Ratings
Film
6/10
Video
5/10
Audio
6/10
Extras
5/10
Overall
6/10
DVD Details
Distributor:
Shameless

Running Time:
83 mins approx

DVD Release Date:
26th November 2007

DVD Country:
United Kingdom

Screen Format:
1.85:1 Anamorphic PAL

Discs / Sides / Layers:
1 / 1 / Single

Soundtracks:
English 2.0

Subtitles:
English(for Italian inserts)

Special Features:
A Nun Speaks (Interview with Anita Ekberg)
Trailers
Film Details
Certificate:
18

Country:
Italy

Directed by:
Giulio Berruti

Starring:
Anita Ekberg
Lou Castel
Alida Valli
Joe Dallesandro
Laura Nucci

Genre(s):
Cult
Exploitation
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Killer Nun (1978)
Region 0 DVD Video Review
19-11-2007 18:00  |  6292 views   |   John White   |   My Other Content   |   Other content for "Shameless Films"
 

The Film


I have to admit that nuns make me uneasy. The other day I bumped into a nun and I became like a bunny in the headlights whilst I was in her presence. Every possibly blasphemous or unkind thing I had said during that day ran through my head and I am sure that my eyes read like guilt incarnate as I attempted small talk with the good sister. Of course I realised I was being a doofus but only after she'd left the room when I started to think that it's just a woman in a uniform rather than anything more awesome or awful. It made me more comfortable to find something weird or pathetic about her vocation, something that made her obvious display of faith a little less intimidating to me.

The Killer Nun is a film which gives you plenty to remind you that handmaidens of the lord are in fact as human, and in this case venal, as the rest of us. Anita Ekberg, yep the statuesque one from La Dolce Vita, is Sister Gertrude, a nursing nun recovering from brain surgery and suffering incredible headaches that she can't get taken seriously. As the matron figure of her Catholic nursing home, her bad temper and outbursts have become unavoidably obvious, and after one rant at a frail OAP she reduces the woman to cardiac arrest. She realises that she needs more morphine to control the pain and soon a libidinous trip to the city is planned. Once in civvies, she is smoking, drinking and picking up men in bars for a quickie. On her return, more patients start to die and the only one who seems to care is her besotted colleague, Sister Mathur. Soon the patients believe that Gertrude is polishing them off like so many jelly babies and her blackouts get worse as her morphine addiction increases.

 


Supposedly based on a true story from Belgium, there is very little in Killer Nun that should be taken as gospel or morality tale. This is particularly obvious in the dialogue - whether it is the English dub that gives the film lines like “Come on Bishop, it's time to get up”, “Ride it like a jockey” and best of all “Flaunting your big floppy breasts at me”, the impact on the viewer can only be to see it all as a bit tongue in cheek. Some of Sister Gertrude's outbursts are also unintentionally funny as when she takes umbrage at an OAP's false teeth being left on the dinner table and extracts said teeth only to stamp on them. It is not surprising that after a few similar tantrums and a number of dead bodies, her patients are soon on hunger strike.

Like a lot of seventies Italian exploitation, part of the guilty pleasure for the genre fan is seeing how far the iconic have fallen. Lou Castel, a man who once inspired the likes of Visconti, Chabrol, Fassbinder, early Wim Wenders and Marco Bellochio, cameos as the only patient south of fifty. Similarly, Alida Valli of The Third Man, Pasolini and Hitchcock provides another of her austere matronly stereotypes to go with her role in the previous year's Suspiria. But the real testament to cinema's fickle ways is Ekberg, who once embodied all the virtues of womanhood in Fellini's masterpiece and here has fallen into an older seedy voluptuousness of girl on girl action and heroin addiction. To compound the indignity, her voice has even been dubbed out of the film.

 

Killer Nun is a piece of sleaze which is hard not to enjoy for its mucky shenanigans, crazy logic and silly premise. It'll cause you to laugh at its cheesiness – a particularly funny high angle nuns in formation shot opens the film – but you'll watch it through and feel happy that you did. Exploitation fans will get their fill here and the next time I see a nun, I'll have this memory of human frailty to keep things in perspective. Killer Nun is entertaining with its sexpots in habits, and should not be taken seriously under any circumstances.



The Disc


Shameless release Killer Nun on an all region(including region 8) single layer disc. The film is presented uncut with some fanfare mentioning its former place on the video nasties list and the re-insertion of scenes cut by the producers, these scenes are in Italian with English subs. The transfer is close to 1.85:1 and is in anamorphic wide-screen. The video quality is fair to good with the film exhibiting a lot of noise in the night time sequences and having a softness and lack of detail which I assume that the BU release does not. Contrast seems a little high, I had to turn mine down some way and the colours are a little cold overall but this is the kind of film that UK genre fans have had to import before and this compares well with the kind of product that labels like X-rated Kult provide. The audio track does exhibit clicks, pops and hum at times with very minor distortion, but dialogue is clear if dubbed a little haphazardly. The inserted scenes with Italian language and English subs jar a little but the subs are clear and easy to read.

Shameless have an interview with Ekberg as their coup here. It is very short despite being well padded with clips from the film as Ekberg talks about her career post Fellini and her struggle against typecasting. Her comments on the film are merely expositional and offer some background to the true life inspiration, but the only real nugget is her fury at being dubbed. We also get the trailer for this film as well as Shameless's releases of New York Ripper, Black Cat, Torso, Venus in Furs, Baba Yaga and Phantom of Death.

Shameless' disc presentation uses static menus carrying on the Giallo theme of their box art and their piracy warning is original - “Be a good neighbour or else...”!


Summary


If you shop around you can get this for eight of your English pounds and despite the visual quality not scaling the same heights as BU's does, I am inclined to say this is a rather good deal. Shameless deserve your support as UK companies have criminally overlooked many Italian exploitation classics and now there is a company for those of us like a bit of sex and violence. Fun movie, ok disc.



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