Alucarda-Movie Review

Alucarda Film Review

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Alucarda

Dir. Juan Lopez Moctezuma
Mexico, 1975
Digi-beta 85 min.

Juan Lopez Moctezuma's excessive, bloody and sacrilegious oddity has been enjoying a recent renaissance thanks to the efforts of Pete Tombs' Mondo Macabro label, and is an integral component of Mexican horror history fitting neatly between the Santos films and the Rene Cardone catalogue.

When young Justine is sent to the secluded convent of St. Archangelo, she forms an immediate bond with a very peculiar young girl named Alucarda. Their friendship (in true nunsploitation form) inevitably transgresses the boundaries of propriety and they find themselves condemned by their fellow sisters.

The next logical step is to turn to Satan for reassurance, which leads to a lengthy ritual pact-forming sequence that sees abundant nudity coupled with Alucarda's incessant screaming. Seriously folks, the screaming fit here is rivalled only by Isabelle Adjani's performance in Possession. The costumes (what few there are) are incredibly weird: the nuns' habits look like - no shit - bloody bandages!

As Alucarda spins out of control, terrorizing the other nuns in a relentless Don't Deliver Us From Evil fashion, the film escapes the confines of narrative and immerses itself in full-on blood-bathed sublimity.

Kier-La Janisse


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