When one first hears the term "nunsploitation", one likely imagines something like 1977's Behind Convent Walls (Interno di un convento). It's crazy nuns, running around, indulging in sexual mayhem with themselves and each other. It also happens to be a very well shot film with some stills resembling Caravaggio paintings.
It was a time when people were trying out erotic film as a serious artform and sometimes gave it production values to match. Director Walerian Borowczyk was described by critics as a "genius who also happened to be a pornographer" according to Wikipedia.
The film doesn't really have anything to say that wasn't said better by Black Narcissus or Mother Joan of the Angels but it has a lot of charming moments. In one scene two nuns bicker over the handsomeness of the men they have sketched in their notebooks, hidden between the pages.
Behind Convent Walls is available on The Criterion Channel now as part of a Nunsploitation collection.
X Sonnet 1964
The angry weakened bird was watching paint.
Compelling boredom packed its sugar tight.
A syrup corn has made a cheapened saint.
Some extra chalk can ape a fractured light.
The board was dry as bone by morning crow.
The rooster roots for hens who like to love.
So Cupid draws his modern super bow.
The feathered shaft was just a ragged dove.
You see in dreams, a troupe of troubled nuns.
They divvy beer to stave the hunger off.
And wish for wheat to bake their daily buns.
A fast can pierce the heart in reckless sloth.
The shadows dance a copy caper slow.
What near the chapel has a ruddy glow?
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