Nackte Haut und schwarzes Leder (1979)

Nackte Haut und schwarzes Leder: Directed by Jesús Franco. With Jesús Franco, Lina Romay, Olivier Mathot, Pierre Taylou. An ex-priest escapes from an asylum and kills people in God’s name. This is a re-edited Spanish-language version of L’éventreur de Notre-Dame (1975) and XXX version Sexorcismes (1975) with newly shot scenes.

“In 1975, prolific Spanish film-maker Jess Franco directed sleazy horror Lu0026#39;éventreur de Notre-Dame (AKA Exorcism), also releasing a XXX version called Sexorcism which featured much more graphic sex scenes (several members of the original cast getting in on the fun, including Franco himself!). Four years later, Franco released a third version of the film, The Sadist of Notre Dame, re-edited with additional footage and a different storyline, but none of the explicit sex.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eFranco plays ex-communicated priest Mathis Vogel, recently released from an asylum, who saves sinners by stabbing them to death with his switch-blade. First to go is a prostitute who makes the mistake of offering him her wares, followed soon after by a young girl walking home alone after an evening of bad disco dancing. Vogel writes a fictionalised account of his slayings, offering his story to a trashy sado-masochistic magazine published by Pierre de Franval (Pierre Taylou) and his assistant Anne (Franco muse Lina Romay), who participates in Satanic orgies at the chateau of a wealthy countess (France Nicolas). Following Anne to one of her depraved parties, Vogel sets about punishing the participants for their sins.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eFranco can usually be relied upon for either graphic sex or graphic violence, and occasionally both; failing that, he tends to make his films plain weird or spectacularly bad. Barring some full frontal female nudity, The Sadist of Notre Dame is a relatively reserved film, the stabbings fairly free of gore and the sexy stuff strictly soft-core, and the film is neither bizarre enough or rubbish enough to appeal to fans of Z-grade cult cinema. To be fair, itu0026#39;s never boring, but when one invests time in a Franco film, one expects certain boxes to be ticked, and they arenu0026#39;t on this occasion.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eIu0026#39;ve not seen Exorcism yet, so I canu0026#39;t say how that film compares, but I have checked out an un-dubbed copy of Sexorcism and can confirm that Franco and company donu0026#39;t hold back when it comes to the naughty stuff.”