***SPOILERTS***Based of the combination of William Fulkers novels "Sanctuary" and it's shocking sequel "Requiem for as Nun" the film "Sanctuary" has nothing to do with the sanctuary cities now so prominent in the news today but the deep south in the 1920's and how it effected young Temple Drake, Lee Remick, who got caught up with it. Well bread and proper Temple got caught up with the wrong crowd looking for a good time and ended up becoming the local Cajun bootlegger and whore Meister known as the "Candy Man", Yves Montand, woman or main squeeze.
That all became about when Temple's boyfriend and later husband Gowan Stevens, Bradford Dillman,who took her to a backwoods moonshine mill to get her as well as himself drunk passed out and left her to the tender mercies of the Candy Man who forcibly raped her. This is all told in a hour long flashback by Temple to her dad the governor of the state of Mississippi, Howard Saint, in her coming clean with her shoddy past. This all had to do with the upcoming execution of her maid and her infant son's black nanny Odetta, Nancy Mannigoe, who was just convicted of murdering him!
****SPOILERS**** Despite all the sympathy that Temple has for Odetta nothing can make you feel that she doesn't deserve what's coming to her and even Temple in knowing that she in a way was responsible for her son's death can';t really come up with a good excuse to have her father commute her sentence. In fact as we soon find out it was Temple going back to a life of sin with her former lover the Candy Man, who cam back from the dead, that eventually lead to her son's death. As for the saint like OOdetta she was resolved with the fate that awaited her in knowing that the horror of her action, which can be called a mercy killing, in that she did keep Temple from going back to the Candy Man and leaving her family behind that would have ended up killing her and left destroyed both her husband and son'a lives if not killed them altogether.
P.S A bit, to say the least, hard to take back then in 1961 when the film was released and even harder now in 2015 some 50 years later still the movie was ahead of its time in showing the brutality of life in the real world and not opting to have a happy ending as you would have expected it to have.
That all became about when Temple's boyfriend and later husband Gowan Stevens, Bradford Dillman,who took her to a backwoods moonshine mill to get her as well as himself drunk passed out and left her to the tender mercies of the Candy Man who forcibly raped her. This is all told in a hour long flashback by Temple to her dad the governor of the state of Mississippi, Howard Saint, in her coming clean with her shoddy past. This all had to do with the upcoming execution of her maid and her infant son's black nanny Odetta, Nancy Mannigoe, who was just convicted of murdering him!
****SPOILERS**** Despite all the sympathy that Temple has for Odetta nothing can make you feel that she doesn't deserve what's coming to her and even Temple in knowing that she in a way was responsible for her son's death can';t really come up with a good excuse to have her father commute her sentence. In fact as we soon find out it was Temple going back to a life of sin with her former lover the Candy Man, who cam back from the dead, that eventually lead to her son's death. As for the saint like OOdetta she was resolved with the fate that awaited her in knowing that the horror of her action, which can be called a mercy killing, in that she did keep Temple from going back to the Candy Man and leaving her family behind that would have ended up killing her and left destroyed both her husband and son'a lives if not killed them altogether.
P.S A bit, to say the least, hard to take back then in 1961 when the film was released and even harder now in 2015 some 50 years later still the movie was ahead of its time in showing the brutality of life in the real world and not opting to have a happy ending as you would have expected it to have.