Tower of Screaming Virgins

source: Tower of Screaming Virgins

"Der Turm der verbotenen Liebe" or "Tower of Sin" or "She Lost Her... You Know What" or "Tower of Screaming Virgins" is a West German / French /Italian co-production from 1968 that resulted in this German-language film, even if there are English versions out there too. The director is Franz Antel and even if this is based on an Alexandre Dumas novel, the name Antel should tell you enough, especially in combination with the title, to tell you that this one here is not a film where you should have great expectation or even expect some kind of quality. The good news is that it is not as much pointless softcore * as you could have thought, thae bad news is that even the better components like sets and costumes are mediocre at best. Luckily, the film stays under the 90-minute mark, so it is not a long watch by any means. The cast does not include any well-known names at all for me as a German audience member with the one exception of course that is Uschi Glas, but the quality of this film here is symbolic for a great deal of her body of work, stuff that simply isn't good and even if she may have been an icon in terms of her looks, she just isn't a particularly gifted actress in terms of range and probably never was. Well as for the story here, there isn't too much to say. Of course there are many sexual references as there is a tower of lust in the center of it all, but well the character writing and plot writing really makes you just want to look away on many occasions. What else can you say about this one. It is not possibly to take this film seriously from any perspective, not as a drama because that's what it tries to be the most, not as a historic movie or even period piece and not as a fantasy film either. It is not bad/entertaining enough to be a guilty pleasure or to be so bad that it is good again in a funny way. It is just very medicore and forgettable. i give it a thumbs-down overall because honestly pretty much everybody who worked on it seemed to not have contributed anything of quality or talent here. Watch something else instead. Final note: What the hell was that Blanche DuBois / Streetcar reference???

Abel Gance 's 1955 version was based on Dumas's play but this French-German one is closer to Michel Zevaco's swashbucklers;it's definitely inferior to the fifties' effort ,but the French Lead, Jean Piat ,essentially a stage actor , has plenty of go and wields the sword with gusto ; he does not take the story too seriously , the right thing to do when you deal with a part unworthy of your talent , and his playing verges on tongue-in- chick. First thing you've got to bear in mind is that it's not history :it's legend ; Marguerite de Bourgogne was Philippe Le Bel's daughter-in -law and this king was no joker :when he learnt that his son's wife had an affair with Philippe d'Aulnay and her sister-in-law Blanche was sleeping with brother Gaultier ,he had both unfortunate young men flayed alive and Marguerite was strangled in her dungeon;as for Buridan ,he was never a victor ,but a scholar :he used to teach philosophy at the university . It's François Villon's poem "ballade des dames du temps jadis" who spawned the legend of" this man thrown into the Seine in a bag."All these characters are featured in the film. There were already nudities in Gance's work,which was risqué at the time ;in 1968 it was more common ,but the plot involved an incestuous relationship (consummated in the movie) . The first part was certainly influenced by Gance ,but the second one turns melodramatic ,confused,the queen changing her mind every five minutes ; the king seems to be out of a card game ,and the giant chess game out of "Alive in wonderland" ;the cinematography is nice and shots of the tower are particularly successful ; the director already showed a fondness for soft eroticism which he would carry on in the seventies.

Although clearly marketed as a sex flick, TOWER OF SCREAMING VIRGINS is a surprisingly well-made European potboiler, jointly made between three countries: West Germany, France, and Italy. However, the film's description and title are a far cry from what the film actually contains: there is indeed a tower in the film, but the women in it are clearly not virgins, seeing as they have different men delivered to their doors every single night. There's not a great deal of screaming in the film, either. Still, despite the misnomer, TOWER OF SCREAMING VIRGINS is a fast-paced little flick that's only spoiled by an overly twisty plot that'll have you scratching your head before long. The story – supposedly based on a play by Alexandre Dumas – is about an evil French Queen who's running riot whilst the King's away. She has young men delivered to her tower, where she has sex with them, then kills them and dumps their bodies in the river. Into this story comes a war hero who decides to investigate the mysterious murders, and comes face to face with court intrigue. Then there's a complicated back story and incestuous twist in the tale which'll have your jaw agape (yes, I know this was the 'swinging' '60s, but even so…). The best thing is to not even attempt to try and understand what's going on – just enjoy the plot. Jean Piat is the athletic hero and he carries the role with some aplomb and charisma – he reminded me of a dark Lex Barker. He's supported by a great cast of nubile young women, most of whom are happy to strip for the screen, so expect to see breasts and bums aplenty in this movie. Then there are the action sequences, which are superbly staged, although too few for my liking. Things climax early on with a highlight involving a bar-room brawl, in which our heroes fends off his attackers with a burning cloth! Costumes and sets are spot on and the tower itself (a miniature, like Hammer's Castle Dracula) looks great. The script isn't too shoddy and although the head-scratching plot is a turn-off, this film packs three stories into one, and never becomes boring. Instead it just piles on twist after twist, surprise after surprise, before finishing on a fiery high. Lovers of historical adventures will be in their element with this raucous offering which never lets up.

