Killer Nuns, Lascivious Devils and Polemic Directors: Brief Film suggestions for contemplative nights in. Patrick Bühler

Are you of a religious disposition? If you are then don't go on reading or do it all the same. Afterwards you should call a meeting of young annoyed Christians and have at haunting the author of these few lines. Erect on a centrally located square (e.g. Marketsquare in Basle) a funeral pyre and attach this individual that dares to sully the Christian Religion. Kindle a fire and listen with delight how the screams of the heretic spread in the pious world.

What follows is a short expedition into the world of those films that are dealing with religious figures of the Christian religious community. The reader won't be informed about Religion and the complex role it plays as a social phenomenon the question is of contents of films. It is in other words a must-see list for all those who have been thinking of joining a monastery or convent. Or those who have been fighting a bad conscience for ages because they haven't been to confession. Or simply those who at least once in their lifetime were curios to find out how it feels to be bad or even diabolically mean. For that you don't need to set fire to the next-door church nor do you have to ravish all nuns in a convent. Just take an evening off, make yourself a cup of tea and nibble on a piece of (pinched) consecrated wafer while you are watching the following films, which particularly the catholic film service is not very pleased with. (Some of them are even officially condemned.

Ken Russel, the English direction eccentric, had read Huxley's much regarded scandal book on the devils of London. This historical shocker gave cause to the shooting of a film It reproduces the events that took place in the idyllic city of London which becomes addicted to a satanic cult. The local monastery is exorcised by a hype priest. The embarrassing inquiry, that is attached to it, is complemented by giving an enema and in the end the nuns, inventive as they are, throw a gigantic sex orgy in a beautiful church. The film is governed by atrocious hysteria and you quite can't get rid of the feeling that Ken Russel simply had fun putting up the catholic inquisition running amok as history opera.

In Herbert Achternbusch's Ghost a bavarian Jesus descends from the cross all by himself, for being so bored up there. "I'm fed up" he tells Sister Maria and thereupon he starts to work as a waiter in the local church bar. He is sent to the Christmas market by two policemen, to get them two "schnapps" glasses full of shit. This fails and now the policemen have to go to stool themselves. On a pick-nick with Maria Jesus asks at the sight of a sausage: "If wine is my blood and bread is my body what then for heavens sake is that?" This question does never get answered, not even by the crucified frogs that fringe the road. Thus the journey continues into the bourgeois parlour. Achternbusch's religious satire was sharply criticised by various church committees in Germany and still today public performance of the film is under penal order in Austria.
A similar destiny did have Werner Schroeter's Love Council by the drama by Oscar Panizza who was put in jug by the end of the 19th century, right after the coming out of his wicked heavenly tragedy in the shape of a book. In this drama, made to a film, religious dogmas are not simply attack with the aid of polemic quotations. Here we are faced with an impressive satirical piece of art in which the attack against God is of great impact. And it is an attack on a infirm and revengeful God. It is a pitiless satire on those highly esteemed figures of the Christian faith. A monstrous blasphemy of satanic grandeur which in a blaspheme way treats the divinely metaphysical causes for the emergence of syphilis (including the Vatican) in the 15th century.

In Greg Dark's crazy porno comedy of the 90s with the title of the Devil in Miss Jones 5-the Inferno the spectator goes through a descent to hell, including latex and Halloween devil costumes (originally devised for cheeky young brats but now housing a nice fat, mean and adult devil). After her death Justine Jones sits in hell and has to try all kinds of sexual practices which she had been abhorring in her bourgeois life. Witty dress up orgies, cynical conversations and a lot of kinky sex make this Dark film a mean, heretic and pornographic(Daunt) inferno. A devil's film, the sulphur of which even overtakes its forerunners (DJM 3&4). In the area of pornographic films I should like to recommend to my open-minded readership a really sweet nun sex film with the title Act of Confession . A nun is seized by such lasciviousness that she masturbates without interruption under the crucifix and endows the priest with blowjobs during the holy communion. She also enjoys being fastened to the altar. This definitely goes to far and as in Achternbusch Jesus descend from the cross and even gets involved with the lusty fancies of our nun. A truly scandalous film which was intended for the cinemas but because of its explosive power was condemned to the minor existence of an obscure video copy.