Customer Reviews

School of the Holy Beast

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

A wonderful film - as amazing as Female Prisoner 701 - fantastic visuals - fantastic music - only the Japanese can make such trash with such style. Highly recommended!

I sat down to view this expecting a typical nunsploitation flick. Sure there is some whipping, torture, lesbianism and even some mention of Satan. But this widescreen, uncut version by Cult Epics is an absorbing and gripping story of demons that lurk within the hearts and minds of humans, not beasts of the holy or unholy kind. Medieval Catholicism mixes with Japanese themes of family, honor and revenge to produce a hot mess that is beautifully presented and mesmerizingly performed. Tumi Takigawa stars as Maya, a young woman who "infiltrates" a convent to discern the truth about her biological mother, a nun who died after giving birth to Maya 18 years before. She encounters greed, lust, subterfuge, hatred, betrayal, corruption, violence and many other vices while navigating the curious caste system of the abbey that pits "choir nuns" against "assistant nuns". Although sometimes over-the-top in its depiction of religious beliefs, it fascinates nonetheless.

After hearing much about this infamous picture over the years I finally obtained a copy and was pleasantly surprised on several levels - one it's nowhere near as controversial in content than some might suggest. The exploitation elements are there but almost tastefully presented - certainly far more so than in dozens of other Japanese 'Pink' or exploitation films of that period which were frequently way over the top in sadism and often unpleasant torture type scenarios.

"School of the Holy Beast" is a big budget film - beautifully photographed and top drawer in all departments - something this genre isn't always known for (*though Jess Franco's "Love Letters from a Portuguese Nun" would fit into that evaluation I believe). The cast are headed by the stunningly attractive and capable Yumi Takagawa in her first film. Among the extras on the DVD is a wonderfully frank and funny interview with the still gorgeous and utterly charming Takagawa where she explains her run ins with the director over nude scenes she hadn't been made aware of in the script. This video interview is really worth the price of admission alone as she is so utterly bemused that this film above all her other serious achievements later on is held up as her shining piece. A really sweet and delightful lady.

Definitely a must for fans of Jap-sploitation and such - with a lovely anamorphic transfer that nicely captures all of the great art direction and photographic compositions well. And hey, the title alone is fantastic and one of my all time favourite film titles - as is the ad art. A great show of it's genre.

The beast being the Rasputin look alike priest? Or is it the Mother Superior?

Yes, its sexploitation or nunsploitation, but the lead is avery strong and resourceful woman.

Is there a difference , besides the titles, between the two versions? More material, less?

If you really want to buy, go for the less expensive used 'Convent'

This is one of the strangest movies I've ever seen, and I'm a fan of alternative, extreme, outcast film.

In some ways "Beast" uses conventional plot devices--a child going "under cover" to try to found out what happened to a parent, and her discovery about the evil shenanigans hidden behind the scenes. But the goings-on in this convent are especially nasty, blasphemous, sadistic, and erotic. This is not old-school soft porn, nor cutting-edge torture porn, but a bizarre reflection of Japanese attitudes toward God, religion, and sexuality post-Nagasaki.

It's hard to pin down exactly what the film thinks about things, although there is a certain consistent nihilism that threads through the main story, punctuated by moments of vivid--almost beautiful--scenes of punishment and eroticism. This movie is so very much not for everyone, and I can only recommend it to those with a taste for the offbeat and puzzling.

This is not by any stretch a great movie--it's probably not even a particularly good movie. But it does have the single characteristic of a movie I consider worth having seen: It stays with me.

<strong>Seijū Gakuen</strong> (Noribumi Suzuki, 1974)

There are certain movies that have attained almost legendary status in the horror underground, movies that were damn near impossible to find for many years, and tales grew up around them like weeds: Moctezuma's <em>Alucarda</em>. d'Ossorio's <em>Tombs of the Blind Dead</em>. Suzuki's <em>Gate of Flesh</em>. Greenaway's <em>The Baby of Mācon</em>. Perez' <em>Silip: Daughters of Eve</em>. Dozens of others. Some of them have lived up to every last piece of hyperbole thrown at them (Seijun Suzuki, since getting the royal treatment from Criterion, has started being considered a Serious Artist(TM), and justifiably so), while when we finally got to see others, we generally wondered what in the world the people who spent so much time raving about these movies was smoking, and where we could get some (the most notorious example being Jodorowsky's almost unwatchable <em>El Topo</em>, which was obviously made by a lot of people who were smoking the same stuff). And one of the most notorious of these movies was <em>Seijū Gakuen</em>, released in English-speaking countries as <em>School of the Holy Beast</em>, and hailed by those who saw it the first time round as <em>the</em> nunsploitation classic, if you're into that sort of thing.

The plot is relatively common in exploitation film that masquerades as mystery: a young woman's mother dies under mysterious circumstances, and now she goes undercover, as it were, in the mother's profession to find out what happened. (While it's more straight horror than nunsploitation, I recently reviewed a movie where the plot is an almost perfect copy; de la Madrid's 2005 flick <em>La Monja</em>, which is even worse than this.) In this case, the woman is Maya (<em>Graveyard of Honor</em>'s Yumi Takigawa), and there's not much mystery about it once she actually gets there; it turns out this is one of those Catholic orders who are really, really into the whole mortification-of-the-flesh gig, and they really kind of expect the novices to go through superhuman tortures in order to get into the club. (Kind of reminds me of fraternity life circa 1979.)

All of this, of course, leads to a great deal of nudity, much of it accentuated by nun habits, and sporting the weird incongruity of this being a Japanese convent (I'm sure such things exist, but in the west one tends to think of Shinto or Buddhism when one thinks of Japan, no?), all things which are sure to fire the fetishes of some folks; if your particular kinks lead you to Asian women in nuns' outfits, this is pretty much cinematic nirvana for you. Have at it. However, as with much pinky cinema I've seen (Suzuki, naturally, being the exception), if you're looking for such niceties as a strong script, well-drawn characters, or any but the flimsiest of frameworks on which to hang the perversion, you'll want to head elsewhere. **

After a normal opening urban sequence; ice hockey spectator, walking by a fountain, riding on a motorbike, and making love, she declares to her new man that she is going to a place `where women cannot be women'. Initially, her motive for entering a convent is unclear. She receives communion, naked, kisses the crucifix, naked, and is then introduced to the concept and tiers of `discipline'. This is where the fun starts. Whips are prominent. A Rasputin-type enters the fray. The scene with roses is particularly striking. Later, her motive becomes clear. In appearance, she's a beautiful woman. Interesting stuff!

Ian Hunter.
Author of `e-Love'.

`This is probably lamest and the worst dvd I've ever viewed - - - with these exceptions: the phpotography is quite good as was the lighting. Sounds are actually audible and well-handled. The
location(s) looked good and the whole cast are plainly professionals who are severely compromised by an incredibly poor script. I feel that one should know quite a bit about an institution before
one trashes, satirizes, blames, critizes or otherwise denigrates it. I wish to be quite clear, to Wit: I am not a Roman Catholic nor do I put much stock in organized religions in general, but I do know enough about Roman Catholicism to find nuns hard to belive who wear hair long (under their wimples), wear no rings, beat each other, and work in full fig in some kind of weedy field (not rice, not wheat/barley etc) and in Roman Catholic priests with full beards wearning Easter Orthodox
vestiments. It is historical fact that nuns and nunneries were - at least in the middle ages, in
Europe - often pretty corrupt, venal and less than morally pure but I never read of one THIS dumb.
This film is dreadful and takes the viewer for a fool. If this were written - it would be useful
only for toilet paper; as a dvd, it'll make a coaster.