Tower of Screaming Virgins

Badly choreographed action, vaulted castle interiors with winding staircases to nowhere, super production values, bloody murders in the first reel, plenty of above-the-waist nudity and hilarious erotic coupling, plus krimi star Uschi Glas playing a Blanche Dubois! What’s not to like?

At its simplest level, Tower of Screaming Virgins is a story of hopeful lovers being seduced to go to a tower where, obliviously to them, they are killed after a night of passion. The tower is even called in this film, “The Tower of Sin.” The film starts off promisingly for exploitation fans, with three lovers being done away with in the tower by men in red masks. The last scene of this prologue has a masked female archer dressed provocatively, her breasts exposed.

Boasting one of the all-time great exploitation titles is this very colorful German-French-Italian period swashbuckler laced with blood, torture, intrigue, and nudity. Lots and lots of nudity. … Incredibly, it’s all based more or less on a real scandal in 14th century France! The mind reels, though the story is conspicuously short of screaming and, more significantly, virginity. The convoluted royal intrigue isn’t impossible to follow but definitely takes a backseat to cheap thrills much of the time, incluing a langorous nude bubble bath scene and a wild finale that finds multiple swordfights occurring around the castle with women in various states of undress providing some unorthodox visual distraction.