Still, Sinful Nuns manages to make up for its shortcomings with a completely demented ending that is so wickedly perverse it makes any imperfections in the 90 minutes that precede it worth sitting through.

Esteban and Lucita are victims of the age-old dilemma of forbidden love. Whether they are pioneers or street gangs, hillbillies or aristocrats, the story is always the same -- two families are feuding and members of each family have dared to fall in love. Now, both sides are plotting to stop a forbidden union.

Lucita's parents have stashed her in the Convent of St. Valentine while at the same time, sending men to hunt down Esteban and, of course, siccing the Inquisition on him. C'mon! It's a nunsploitation movie. Don't tell me you didn't see the Inquisition coming?

Wounded in a swordfight, Esteban hides out in the convent while he recovers. Lucita, meanwhile, discovers that everything is not as it seems to be.... Of course, we'd be disapointed otherwise.

Her cellmate, Josefa, is an insatiable nympho who never misses an opportunity to hit on Lucita.

In a bizarre ritual, the nuns strip and flog one of their members. The torturous scene seems to arouse Josefa who takes Lucita's hand and tells her how she wishes she were in the abbess' place.

That night, Josefa is murdered. Who do the nuns find standing over her bloody corpse? Lucita of course. She is brought before the Inquisitor, stripped, strung up and interrogated.

The inquistor's face glows as he talks about the execution he has planned for Lucita.

"I want to make an example of you. We'll take you to Seville to the main square and there, you'll be burned alive, before the whole town. The flames of the stake will revive the flames of our faith."

As Lucita is taken to Seville, the Abbess discovers Esteban's hiding place. Strangely, she doesn't turn him in, but rather, changes his bandage and cares for him.

In a ploy to gain her confidence, Esteban sleeps with the abbess and they rock the casbah all night. His plan fails as she tries to kill him in the morning (with the same dagger used to kill Josefa). Esteban escapes, and goes to Lucita's father for help. Of course, he tries to kill Esteban at first, but calls his men off and agrees to help Esteban in his plan to break Lucita out of prison.

Meanwhile, the Inquisitor discovers the sinful goings on in the Convent of St. Valentine. A mass grave is uncovered in the garden -- the victims of the Abbess' lust.

Then, in the most twisted part of the movie, the Inquisitor issues his judgement upon the abbey.

"Death is only a small thing. You're sins can not be punished by death. Something else is required."

He orders the convent to be sealed up and the nuns to be buried alive. The nuns, Lucita included, dying of starvation, thirst and deprivation, begin spiraling into dementia.

They run around the convent half naked, screaming and wailing. Starving, they try to eat candles and lick moisture from the walls. They fight over imagined scraps of food.

The abbess wallows in her nakedness in her chamber while her servants claw at a perverse graffito of Satan, depicted with a gigantic, snake-like cock.

In the end, of course, Esteban comes crashing through the wall like a swashbuckling Kool-Aid man and saves Lucita from a throng of crazed nuns.

The story is choppy, the pacing is slow, the action is mediocre and the nudity seems more gratuitous than erotic. Even still, I can't help but acknowledge that the Inquistor's punishment on the abbey is so absolutely sick and twisted, I found myself thoroughly amused and willing to forgive the movie for its shortcomings.

If The Sinful Nuns of St. Valentine has any mark to leave on this genre, it is in its perversity. If nothing else, this is a sick and twisted film.