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In 1866, Gustave Courbet painted The Origin of the World, a portrait of a woman’s nude torso and exposed vagina that still possesses the capacity to shock the straitlaced. On one level, the painting proves pretty definitively that there’s a fine line between a timeless work of art and a beaver shot. On another, it provides a convenient precursor for the cinematic sensibility of Spanish maverick Jess Franco, who seemingly never met a pussy he didn’t want to zoom unabashedly in on. This holds especially true for Lorna the Exorcist, wherein the female genitalia play a significant thematic as well as aesthetic role.

For what it’s worth, the film bears only the slightest passing resemblance to the William Friedkin classic that it’s ostensibly ripping off. Both films focus on a character located on the cusp between childhood and womanhood (though here she’s a bit of...