The Killer Nun

great movie

source: The Killer Nun

I found Killer Nun to be a great nun-exploitation horror film. It was originally banned in The UK, and was banned in Italy upon it's release. It is about a morphine addicted nun who is sliding into madness, The head nurse & nun in a hospital, finds that Sister Gertrude's increasingly psychotic behaviour to be a danger to the staff and patients around her. She starts to torture some poisoner's in the hospital, breaks an old woman's false teeth, and also stalks the young nuns in the convent for some kinky sex, and lesbianism, I found it to be quite a shocking film to watch in certain parts. I would recommend this film to other viewers to watch, as long as they can take the content of the film.

Here is a rather fun and quite distasteful film about a nun (Anita Ekberg) and her spiral into insanity. I was rather surprised by this movie as I am not a big fan of nunsploitation, but, this movie was a rather hilarious attempt at being dead serious. Anita Ekberg plays Sister Gertrude, a nun who apparently had brain surgery before the movie starts. She is now working in a hospital with geriatrics and crippled patients. Right away we realize that the sister is not all there in the head as she is addicted to morphine and is sleeping with men on the outside of the hospital. Only one other nun working in the hospital realizes what she is doing, but, doesn't lift a finger to stop it. When patients start mysteriously dying it looks like Sister Gertrude may have slipped completely over the edge. Some of the positives of the movie is that it has a great soundtrack and some truly good acting from the lead characters. The story is a bit predictable, but, that is all OK as the movie is rather entertaining. We have some truly hysterical moments as well! Look for a scene in which Sister Gertrude smashes an old ladies dentures on the floor! Also, for you gorehounds out there, we have very little in this movie. We do have several disturbing kills, but, nothing gory. I think it is funny how movies like this were made in the 70's. It was truly a great time in exploitation cinema. A movie like this wouldn't dare be made now-a-days. I would certainly check this movie out if you are a fan of exploitation. It is well worth the time. 8/10

This is a bizarre but awesome Nunsploitation film, although the ending was very confusing!. The Story is is very engrossing, and the film really keeps you guessing, plus Anita Ekberg is fantastic in this!. This isn't a very popular film, however i think it is a great sleazy classic, that i throughly enjoyed, and while it's rather tame, i still enjoyed it very very much, plus it did have a couple of shocking scenes. The character development is surprisingly good, and it actually did have a cool plot to it, plus all the women were very good looking for the most part. What i really liked about this film was how it kept you guessing, and a few of the death scenes, were quite graphic, plus i really dug the setting as well. This is a bizarre but awesome Nunsploitation film, although the ending is very confusing, i consider it to be a must see!. The Direction is great.Giulio Berruti does a great job here, with very good camera work good angles, keeping the film unpredictable, and keeping it at an engrossing pace. there is a bit of blood and gore. We get a very gory surgery scene,someone is beaten with a lamp,graphic fall victim,gory corpses,pin in the eye, pins in the face,slit wrist, gory marks on arm from drugs and more!.The Acting is very good. Anita Ekberg is fantastic here, she plays the psycho Nun very well, is sexy, unpredictable, and really did a fantastic job overall!. Paola Morra is hot!, and does fine with what she had to do. Alida Valli is good in her screen time and added class to this. Massimo Serato is good as the old doc. Joe Dallesandro is okay as the doc but his role really wasn't that memorable. Overall a must see!. **** out of 5

Anita Ekberg made this film in the late 1970s, just when her career was in dire need of a boost. Well I've got some bad news for Ekberg fans, this isn't the star vehicle that any of you were looking for. In fact, it's pretty weak. There was a plot, but it wasn't that great. The directing was alright, but most of the production value on the film was merely mediocre. Ekberg plays a middle aged nun who works for a Catholic hospital somewhere in Europe. She has recently had a brain tumor removed and was told that she made a complete recovery. Ekberg has her doubts because she finds herself acting in bizarre ways. There are several murders at the hospital that Ekberg believes she was responsible due to her changing mental condition. The only person who seems to know about her problems is her roommate/lesbian lover. The plot isn't very difficult, and the twist is predictable. Look for Joe Dallesandro of "Flesh for Frankenstein" fame (his voice is dubbed, so we don't get to hear the Jersey accent), and some mild lesbian action. Other than that, it's really not worth bothering with.

*SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* "Killer Nun" baby. What a title. I couldn't resist. I was helpless. A nun. Who's a killer! Had to see it. Unfortunately "Killer Nun" was too good a title. It couldn't live up to the high sleaze bar it had set for itself. The main nun, Sister Gertrude, (Anita Ekberg), does not get naked. She wasn't a young nun but she still had it going on. She was looking good. So Gertrude works in a hospital. She is also addicted to morphine. Patients start ending up dead. Gertrude is suspected of being a killer nun. Her young nun roommate tries to console her. She also gets naked a lot and longs to be with Gertrude. In a good scene, Gertrude says that she'll only make love to a woman if she's wearing silk stockings. But once again, the movie falls short and no nun sex scene. Rats. All in all, not too exciting. If the point of a "nunsploitation" movie is to see women dress as nuns and be sexual, this movie falls flat.

I first became aware of this via the Blue Underground DVD, though I was not intrigued enough by the online reviews to acquire it; however, coming my way recently while being in a "Nunsploitation" frame-of-mind, I could not very well let the opportunity pass me by (in hindsight, the English dubbing is atrocious – even if the print reverted for a couple of brief scenes to the original Italian language). I have never been a fan of voluptuous Anita Ekberg and watching her as a demented, dope-addicted and sex-starved nun promised non-stop camp; with this in mind, obscure director Berruti lent the proceedings a matching deliriousness – but, alas, the end result is considerably less than the sum of its parts. The rest of the cast is interesting but, apart from Paola Morra – who, perhaps not to give the game away too early, effectively underplays her role as Ekberg's devoted 'room-mate' (incidentally, she would don the habit again that same year for Walerian Borowczyk's BEHIND CONVENT WALLS), clearly operating below-par: Joe Dallessandro (completely out of his element as a young doctor whom Morra effortlessly manages to keep in check at the climax – if you get my drift), Alida Valli (literally phoning in her performance as the Mother Superior), Lou Castel (as a nosy crippled patient) and Massimo Serato (as the irascible elder doctor who, however, continually cuts Ekberg's clumsiness some slack because she was the most valuable assistant he ever had!). Mildly interesting is the fact that THE KILLER NUN is book-ended by two confessional scenes (the second of which abruptly terminates the film without a proper resolution!) in which each of the protagonists spit out their hatred of the male species; for what it is worth, though clearly unbalanced and given to foul-mouthed outbursts, Ekberg is not the homicidal sister of the title but a victim of circumstance and rejected affection. Noted for its blending the "Nunsploitation" genre with the typical Giallo formula, these elements ought in fact to have made for a doubly enticing proposition; yet the two styles never properly jell, so that the film is too often ludicrous as opposed to gripping (much less scathing). In its favor, we do get Alessandro Alessandroni's score – which has an agreeable 'hard rock' vibe to it particularly redolent of Led Zeppelin's music! Unsurprisingly, the film is most memorable when it goes over-the-top – such as the irate Ekberg crushing an old patient's dentures under her feet (with the latter expiring soon after!), all the murder set-pieces but especially the one where a nurse has needles painfully stuck in her face (years before Takashi Miike!), and its two risible sex scenes (an old wheelchair-bound patient being serviced out in the rain by a young nurse and Ekberg herself picking up a man at a café and then making love in the corridor of his apartment-building).

Far better than I remember thinking on my first viewing but that was a while ago and now I think of it one of my first in this field. Probably not a good one to encounter first because it really is such a strange one. Pretty surreal with nuns drifting down corridors, gowns splayed out behind and the dreams, imaginings and nightmares punctuated with goring killings and lusty couplings. Ekberg is fine but so is everybody and they all play weird so that this also helps to give the film an unreal feel even though it is firmly set in a convent and supposedly based upon a true case. A stand out moment is the crushing underfoot of the poor old lady diner's false teeth, as we cut from the vicious trampling to the squirming old lady, hands to her mouth. Music is pleasant enough and effective if a little derivative and if Dallesandro seems the most normal person on the screen that just goes to show something about this true one off.

I have long wanted to see Killer Nun. The basic premise of a psychotic nun, plus the promise of some naughty goings-on in the convent, appealed to my baser instincts. I'd also heard it had some kind of 'cult' status. This isn't always a sign of quality, but usually means a film with an interesting style. I regret to say this film isn't even bad enough to be good or funny, it's just a mess. What could have been suspenseful or thrilling is simply thrown away by poor character development and wooden acting (although the crude English dubbing doesn't help). Some situations are frankly unbelievable, such as Sister Gertrude having a 'day out' as a hard-drinking swinger before returning to her cell with an illicit stock of morphine. As for eroticism, I would have expected rather more than some very brief nudity, even in 1978. To cap it all the ending is unforgivably confused - who *was* the killer nun? Unfortunately I can't bear to sit through this again to find out.