Director-producer Sergio Bergonzelli (BLOOD DELIRIUM, IN THE FOLDS OF THE FLESH) is a sort of "loose cannon" of the Italian erotic film industry. Some critics have complained that his movies are weak and incoherent. I believe the latter is sometimes true, but Bergonzelli rarely treads lightly on his subject matter. For instance, CRISTIANA THE DEVIL NUN makes a very strong statement about who should and should not take the vows in the Catholic church.

Cristiana (Magda Konopka) is a free spirit who, with her boyfriend, Luca, shocks the passengers on a commercial airplane by making love in their seats. A nun looks on. A raging thunderstorm threatens to destroy the plane in midair. Cristiana asks God to save them all, and in return she promises to become a nun. Guess what happens?

At the convent, Cristiana is anything but subdued and submissive to God. Raphael, a wild-eyed painter of religious art, asks her to sit for him. "You have an inner heat," he declares. But she says she burns "only for Jesus."

Cristiana dreams of kaleidoscopic sin, such as making love to Luca and the painter. She works her way through the nunnery, content to merrily screw as she goes. Eventually, Luca infiltrates the convent bell tower, and he and Cristiana continue with the same activities that shocked the airplane passengers.

Another nun, Leonora, discovers Luca's hiding place, and the two of them "go down the primrose path to damnation." In an amusingly sleazy moment, Cristiana discovers them together, and a bumbling, apologetic Luca chases Cristiana out of the convent wearing only a black jockstrap, while several wide-eyed nuns look on in horror.

Cristiana runs home to her drunken prostitute mother, who tells her daughter, "You're going to learn everything mom did." A sexually and ideologically liberated Cristiana insists, "I want to start living." She strips for partygoers at a festive bacchanal, and becomes the mistress of a sleazy money launderer named The Professor. Once again, she sits for Raphael, this time for a painting he calls "The Possessed."

The Professor manipulates Cristiana into joining orgies for the benefit of his voyeur clients, and convinces her to go back to the convent to steal a valuable crown from a statue of the Virgin Mary. The caper goes bad and Cristiana attempts to flee the scene unnoticed. You could say her descent into madness does not end well.

Far from being a sober meditation on the verities of sin and salvation, this movie is a riotous camp fest. Featuring a burning toy airplane in the opening sex-and-conversion scene, plus a certain CLOCKWORK ORANGE ambience (e.g., ladies in blue wigs), it's a hands-down sleaze fest of the first order.

The special effects are not great. It starts off in an airliner in which Cristiana is having sex with another passenger in full view of all the other passengers. The airliner rolls, pitches and yaws too quickly to be realistic. Then when one of the engine catches fire the flames seem rather too big and not blown rearwards by the air stream. Whatever caused the plane to do that, Cristiana credits God with sparing their lives and resolves to become a nun. It is a spur of the moment decision she comes to regret, because she is not cut out for the cloistered life. She is the sort of young woman St Paul would have advised to marry rather than attempt celibacy, although keeping her marriage vows would have been a challenge for her. So things do not work out at the convent. She was just not cut out for it. That is what I think happened because the version I saw did not have subtitles.

I quite liked it, despite its crumminess. In the nunsploitation league it is hovering above the relegation zone. I liked what they showed us. There are topless nuns, but sadly no nude nuns.