'Inquisición' (1976) – Jacinto Molina.

The remarkably prolific film-maker Paul Naschy once again returns to the macabre medieval milieu, in this specific instance the burly Iberian iconoclast mines one of the more despicable epochs of man's iniquitous history, the blackened days of The Inquisition, when a plague of uncommon cruelty and madness was evilly matched by the no less diabolical pestilence of the plague, and against this Dantean backdrop of Satanic hysteria and terminal disease, writer/director Jacinto Molina aka Paul Naschy constructs an especially lurid tale of uncontrollable lusts, moral duplicity, thwarted love, grisly torture, profane idolatry and theological insanity as the corrupted magistrate Bernard (Paul Naschy) and his two fellow inquisitors travel the plague ravaged land on their monstrous quest to purge the land of falsely accused witches, warlocks and wise-women, pitilessly dispensing god's wrath with impunity, and, perhaps, furtively harbouring entirely more wickedly fulminating passions of their very own!

Once the three unforgiving inquisitors begin their iniquitous witch-trials, the brooding, faintly demonic magistrate slowly becomes amorously enamoured of the beautiful Catherine (Daniela Giordano) a rather melancholy, dark-haired siren who uses her not inconsiderable allure to tempt the anything but god-fearing Bernard de Fossier, culminating in a splendidly melodramatic, gruellingly traumatic climax, while not quite up to Michael Armstrong's Sadistic 'Mark of the Devil' still packs an emotional punch! The zesty performances all across the board are excellent, with Paul Naschy's conflicted Witch-finder finally meeting his buxom match with sultry Daniela Giordano's Satanically scheming proving to be a delightfully voluptuous adversary, and the rousing score by Maximo Barrates is exemplary. 'Inquisición' will strongly bewitch inquisitive Euro-cult fans with its own uniquely beguiling B-Movie Black magic!