Simulated Black Masses are being held for the entertainment of rich modern day Parisians, meanwhile defrocked priest and lunatic Mathis "I am the sword of the Lord" Vogel (Jess Franck) is murdering beautiful young women in the name of God. Within the first opening seconds we see Lina Romay (director Franco's favourite star and real life lover) stark naked, a mere taster of what is to follow. There is female (and some male) full frontal nudity and soft core sex throughout, this is obviously a skin flick first, a horror film second. Jess Franck is really Jess/Jesus Franco, no prize for figuring that one out! One thing I love about him is that he always appears in his movies, usually in a small cameo, but here he takes centre stage playing Vogel. And a fine performance he does deliver. The death scenes are brutal and very gory. We get his trademark zoom shots (including the infamous genital ones), I felt overall that the camera work was pretty good, as is the acting, sets etc. I think you either love Franco or loathe him as a film maker, I'm of the former camp. Demoniac/Exorcism etc etc is by no means a bad Franco movie, he has made better films, he has made far worse too.

If you manage to find the fully uncut version of "Exorcism", then you have "The Sadist of Notre Dame". This has always been one of my favorite Jess Franco achievements. It's obviously not on par with his true classics like "The Awful Dr. Orloff", "Faceless", or "Diabolical Dr. Z", but it's nevertheless a tense and brutal shock-tale. It also features Jess Franco's biggest (and best) acting performance, as the mentally unstable ex-priest Mathis Laforgue who recently escaped from a psychiatric clinic and now dwells the streets of Paris. He sees himself as a redeemer, sent by God to wipe out all that is impure. Laforgue kills prostitutes, horny teenagers, and random partygoers, all whilst claiming he's saving their souls. Always liked this one because it is a cruel exploitation story with nevertheless an uncannily realistic ambiance. Paris is perhaps considered the most beautiful city in the world, but here you only see eerie dark alleys, freaks & outcasts, vile acts of torture and mutilation, and pure perversion.

How many times can you make one movie? Well, if you're Jess Franco, the answer is a bunch, because there's 1975's L'éventreur de Notre-Dame AKA Exorcism which was also remade as the adult Sexorcismes. There's also another cut called Demoniac, because Franco realized that some day weirdos would obsess over his movies online.

Four years later, Franco Xeroxed his own work and added new footage to make this movie, which starts with Mathis (Franco) arriving in Paris and taking his blade to prostitutes and women who enjoy sex to save souls. He was thrown out of priest school because he's insane and attacked a nun, so now he's trying to get his story "The Return of the Grand Inquisitor" published in The Dagger and the Garter magazine.

While meeting with the owner of that sleaze zine, Pierre Franval, Mathis becomes obsessed with a secretary named Anne (Lina Romay) who is a lesbian in love with her roommate Rose, a fact that he learns by being a voyeur and that she also arranges sex-filled fake Black Masses by tying up and torturing a dancer named Nina, who is played by Franco's real-life stepdaughter Caroline Riviere because, well, it's a Jess Franco movie.

Of course, the psychodrama of the Black Mass isn't real, but to Mathis it is, so he becomes the Inquisitor of his fiction, killing everyone and anyone involved. The tradeoff is that while we get some great shots of Franco with Notre Dame behind him, Lina's role is significantly reduced.

I love that Stephen Thrower broke down on the blu ray how this all came to be. The movie comes at a period of life when Franco had been through great change. He'd divorced his first wife Nicole Guettard and, as these things happen, Romay had also divorced her husband Ramon Ardid. After making multiple movies in Switzerland for Erwin C. Dietrich and the death of friend and producer Robert de Nesle, Franco was back in Spain and burned out. Eurocine decided that they could take Exorcism and get production company Triton to pitch in some money to make Las Chicas de Copacapana and Two Spies In Flowered Panties, as well as this movie.

Somehow a slasher movie with not much blood and a sleazy movie without as much sex - yet still full frontal nudity - this is a weird case of a movie that has enough versions that you can just about make your own cut.