Killer Nun
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Killer Nun (Suor Omicidi) (1978) is an Italian nunsploitation film directed/co-written by Giulio Berruti and co-written by Alberto Tarallo. The music is by Alessandro Alessandroni.
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Synopsis
Killer Nun (1978) was produced in Italy. It features Anita Ekberg as Sister Gertrude, who is recovering from neurosurgery, although her Mother Superior (Alida Valli) dismisses Sister Gertrude's fears about rushed recovery. Unfortunately, soon enough, it becomes clear that Sister Gertrude's fears were legitimate, as the hapless nun spirals into psychosis and addiction to morphine and heroin at the geriatric hospital where she works.
As well as initiating a lesbian affair with Sister Matthieu (Paola Morra), Sister Gertrude expels concerned Dr Patrick Roland (Joe Dallesandro) from the hospital, and a reign of terror is initiated, in which Sister Gertrude inflicts humiliating calisthenics on one group of elderly inmates, stomps on an elderly woman's dentures, reads gory hagiographic details of the lives of tortured saints to her hapless charges and is judged to have thrown an elderly man engaged in sex with a nurse out of a window. As if this weren't enough, Sister Gertrude goes into a nearby town, picks up a man at a bar, and has impersonal heterosexual sex as well. Finally, the Mother Superior is convinced that she must do something about the aberrant behaviour of Sister Gertrude...but is she really the perpetrator of murder, or is someone trying to frame her?
Nunsploitation
Killer Nun (Suor Omicida) was an example of the nunsploitation genre, which centres on aberrant secularised behaviour from religious women. Unlike other examples of the genre, usually set in medieval or Renaissance locations, Killer Nun is firmly set in the present day, and has no pretensions to social commentary or any remarks about the role of women religious within church and society. In the United Kingdom, Mary Whitehouse denounced it as one of the "video nasties" subgenre of violent horror cinema, which 'might' adversely affect human behaviour.
Cast
- Anita Ekberg .... Sister Gertrude
- Paola Morra .... Sister Mathieu
- Alida Valli .... Mother Superior
- Massimo Serato .... Dr. Poirret
- Daniele Dublino .... Director
- Lou Castel .... Peter
- Joe Dallesandro .... Dr. Patrick Roland
- Laura Nucci .... Baroness
- Alice Gherardi .... Janet
- Lee De Barriault
- Ileana Fraia
- Antonietta Patriarca
- Sofia Lusy
- Nerina Montagnani .... Josephine
- Franco Caracciolo
United Kingdom Classification Details
English Title:
Killer Nun (UK) (video title)
Runtime: 82 min
Country: Italy
Language: Italian
Color: Color
Sound Mix: Mono
Certification: Germany:18 / Finland:K-18 / Norway:18 / UK:18 / West Germany:18 / Iceland:(Banned)
