They Removed The Tumor...And Her Sanity!

Video Nasty #30

Killer Nun

1979

 

 

FROM THE SECRET FILES OF THE VATICAN!

Original Italian title: Suor Omicidi

Also known as: Deadly Habit

NTSC Running time: 86:47

Directed by Giulio Berruti

Written by Berruti & Alberto Tarallo, from an idea by Enzo Gallo

Produced by Enzo Gallo

Costumes and Wardrobe by Albert Tarallo

Starring: Anita Ekberg, Paola Morra, Lou Castel, and Joe Dallesandro

Body Count: 5

Availability: Region 1 DVD from Blue Underground

BBFC Status

Why it's a Nasty: Gore murders, mostly, but the "blasphemous" tone probably irked people as well.

What was cut: When submitted for classification on March 11, 1993, 13 seconds of cuts were made to a pins-and-scalpel murder sequence.

Current UK status: The cuts were waived for the next submission on April 19, 2006.  Killer Nun now holds an 18 certificate for the uncut version.

UK Availability: Region 0 DVD from Shameless Entertainment.
Killer Nun was seized, but escaped prosecution.

Hope you have a bit of time to watch that video up there, because that's not the trailer.  Grab some snax, lock your door, take the phone off the hook, and enjoy the show.

A veiled nun (we don't see her face) kneels at confession, telling the priest she cannot forgive the man who wronged her.  He tells her she has fallen from grace.  Who is she, and who will she not forgive?

Sister Gertrude (Anita Ekberg) seems at first a bright and cheerful nursing nun, but we soon see that she's having some problems.  After the removal of a benign brain tumor, she's become addicted to morphine and her behavior has grown increasingly erratic.  She berates her elderly charges, smashing one poor woman's dentures in a fit of annoyance.  The patient passes away later that night.  Sister Gertrude has one close friend, her roommate Sister Mathilde (Paola Morra), who works to protect her and professes her love as the women lie nude in their cell.  When Sister Gertrude's physician won't give her any morphine, Gertrude steals jewelry from the dead patient and goes into town to get the drugs herself...but first she captures a man.

Back in the convent, a man is brutally beaten and thrown from a window while Gertrude is nodding out on her morphine high.  Could she be the killer...or is someone trying to frame her?

Giulio Berruti directed this nunsploitation feature under similar conditions to John Carpenter making Halloween: a producer had a catchy title and the director had to do the rest.  Enzo Gallo knew that the well-liked Berruti would be able to secure top-notch talent for rock-bottom prices, so Gallo told him to make a movie called Suor Omicidi and left him to it.  Berruti delivered.  Anita Ekberg (La Dolce Vita, Miss Sweden 1950) is alternately wild, prim, and catatonic.  Joe Dallesandro (Flesh For Frankenstein, other Warhol pictures) comes into the film late and brings his own subtle oomph to the proceedings.  Paola Morra, an Italian Playboy Playmate who had a brief acting career, is the weakest link, but to be fair she was working with longtime actors who knew their craft: Ekberg, Dallesandro, Alida Valli, and Lou Castel all had (in the case of the males, still have) acting careers spanning decades.

Perhaps the most shocking thing about Killer Nun is that it was filmed in an actual convent!  Nuns using drugs, sneaking out for anonymous sex, killing their elderly patients, and having lesbian trysts (offscreen, Berruti chose to leave the lesbian scenes to the viewer's imagination out of respect for Ekberg) are not the stuff that the diocese are likely to condone.  When the church officials requested to review the script, Berruti and a friend knocked out some innocuous scenes in a night and presented the fresh pages as their script.  If anyone happened upon the filming while something salacious was being filmed, the crew would begin behaving as though they were just setting up a shot.  The spectators would get bored and wander off, leaving the production to continue filming.  I believe the technical term for this behavior is BALLS.  Big brass balls.  Guts.  Chutzpah!  To make a movie like this right under the church's nose is audacious and beautiful.  Because this isn't a picture out to ignite any kind of social change, it's just an exploitation film, and a pretty tame one as far as this genre goes.

However, the story was based off of the truth: a Belgian nun was found to have stolen gold and jewelry from her patients, knocking off a few of the more annoying ones in the process.  It's said she'd taken $30,000.  The sex, drugs, and twisted motives were added just because they're fun!

So after you watch it in that little window up there, go buy a legit release of Suor Omicidi.  I'll watch your stuff while you run the errand.  We gotta look out for each other.  Because my name's Justin.  JustinCase.