The Confessional

1976

Horror

8
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 46% · 4 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Spilled 46% · 250 ratings
IMDb Rating 6.3/10 10 1466 1.5K

suicide confession murder priest church catholic church

Plot summary

A troubled young girl goes to confession at the local church. Unfortunately, the sexually frustrated priest she confesses to becomes obsessed with her. At first, the priest stalks the girl, but later it is revealed that he will stop at nothing, including blackmail and murder, just to get close to her.

Director

Pete Walker Photo
Pete Walker

Top cast

Susan Penhaligon Photo
Susan Penhaligon as Jenny Welch
Mervyn Johns Photo
Mervyn Johns as Father Duggan
Andrew Sachs Photo
Andrew Sachs as Man in Church
Stephanie Beacham Photo
Stephanie Beacham as Vanessa Welch
720p.BLU 1080p.BLU
960.01 MB
1280*768
English 2.0
NR
23.976 fps
1 hr 44 min
Seeds 6
1.74 GB
1800*1080
English 2.0
NR
23.976 fps
1 hr 44 min
Seeds 13

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by bloody-3 7 / 10

Charming story

The charming story of a priest.....who murders people! Meet Father Xavier Meldrum from the Church of the Sacred Heart. He uses religious means to bump off his enemies such as a poisoned wafer, incense burner and rosary beads. Splendid performance by Anthony Sharp (remember him as the government minister in A Clockwork Orange?) as the obsessed vicar and a good turn by Pete Walker regular Sheila Keith as a one eyed housekeeper. A well done musical score by Stanley Myers is also featured. Remember this movie the next time you go to confession!
Reviewed by Coventry 7 / 10

Killing in the name of ... Catholism!

Reviewed by world_of_weird 6 / 10

Not one of Walker and McGillivray's best collaborations

Coming hot on the heels of the sleazy HOUSE OF WHIPCORD and the outrageously gruesome FRIGHTMARE, veteran exploitationer Pete Walker and his puckish screenwriter David McGillivray decided to stir up some more mischief, this time aiming their vitriol at the hypocrisy of the Catholic church, with a blackmailing killer priest who uses the tools of his trade (incense burners, rosary beads and communion wafers) to deal out death to non-believers. Given the hoo-hah the Monty Python team caused with LIFE OF BRIAN four years later, you'd have expected the controversy to rage as Pete and David had hoped it would, but HOUSE OF MORTAL SIN barely raised a murmur - most likely because it's a rather dull and restrained affair compared to their earlier exercises in wonderfully hideous terror. Anthony Sharp is fine in the lead as the crazy cleric, alternating between pompous bumbling and trembling mania at the drop of a hat, whilst Susan Penhaligon makes a memorably vulnerable victim, but the film feels too much of a cut-and-paste catalogue of borrowed elements (the mother fixation from PSYCHO, Sheila Keith basically reprising her WHIPCORD role as Sharp's demented housekeeper, the dysfunctional family business from FRIGHTMARE) to really ring true. The set-piece murders are impressive, and the ending is as bleak and as desolate as you'd expect, but the film contains more padding than a cheap mattress and Walker seems to have confused tension with tedium in several scenes. Still, it's entertaining enough for a slow evening.
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