This is something completely different from the glossy, romanticised and euphemistic 1956 account of the Cenci drama, completely adjusted to suit a great audience and appeal to popular taste, in an effort as well to 'bowdlerize' the matter, actually suggesting that Francesco Cenci was not murdered at all but really had an accident. In Lucio Fulci's film nothing is hidden or pasted over, but the realism is brutally complete in comprehensively trying to include all the worst details. On the other hand, Francesco Cenci here (George Wilson) is one-sidedly depicted as a complete inhuman monster without any humanity left, which is hardly credible. He was a monster but not entirely inhuman, as he actually moved his children from Rome to protect them against the perils there. Although this film is closer to the truth than the Riccardo Freda film, it is in spite of all its atrocious brutality equally beautifully made and very stylistic at that -- the Rome and environment of 1598 is meticulously recreated with greater success than in 1956, and the rustic scenes are magnificent. Also Beatrice herself (Adrienne LaRussa) is more convincing and even more beautiful here than in the earlier version and makes an unforgettable impression - she is the one you will remember from the film and none of the others.
You could object against the exaggerations here, the film begins with a horrible scene of the count looking on while he lets a man be torn to pieces by furious dogs, and when the rape scene occurs the sound of the furious dogs returns in playback, which is very efficient and an ingenious illustration of a rape scene, so this scene you could forgive, while the torture scenes are more unnecessary and hardly even relevant.
Objections have been raised against Fulci's chronological confusion, the film begins with the preparations for the executions, and after the murder of the count he is shown again in very vivid scenes in flashbacks, culminating with the rape scene, but all this is in perfect order to build up artistic architecture, appropriately ending up by a full explanation of the motive, so this timetrack confusion is rather an advantage than detrimental. Lucio Fulci's film is definitiely a work of art with adorable cinematography all the way, and it is a pity that he didn't make more serious films, as he later declined almost exclusively to horror films, but he certainly had potential for a great director.
Review of The Conspiracy of Torture
