi, belong to the prettiest and most talented Japanese actresses I ever beheld. This movie now ranks among my favorite nunploitation-efforts, along with "The Devils", "Flavia – The Heretic", "Alucarda" and "Behind Convent Walls". Highly recommended!
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