Beatrice Cenci
Italy, 1599. The entire Cenci family awaits their fates on the morning of their execution for murder. Frequent flashbacks show reason why.
Four years earlier: Francesco Cenci (George Wilson) is a rich landowner and nobleman, but is hated by everyone, including his entire family. He's a vicious, conniving, cynical tyrant of the household and a domestic abuser to his wife and children. He also has made numerous enemies within the close-knit halls of the Catholic Church and the state. Francesco's beautiful teenage daughter, Beatrice (Adrienne Laurussa), confides in her mother that intends to take the cloth and enter a convent, as much to escape from her father as for spiritual reasons. When Francesco hears about this, he is enraged and reacts by imprisoning Beatrice in the bowels of the Cenci castle, observing that there is little difference between dungeon and cloister.
Flashing forward back to the present, it is announced that the Cenci patriarch has been killed in a fall from the battlements, an accident which looks suspiciously like murder. Suspicion closes around Beatrice's lover Olimpio (Tomas Milian), who is taken into custody and brutally tortured for information about the slaying.
Flashing back in time, Beatrice is released from her father's dungeon after nearly a year in solitary confinment by Francesco to celebrate news that her two older brothers where killed in war. Beatrice defies the atmosphere the revelry demanded by her abrasive and callous father and attends the party wearing a black funeral dress. A little later, Francisco confronts Beatrice in an upstairs bedroom, and the specter of incest emerges. Beatrice's father drunkenly rips off his daughters black dress and stands swaying over her, dripping sweat into Beatrices exposed midriff. It is finally revealed the motive for Francesco's death: he was raping his grieving daughter.
Beatrice changes drastically after this horror. She coerces her besotted servant, Olimpio, with sexual favors, and embroils him in her desire for revenge. Olimpio is told to seek the assistantce of the local bandit, Catalano (Pedro Sanchez) to exact revenge on her father. Olimpio is not told for what reason he is planning the murder; it is enough for him that his lady lover requires it. When the time comes as Francesco Cenci sleeps, the bandit ducks out, revealing that he is a killer "in reputation only." Olimpio, with a knife raised to stab Francesco, also suddenly backs out saying that he cannot stomach the task of killing. In desperation, Beatrice snatches the knife from Olimpio, and does the deed herself, stabbing her father in the eye, while Olimpio restrains the waking victim before he expires.
Beatrice is vengefully aglow, but Olimpio is stricken with guilt, and wipes his bloody hands on the bedstead. Beatrice calls in her stepmother to help her clean up the mess and gets her little brother (Antonio Casagrande) to help her carry the dead Francesco onto the ramparts of the castle to throw him off to make it look like an accident. Beatrice uses their silent compliance to ensure future denials.
Flashing forward back to the present, the whole Cenci family is implicated in the murder either as participants or accessories and under Church law, they are condemned to death. The bandit Catalano is murdered by soldiers when he attempts to escape after he attempts to kill one soldier on horseback and in return, is lanced to death. Cardinal Lanciani (Raymond Pellegrin) attempts to wring a statement implicated Beatrice from Olimpio, who has been repeatedly tortured to extract his confession about the Cenci family's involvment. But Olimpio maintains Beatrice's innocence in the crime until he dies from his wounds. The planned execution begins causing great unrest among the people of Rome who feel that Beatrice was justified in killing her father who besmirched her honor. The Pope decides to absolve Beatrice Cenci of her sins but only after she is beheaded along with the rest of her family. He belives that an absolution will clear the air by making Beatrice a martyr. This horrendous duplicity exposed, the movie ends as Beatrice and the rest of her family are led out of their cells into the prison courtyard for their execution.
