This Jess Franco flick, originally entitled Il Trono di Fuoco, stars Christopher Lee as the evil judge and the beautiful Maria Rohm as the object of his obsession and lust. It is yet another example of authority figures using witchcraft as an excuse to murder, rape and torture. This time the setting is, as near as I can tell, England at the end of the 17th century when William of Orange invaded and deposed the Catholic King James. But who cares about the history, let's talk GIMP.

I was unable to manage any screen caps for this movie, but Ralphus stepped in and provided me with copious excellent images to illustrate my review. There are also entries in the Torture Rack Scenes Database and the Whipping Scenes Database (unless these end up in those databases as well).

About 13 minutes into the movie, Margaret Lee, playing Alicia Gray, is tortured on the rack. There is no nudity. She is stretched and screams quite a bit, she is branded on the chest with a hot iron, and she is slashed with a knife. The scene lasts just short of 3 minutes from beginning to end. There is a clip of the rack scene on YouTube as well.

About 20 minutes in, Alicia is sort of burned at the stake. She is tied to a tall ladder device and we see her struggle weakly as smoke rises up around her face, but there are no flames and she doesn't really look like she's burning. Her sister pays the executioner to end her life quickly, so he whacks the support and the ladder device falls forward onto a burning pyre. It doesn't take a geometry genius to figure out that if a vertical pole of height x falls forward onto a pyre at position y which is at a right angle to the base of the pole, then that pyre could not have been directly under the pole to begin with. But the rising smoke made for a passable BATS if you have a vivid enough imagination.

At the 30 minute mark we are treated to a sex scene featuring full frontal nudity from Mary (Maria Rohm) as she rolls in the hay with her paramour. She has a 70s bush. The scene lasts about a minute and a half.

There is an attempted rape at the 40 minute mark. Mary has been led to an inn under false pretenses and the guy who brought her attempts to get frisky. There is struggling, she is pushed to the floor, she gets up and runs away, she is grabbed and pushed to the floor again, and she pushes him off and into the fireplace where he burns his face as she escapes. No clothes tearing and no nudity, just some rough struggling. It runs about a minute.

The same guy roughs up another woman, Sally (played by Diana Lorys), at the 55 minute point. He grabs her roughly and pushes her to the floor, slaps her, kicks her, straddles her and chokes her, bangs her head against the floor, and attempts to crush her windpipe using a plate until she tells him what he wants to know. No clothes tearing. No nudity. Another 1-minute scene.

There is about 30-second dungeon montage which is the judge having a nightmare. There is a brief bit where a woman's tongue is ripped out of her mouth, and another woman in a stocks, but the camera is just basically panning.

At the 1 hour and 11 minute point we start the Best Dungeon Scene of the Movie. Sally (Diana Lorys) is AOH whipped.

A few minutes later, at the 1 hour and 16 minute mark, we get the Second Best Dungeon Scene in the Movie. We start by watching the AOH whipping and branding of a fully nude woman.

Mary is chained to the wall.

She is released, and forced to lick the naked body of the AOH woman. She licks the back of her legs and her butt, the front of her legs, her hairy crotch, her belly, and her breasts. It is a 3 minute licking job, and it is kind of hot in a humiliation sort of way.

Also, if you watch this on Netflix Streaming, at the beginning of the scene it switches to German with English subtitles. Maybe this bit was cut from the English language version and some enterprising perv spliced it back together using the uncut German language version. Whatever the reason, it is awesome and besides, she isn't talking while she's licking anyway.

Immediately following the licking scene, Mary is forced to strip naked and is bathed in a tub, then redressed. The stripping, bathing, and dressing takes 2 minutes and Maria Rohm's lovely naked body is fully on view the entire time.

The final scene is technically a rape scene. Mary submits to the carnal desires of the judge in exchange for sparing her paramour's life. She starts out laying on her back, fully clothed. The judge slowly opens her blouse to expose her breasts. He fondles her toes and moves his hand very slowly up her legs, pushing her dress up as he goes. Eventually we get a glimpse of her bush as he continues feeling her up. The entire time we watch as Mary gasps and struggles not to cry in her shame. We don't get to see any sex, however, we just hear the breathing and gasping get louder. It is as effective a non-consensual sex scene as it can be with a passive victim and no actual sex.

That's it for the GIMP.

This movie also featured Maria Schell as a blind witch. Her part was inconsequential, GIMP-wise, in this movie.

This is an enjoyable Jess Franco flick, with attractive women and some decent GIMP along the way. A rack scene, a lame burning at the stake scene, a whipping scene, a humiliation forced lesbian licking scene, and a sort of rape scene that at least qualifies as non-consensual. Since they didn't have electricity back then we didn't get an electro scene, but we did get a branding or two, which was as close as they could come, I guess. That's not bad. I will give this a solid B.