Video Nasty #23 : Killer Nun

Synopsis: When patients at a religious hospice start dying somewhat prematurely Sister Gertrude is the prime suspect; her rule has become increasingly dictatorial and she suspiciously blacks out before every death. Doubting her own sanity, Gertrude can only find solice in mental torture of the patients, large helpings of self-medicated morphine and humiliating her doting and obsessive lesbian roommate. Is Gertrude being framed or is she really the Killer Nun?

No. It's the lesbian roommate, stupid.

Killer Nun is one of many nunsploitation movies, following a sister's fall from grace into a secular swamp of feminism, lesbianism, sadism and murder (If there was ever a film genre that was named before a film existed, it has to be Nunsploitation). I'd guess that the sexualised element is clearly playing to man’s apparent desire for a good girl gone bad, after all, nun to scum is more of a moral swing than Harold Shipman doing a fun run for Help the Aged.

Given the bluntness of the title I expected Killer Nun to be a fun throw-away movie with some unsubtle criticism of religion, the later presumably leading to its treasured place on the video nasty black list. Instead, I got a dull trashy movie that didn't work on any level; the script meanders, the kills would only mildly excite a gerontophobe and the sex scenes are about as erotic as a scat movie narrated by Werner Herzog.

Gertrude, the nun recovering from potentially botched neuro surgery is played reasonably well by Anita Ekberg, but the script gives her little to do other than look distressed, confused and angry, mostly in that order, ad nauseam. Gertrude's nihilistic fall from grace leads to some incongruous but bizarrely entertaining scenes, such as Gertrude smashing on an elderly woman's false teeth during dinner, and later forcing her lesbian roommate to wear nothing but stockings and repeat the phrase 'i'm the worst kind of whore'. Gertrude's dictatorial treatment of the patients is one of the more interesting aspects of the film, especially as the patients appear to have complete contempt for their self-appointed guardians' religion. Unfortunately, like anything potentially interesting in the film this falls along the wayside in favour of the suprisingly dull murder mystery.


One would think that the taboo of a nun murdering her flock would be interestingly subversive, but the lack of inventiveness and visual flaire reduces most of the kills to something that wouldn't look out of place in an episode of murder she wrote. It's clear that the protagonist is being framed, and the heavy handed attempts at misdirection to implicate Gertrude are transparent and tired.

Despite the promise of its explosive title, Killer Nun is a disappointing movie that fails to effectively exploit all the interesting ideas a morphine addicted, lesbian, murdering nun raises. To be honest, i'm mostly disappointed that I didn't manage to fit a 'kick the habit' pun into the review.