Tower of Screaming Virgins (1968)

Tower of Screaming Virgins (1968) is one of those films where you are left wondering exactly who it is aimed at.  A West German/Italian/French co-production shot in Hungary, kicks off as if it was one of those Gothic Euro-horror flicks involving crazy aristocrats torturing people in their castles, as masked men chase a man around a tower before killing him and throwing his body into the river below.  But it quickly switches to a swashbuckling tale of derring do, featuring a sub-Errol Flynn swordsman roguishly romancing  a younf woman en route to the court in Paris, flashing his sword around a lot.  Subsequently, at court, we meet the Queen and her bare knockers taking a bath and seducing a young artist.  The film later takes a turn back into the Gothic with more sex and violence at that tower.  With its strange combination of nudity, swordsmanship, court intrigue and horror, (there's also, in a final twist, some incest thrown in), Tower of Screaming Virgins gives the impression that it simply doesn't know its target audience, instead serving up a melange of genre tropes that won't satisfy any of its potential audiences.  Based on am Alexandre Dumas play, (which had filmed, slightly less luridly, several times previously), the story, bizarrely, has some basis in fact.  Not much, but some.

While the film's (and source play's) plot has Queen Margaret, wife of Louis X, getting her naughties with various lovers at the tower, then having them killed so that her infidelity to the King won't be found out, the reality was that her lovers, those who were uncovered at least, were actually tortured to death by the authorities in an attempt to get proof of her adultery.  (Curiously, the Queen and her ladies in waiting (who are complicit in her schemes) wear masks to make love to their paramours which, as they are going to kill the guys regardless, would seem an unnecessary precaution).  Moreover, while the film has these lovers being procured for the Queen by a gang of loyal cronies, in reality they were knights of her husband's court, already known to her, who were well aware of her identity.  Unfortunately, all this unhistorical intrigue bogs the film down, fatally slowing the pace while the various plot complications  leave the viewer confused.  The film isn't just unhistorical in its plot, (which can be forgiven as artistic licence), but also its details.  The events portrayed are meant to be taking place in the Fourteenth Century, yet the sets, costumes and props seem to come from the Seventeenth Century.  It feels as if the director thought that he was making a Three Musketeers film, with everyone fencing each other with rapiers, rather than hacking each other to death with broadswords and the hero coming on like D'Artagnan.

Stylistically, the film is very much on a par with other Euro-historical films of the era - solid but uninspired direction and design combined with lurid plot details.  Also in common with other productions of its era, it teases much in terms of smut, but in reality delivers only some bared boobs and bums, (which, nonetheless, would have been considered fairly 'racy' in similar English-language productions).  Tower of Screaming Virgins isn't a particularly bad film, but isn't particularly good either.  Ultimately, even the mild nudity and lurid details can't distract the viewer from a turgid plot that runs out of steam long before the end.