I don't think I'd seen Arabian Adventure before. It's a 1979 British adventure fantasy with Christopher Lee as a big bad wizard. Brian Hayles wrote the screenplay and Kevin Connor directed. It had a £4,000,000 budget and you can see some of that money up on the screen. It didn't do so well at the box office. We watched the nice Kino Lorber Blu-ray. I liked it well enough to order a copy from KL while their sale is on.
Christopher Lee is the evil wizard Alquazar, Milo O'Shea is his main henchman and spy among the people, Oliver Tobias is the handsome prince and Emma Samms is the beautiful princess, and Puneet Sira is the young urchin who helps the prince. Other actors I knew were Peter Cushing, Capucine, Mickey Rooney, John Ratzenberg, Shane Rimmer, and Art Malik.
There's plenty of typical Arabian adventure stuff going on, sword fighting, magic, flying carpets and it's all happening in a nice bunch of sets and models. It delivers a good story and a nice looking film. Worth a look for those who like an adventure.
The adventure in School Of The Holy Beast is of a different kind. A nasty tale of sexual perversion set in the Christian Church of Japan. It's a 1974 Toei Company pinky violence film that's also called Convent Of The Holy Beast. It's directed by Norifumi Suzuki, he wrote the screenplay with Masahiro Kakefuda.
A woman joins a convent to investigate her mother's death. She finds the place filled with horrible nuns who like punishment way too much. Not happy with self flagellation the Abbess and Vice Abbess beat the shit out of anyone stepping the slightest out of line. Of course it turns out they are worse they their poor victims.
There's plenty of nudity, hitting and blood, topped off with some rape and torture. The male Archbishop is an extra nasty bit of work. Yay, then many of them come to a bad end. I wouldn't much care to see it again. It kind of drags on and I'm not much of a fan of the torture and beatings.
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