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Review

One would be hard pressed to think of another film title that so bluntly and simply conveys everything you need to know about the movie in question … and yet, Killer Nun is actually considerably stranger and more outrageous than even its elegantly extreme moniker might indicate. Featuring a cast that resembles a Euro-cult all-star team, this 1978 Italian shocker takes its time before eventually adhering to the rules of the giallo (literally “yellow,” the name given to Italian murder mysteries), but the film also functions as a lurid and often darkly comic portrait of a nun on the verge of a nervous breakdown – a storyline which often seems largely incongruent with the film’s thriller plotting. Anita Ekberg, looking less La Dolce Vita and more La Lane Bryant by this point in her career, stars as Sister Gertrude, a sadistic nun whose various neuroses, hypochondriac fits and outbursts of cruelty have a habit (um, sorry…) of interfering with her control over the psychiatric hospital she manages. Gertrude’s perfectly understandable fondness for booze, morphine and casual anonymous sex with strangers threatens to send her off the deep end … but still, could she be responsible for the gruesome patient murders that are also plaguing the hospital? If you actually wind up asking that rhetorical question while watching the film, then this is apparently the first murder mystery you’ve ever seen, and indeed, the giallo elements are actually of secondary interest (though the murder sequences – particularly a notably grisly sequence involving needles that could give Audition a run for its money – are stylishly and sadistically well-executed). Killer Nun is more compelling as a trashy anti-clerical character study of a frustrated nun’s struggles with morality and sin – Gertrude’s sexual escapades, however, pale in comparison to her disciplining of an elderly woman with dentures, in a sequence that must stand as one of the most unintentionally hilarious and outré moments in any European exploitation film. While Killer Nun delights jaded cineastes with its tawdry excesses, the film is also fascinatingly uneven: striking, artfully composed images alternate with sloppily edited sequences and occasionally unflatteringly flat cinematography. Director Giulio Berruti is interviewed on the DVD, and he comments on the oddly disjointed nature of the film’s production, in both content (the producer sought to make the film an accurate depiction of the real-life events upon which it was based, a story Berruti admits was of little interest to him), and construction (shooting in an actual convent, the filmmakers had to hide the nature of the film from the church, which involved bringing shooting to an abrupt halt whenever an actual nun or priest would materialize). Berruti would only direct once more, but he was still able to assemble a stellar cast for Killer Nun, which is also one of the film’s strengths: in addition to Ekberg, the film also features Alida Valli, Lou Castel, and Warhol stud Joe Dallesandro, whose laughably improbable portrayal of a doctor easily trumps Jennifer Lopez’s psychotherapist in The Cell for most unbelievable career depiction in a genre film. One more thing: co-star Paola Morra, apparently an Italian Playboy model of the day, should have appeared (nude) in every film made in Italy during this era, but sadly, did not.