Paul Naschy stars as Bernard de Fossey, a witch-hunting judge traveling to the Carcassone region of middle ages France to further his morally dubious duty. Initially his services are welcomed, but soon the small town’s opinion sways as his brutal tortures proliferate against innocent young women. Despite his militant devotion to Catholicism, Bernard capitulates to sins of the flesh by falling for Catherine, a young village woman (Daniela Giordano). After her fiancé is killed en route to Toulouse she becomes a prime target for Bernard’s forbidden amorous pursuits and Bernard is ultimately undone by his sexual acts. Thinking he is the culprit of her fiancé’s murder, Catherine employs the services of a local witch to avenge his death. In a twist of irony the hunter becomes the hunted as Bernard is burned at the stake alongside admitted witch Catherine for his sinful deeds.

Paul Naschy’s directorial debut is largely a success. Most successful is Naschy’s remarkable sense of historical composition and set design. Naschy exploits Gumersindo Andre’s medieval sets and authentic torture apparatuses (borrowed from a Spanish museum[1]) to their fullest potential, allowing the viewer to play hesitant voyeur. The torture scenes’ gruesome acrimony compensate for their sporadic appearances. Scenes such as a rotating, spiked gyre approaching the bared breast of a female victim and the obscene pulling of another unfortunate victim’s nipple are as wrenching and squirm-inducing as any scene from competing films such as Adrian Hoven’s classic 1969 witchcraft opus Hexen bis aufs Blut Gequaelt (Mark of the Devil-long the zeitgeist of such pictures). The various dungeons and castles that the tortures occur in are as desolate, dank and oppressive as in any other Spanish horror from the period and convey a precious sense of historical immidiacy and accuracy that Hoven’s production cannot touch.

The citizens populating those castles and farmhouses provide much of the film’s strength and enduring fascination. Naschy nicely captures the psyche of his world’s inhabitants by a small scene in which an owl flies ominously across a path in broad daylight. Catherine and her friend Madeline interpret it as a bad omen, a very accurate assumption considering the weight put on natural phenomena in the middle ages, a trend defining social beliefs during the middle ages and one so powerful that it would continue into the literature of Shakespeare and well into the naturalist literature movement. The raiment clothing Naschy’s characters is also historically sound. Common peasants wear muddied and crude shawls that still manage to be distinctive and members of the town’s upper crust wear colorful gowns and britches. The pinnacle of Naschy’s attention to period detail occurs at a raucous town fair, where clowns, fair maidens, thieves and clergymen intermingle in what is undoubtedly one of the most realistic depictions of the period that the horror genre has offered. Because of such a meticulously constructed scene it is obvious that Naschy’s claims of intense research and interviews with Julio Caro Baroja[2] (a noted Spanish historian) were not unfounded and entirely necessary.

But historical accuracy would still mean next to nothing if the essential horror elements were not in attendance. Aside from the obvious torture sequences, Naschy does what no other witch-hunt film dares to do: show the devil in all his fearful, fire-and-brimstone glory. In a decision that must have been instinctual, Naschy plays a dual role as the devil (how else would he be able to hide under a monster suit with Waldemar Daninsky out of the picture?). Naschy’s treatment of the devil is invigoratingly classical, sporting crinkly black horns and a gnarled bone capped with a human skull. The disparate scenes with the Wicked one transpire during Catherine’s hallucinations after she has imbibed an evil brew. In a standout scene Catherine joins fellow pagans in a perverse ritual to Naschy’s Evil One, complete with a warped reverb track and a frothy, gel colored set. Staffs and torches coated with skulls and bones jut up from the mist like papyrus reeds from a stream. The devil views the Satanic merriment from his opulent throne. This scene is so bold, so visionary that it beautifully exemplifies the potential and power of vintage Spanish horror. Here INQUISITION is at its best, resembling one of Jose Gutierréz Solana’s (a lifelong influence on Naschy) gothic paintings suddenly sprung to life.

The horrific imagery is not relegated to hyperbolic fantasy either. Some of the film’s most potent and ghastly visualizations are those of the black plague. Naschy uses the plague as a point of narrative cohesion, tying the historical drama and more horrific elements together. And Naschy doesn’t relax his savagery in its depiction. Throughout the film stacks of withered, sore-encrusted bodies are rudely thrown into the infamous collection wagons. One scene is genuinely harrowing when Bernard comforts a woman in the grips of death, patting her oozing body as she coughs and wheezes to a welcome death.

