TOWER OF SCREAMING VIRGINS (1968)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

LONG LONG LONG SPOILERS

This English-dubbed French thriller, despite its exploitative title, boasts a distinguished lineage. The source material is partly from a legend from French history: that, in the 14th century, Margaret of Burgundy, wife to King Louis X, committed adultery within a Parisian guard-tower, the Tower of Nesle, for which offense the unhappy French queen was imprisoned for the remainder of her life. A writer named Frederic Gaillardet dramatized the incident, though Alexander Dumas rewrote the play, possibly because he'd become famous for a stage-success in 1829, prior to his later fame as a novelist. However, the Gaillardet-Dumas story only takes various names and places from the historical account, concocting a wild hybrid story I'm tempted to call a "psycho-swashbuckler." I have not read any version of the prose source material. But I theorize that one of the authors borrowed a folklore-tale about Cleopatra, which asserted that the Egyptian queen had the habit of taking male lovers into her boudoir for one night of passion, only to have them executed afterward. 

TOWER, like the play on which it's based, spins out the idea that Queen Margaret-- who, according to the story's dynamics, ought to be in her middle thirties-- uses the deserted Tower of Nesle for a series of one-night stands with young Frenchmen, whether they are or aren't "virgins" like the title says . In fact, there are usually three such encounters each night, since Margaret (Teri Tordai) sets up liaisons for her two handmaidens as well. Then comes the "screaming," as Margaret's main henchman Orsini and various hooded thugs slay the male victims and toss them into the Seine River. I don't know why any of the henchmen, or Margaret and her ladies for that matter, affect any sort of masks, since they expect all to be killing off any and all visitors. The attempts at secrecy don't keep the locals from getting the sense that nasty things are happening at the "Tower of Sin," as they call it.

Then a celebrated war-hero, Captain Bouridan (Jean Piat), approaches Paris. On the way there, he meets and chats up a cute young noblewoman, the curiously named Blanche DuBois (Uschi Glas), finding out that she plans to petition the king's court for her father's inheritance. Blanche provides a subplot to TOWER as she gets drawn into the life of the Queen's lady-in-waiting, due to the machinations of the lust-minded Orsini.

In a tavern Bouridan's master swordsmanship saves the life of a naive young man named Philippe, who came to Paris with his brother Gautier for obscure reasons. The captain noticed that both young men have strange marks on their wrists but makes no comment on it. By chance a procurer for the Queen talks both Bouridan and Philippe into attending one of the tower-parties. Bouridan already has some suspicions about the "Tower of Sin" but doesn't try to talk Philippe out of participating. The upshot is that although Philippe sleeps with the Queen and is subsequently killed, Bouridan escapes both being bedded and murdered. And this sets up a series of complicated revelations, double dealings, high and low intrigue, and many more swordfights than one would expect of a film titled TOWER OF SCREAMING VIRGINS.

In fact, there are so many complicated revelations that I've belatedly decided to devote a separate ARCHETYPAL ARCHIVE essay on them to explore how TOWER does or does not satisfy my criteria for mythicity, and why I call it a "psycho-swashbuckler." I will note that the swordfights, while plenteous, are just okay, as is most of the acting-- though director Austrian director Franz Antel, best known for lots of Euro-sex flicks, does a fine job of selecting pulchritudinous women for even very minor roles. In my opinion the script softens Margaret too much, given that we know she's callously sent countless young men to their deaths just so that she could have a few rolls in the hay while her husband the king was away. There are no special murder-methods used to slay the victims, nor do any of the disguises serve any purpose by that of concealment, and many critics would not consider this film metaphenomenal at all. I argue that this particular "bizarre crime," while maybe not uncanny in Cleopatra's Egypt, is definitely beyond the pale of the ordinary in 14th-century France. And although Margaret and her tower occupy a lot of screen time, Bouridan's courageous cavalier is undoubtedly the star of this show.