The Conspiracy of Torture

Rome, 1599. Beatrice Cenci is shut in her father Francesco's castle. He is rich, untouchable, and has been raping his daughter for years. Beatrice, her stepmother, her brother and Olimpio, a servant in love with her, kill him. They are caught. What follows is not a trial but a torture room: the confession is taken under torture. The papacy seizes the family's wealth. Beatrice is executed in public in Rome at twenty-two. Lucio Fulci directs the Italian film; ninety-nine minutes, with Adrienne La Russa as Beatrice and Tomas Milian as Olimpio. The case is real; the story of Beatrice Cenci has been told in Italy for centuries, and writers from Shelley to Stendhal took it up. Fulci turns the film squarely against the justice of the Church.