cinema history class: the virgin of nuremberg

Session: Italian Gothic Horror Month, Week 3
Movie 2: Virgin of Nuremberg (1963)
Directed by Antonio Margheriti

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
Stuck in her husband's castle (which also happens to have lots of torture implements), Mary is terrified. Not least because women keep seeing to get tortured to death. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:
Virgin is, at its core, a whodunnit set in a castle. And it's reasonably well done at that. It's a very tight film, yet there are many red herrings designed to keep the viewer guessing. And the reveal was, for me, anyway, a complete surprise. Actually, in some ways it seems like a Scooby Doo episode. There's the appearance of a supernatural element that is later revealed to be plain old natural. And when the killer, disguised as "The Punisher" (here, explained as a medieval torturer/killer) has the hood ripped off, I couldn't help but think "...if not for those meddling kids." Now comparing the movie to Scooby Doo isn't a knock. The Scooby crew had their formula because it worked. And this movie, predating the show, can't be said to have been ripping it off.

The title is an interesting point, here. The movie had also been released under the more generic title, Horror Castle. The better title refers to an iron maiden that, for whatever reason, had been dubbed "The Virgin of Nuremberg." But seeing that title on the movie, I was half expecting this to have to do with the sexuality (or lack thereof) of female characters. It is, afterall, a standard movie trope that women get punished for being sexual.*

Including "Nuremberg" in the title is a reminder of the Nuremberg trials that followed World War II. Since the movie dates from the early 1960's, the trials were in more recent memory. And the theme does tie in to the murderer's history as a general in the German army during World War II.

Which brings me to a point within the movie that leaves me feeling ambivalent. The General-turned-killer is a tragic figure -- he had been part of an unsuccessful plot to kill Hitler during the war. Most of his co-conspirators were simply killed. But he was tortured -- if I understood the exposition correctly, the skin on his head was removed, leaving him a kind of living skull. The insanity the resulted is, presumably what drove him to kill. Having a Nazi as a sympathetic character is a bit of a stretch, though the story tries to help it along with the story of his having tried to kill Hitler. But his motives are clearly explained -- he wasn't trying to kill Hitler as some kind of repudiation of Nazi ideology. Rather, it was all about Hitler carrying on the war effort when Germany's defeat was clear.

So I'm back to having no sympathy for him. But it does then raise another philosophical issue. As evil as Nazi ideology was, one has to recognize the difference between German foot-soldiers in World War II and the SS. How much can one blame people who grew up in a country and were drafted into its army for the evils of the government they served? In the movie, the General is clearly not a simple soldier. But maybe he was simply a career military man who wasn't involved with the inhumanity. Probably not, I guess, since he was close enough to Hitler to have been involved in the assassination attempt. Ah, fuck him. He deserves whatever torture he suffered.

Oh, and the makeup that made him appear as a monster was really well done. Among the best.

Ratings:
Me: 8
Dave: 9.7-9.8
Ethan: 9
Joe: 10
Sean: 2 out of 4

*Maybe that's an American trope, in which case it might not apply to this, an Italian movie.