An equally impressive achievements is Naschy’s complex role as Bernard. Naschy’s versatile screenplay paints Bernard as a tortured, disillusioned soul trapped in his obsessive dedication to an inhuman vocation. Initially he is fully dedicated to his work but is undone by his lust for Catherine. In fact, one could go so far as to critique INQUISITION as a tragedy as Bernard is ultimately conquered by an outside force (Catherine) that his claustrophobic world (his religion and duty) cannot handle. Regardless of one’s inclinations, Naschy does a commendable job of portraying Bernard’s transition from pious executioner to blasphemous sinner. These transition scenes materialize as hallucinary projections of his religious guilt. In one such scene a seductively robed Catherine calls to Bernard and taunts him with her sinful gifts. Then, in the proverbial rude awakening, Catherine vanishes and Death himself (again Naschy) appears, complete with towering scythe and gray facepaint. Death’s ominous, silent presence is an effective metaphor for Bernard’s impending sense of doomed mortality and, most worringly, immortality.

Naschy swaths another layer of depth onto his debut film in his equally complex view of women. It is surprisingly sympathetic-hopefully allying any suspicion of his alleged misogyny-and liberated as it depicts women as the gender trapped in a claustrophobic society. Aside from colorless domestic chores, women are only shown as the persecuted, a sad but valid fact. Through Catherine, Naschy poses the argument that witchcraft was the only pressure valve for a stressed, demoralized woman in the middle ages and, most importantly, their only source of true power. When Catherine first experiences her encounter with Satan and the possibilities offered, she is overjoyed. She is confident that she can avenge her brother’s killer and she even exerts dominance over that pillar of faith and authority: Bernard de Fossey. After their lovemaking, Bernard sorrowfully admits "Catherine, I’m ruined." But there remains a sense of sorrow over this instance because it suggests the only channel of power available to women is through sex and seduction. Witchcraft’s principle weakness and invalidity is evidenced near the film’s conclusion, when a dejected Catherine has been arrested and imprisoned as a witch. However, the town magistrate tries-in vain-to convince Catherine that she wasn’t practicing witchcraft at all and that her visions of the devil were merely trickery due to the hallucinagenic drink she was given. This development is bitterly sad, as Naschy denies Catherine the simple pleasure of feeling power for at least one fleeting moment in her life. It is interesting to note, however, that it was a woman (Catherine) who defeated a very powerful man (Bernard).

Being the ambitious film it is, INQUISITION inevitably succumbs to shortcomings. For one, Nascy’s direction often falls victim to the old genre filmmaker temptation: the overuse of the zoom lens. The zooms quickly become anesthetizing and irritating. And even though the film is commendable for not relying heavily on cheap gory thrills, it does lose its target audience seeking just that. Because the target audience may be lost because of the lack of exploitable elements, the film’s identity crisis disembogues. Because of the relatively short running time the two narrative arteries (historical drama and horror) don’t converge as smoothly as they should, and one half (the historical drama) fares far better than the other half, lending a rather lopsided pacing to the film. Because of this dilemma, INQUISITION’S wagon wheels often spin slowly. Finally, the film is also padded with some unnecessary dialogue and marginal characters (such as a village outcast) that only serve to soften an otherwise powerful film’s blow.

Because of these setbacks, INQUISITION never quite reaches its full potential, which is all the more infuriating considering the unquestionable strength of the dream and torture sequences, as well as the social commentary granted by Naschy’s adequate screenwriting. However, INQUISITION remains an interesting glimpse into the work that would come from Naschy the director, and it is laudable that in his directorial debut he exhibits a close understanding of the cinema (evidenced by his carefully consistent mise en scéne), something that cannot be said for even some of the genre’s longest contributors.

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[1] Daniela Giordano, interview, Sinister Tales. <http://members.aol.com/eurosin/giordano.htm>

[2] Mike Hodges, Paul Naschy: Memoirs of a Wolfman (Baltimore: Midnight Marquee Press, 2000) 131.