The genre was supercharged by two major influences: the sensationalist media coverage of real-life exorcisms (which inspired William Friedkin's The Exorcist ), and Ken Russell's 1971 masterpiece The Devils . While a more artful film, The Devils presented a vision of hysterical nuns engaging in mass sexual deviancy under the thumb of a tyrannical priest, becoming a direct stylistic and thematic blueprint for dozens of low-budget imitators—including this one.