Tower of Screaming Virgins (1968) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Based on the Alexandre Dumas novel, this film tells the story of a Queen who has a lust for blood. Each night men are taken to a deadly tower and in the morning their bodies are discovered. One man decides he has had enough and plans to overthrow the Queen. This German film is certainly a very strange one. It has been released under a number of titles but its TOWER OF SCREAMING VIRGINS is perhaps the most infamous of the bunch. The film's title and promotional materials makes you think that you're walking into a Euro horror picture but that's not really the case. This here is basically a swashbuckler film that someone like Errol Flynn would have appeared in had he been the age he was when he did THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD. What sets the film apart from others in the genre is the fact that this one does feature horror and sleaze elements. The most surprising thing about this picture are some rather bloody and creative torture and death scenes as well as plenty of female nudity. This film certainly lived up to its reputation as being a rather dirty little picture adn this stuff certainly helps keep the film moving and entertaining. I think the film also deserves credit for having a nice atmosphere, some great costumes and I really liked the cinematography and look of the picture. All of these elements certainly make the film worth watching. At the same time, I found most of the story and most of the performances to be rather forgettable. Whenever something "dirty" wasn't happening the film really dragged. Still, with that being said, the flaws with the picture aren't great enough to keep people from checking it out.

I saw this film under the irresistible title: The Tower of Screaming Virgins. To its credit, the film offered both a tower and some screaming, although I doubt if anyone in the tower was a virgin. . . not that I was going to complain! I knew I was going to groove on this film from its pre-credit scene where an escaping man was shot with an arrow by a topless woman in a red executioner's hood. This film featured surprisingly good swordplay, a handful of nice, semi-* ladies, and a better than expected story, something that surprised this viewer. The plot involved a conspiracy to supply the Queen and her handmaidens with lovers. The women wore masks and waited in the tower. After the men had served their purpose, they were murdered and dumped in a river. Unfortunately, the rogues whose job it was to do the supplying and the murdering had not done the job correctly, and bodies were beginning to be found. The rogues made a bigger mistake when they selected romancing adventurer Bouridan as a guest of the tower. In addition to women and fighting, Bouridan liked a mystery. The Tower of Screaming Virgins delivered on all the thrills a potential viewer would expect. I recently watched the similar, and somewhat better known, Isabella, Duchess of Devils (aka Ms. Stilleto), but The Tower of Screaming Virgins was the more enjoyable film. It had a better story, quicker swordplay, and nicer actresses. I hope other viewers will enjoy their time in the The Tower of Screaming Virgins as much as I did.

This film is a crackerjack, at times rivetingly atmospheric con job of a mishmash of a film that defies convention so much that it is pimped as something it really isn't. The title and opening 10 minutes or so promise a sort of Edgar Wallace-like horror thriller about young men lured to their doom in a forbidden tower somewhere in France. There are hooded assassins, some surprisingly gory deaths, a bit of female nudity, and then the film shifts gears to become a swashbuckler right out of Alexandre Dumas -- who gets a writing credit -- concerning "The Hero of the Flanders Campaign" who has come back from chasing maidens around the countryside to engage in derring-do, righting wrongs, making the ladies swoon & the other swordsmen salute his valor, and above all serve his King. In other words this is a strange movie and I'm not surprised to look at the user ratings vote board and see an inordinate amount of 1 star ratings. That's probably because due to the Englicanized title TOWER OF SCREAMING VIRGINS, most of them gave it a look expecting atmospheric, lurid Euro Horror with 17 year old girls being torn from their clothes by satanists in red hoods for nefarious purposes. And the most notable name in the cast is Uschi Glass, best known for baring her wonderful body in various exploitation & horror epics from the 1970's. Instead, viewers find D'artangan's 3rd cousin doing the Errol Flynn bit. The best way to describe the film it is that it's a costume drama hybrid mixing horror, swashbuckling, palace intrigue and Three Muskateers flavored heroics. Nincompoops will be disappointed, but fans of *FILM* will find this to be an enjoyable hodgepodge that has a strange agenda. The Screaming Virgins of reference are young men, the film's sporadic & exploitational nudity and at times surprisingly graphic violence are too overboard for the younger audiences this kind of fare is usually aimed at, and the movie is filmed with a sort of ornate, Gothic/baroque production design is often reminiscent of a Harald Reinl or Adrian Hoven production. Misty, vaulted castle interiors with winding staircases to nowhere look like an Escher drawing, with swordfighters leaping from parapets instead of Count Dracula. The change of pace is most refreshing and I'd say this is one of the most interesting genre films to come out of Continental Europe during the later 1960's. Seek it out, it's quite rare and worth more than one viewing, and you can't say that for a lot of movies with such a title. 8/10

Moviecut—Tower of Screaming Virgins

source: Tower of Screaming Virgins

source: Der Turm der verbotenen Liebe