Directed by Giulio Berruti
Written by Giulio Berruti and Alberto Tarallo
Starring:
- Anita Ekberg as Sister Gertrude
- Joe Dallesandro as Dr. Patrick Roland
- Alida Valli as Mother Superior
- Massimo Serato as Dr. Poirret
- Paola Morra as Sister Mathieu
Rating: 
Scabrous thematics and religious meltdowns transpire in this tame but still scandalous tribulation of the horny nun genre, the only one of the Nunsploitation films to make it onto the infamous Video Nasties list. Which begs the question: how is it that the most delicate and subtlest of all Nunsploitations was condemned by the modern puritanical inquisition of censorship but not its more extreme and blasphemous counterparts? Perhaps the temerity of being the only one within the notorious nun porn canon to feature a drug-addicted nun as its protagonist was what ultimately further inflamed the conservative sensibilities of Thatcherism; Killer Nun has not two but three strikes that signified an immediate, unassailable inclusion in the list of Video Nasties: it bears the triumvirate of exploitation: sex, violence, and drugs.
Typically, sacrilegious Nunsploitation themes gravitate around sex and violence alone. Killer Nun is the rare exception. “Such grotesque irreverence to make a movie about a nun who is more devoted to sin than to pious virtues!” I’m positive that’s exactly what the self-righteous censors thought when they witnessed an exceptional Anita Ekberg shooting up morphine, oh what a delightful ignominy. Be it truly a film that played the genre correctly or not – be it a killer film or not – its radicalization of something as straightforward as exploitation iconoclasm made into a delirious journey through a nun’s murderous subconscious sets it up as a fascinating if not entirely satisfying entry in the genre.
Instead of ancient convents and medieval superstitions we get a Catholic hospital for the elderly and contemporary prejudices. It is quite possible that this radical alteration of geography, period and politics was deliberate on the part of the filmmakers of Killer Nun so as to render a sort of revisionism of the genre. Mostly the stories of these films take place in Renaissance or medieval Italy, this one is set in a contemporary Italy. Which at first glance may seem mere artistic convenience but in reality alludes to purely contextual issues of the era, hence the drugs as a storytelling – and exploitative – component are present as its modern factor.
Swedish goddess Anita Ekberg plays Sister Gertrude, who suffers from nervous breakdowns due to a delicate brain tumor surgery she underwent. Her sudden tyrannical outbursts and aggressive paranoia lead her to question her reality and her faith as she engenders the fear and hatred of all her patients in the dreary hospital for the elderly where she works. In her daily interactions the only one who is reciprocal to her is the hopelessly infatuated Sister Mathieu (Paola Morra), a sinful and submissive nun in search of the affection of her beloved Gertrude, she is a desperate lesbian. When these well-known narrative patterns in the genre launch a string of blasphemous behavior, Italian director Giulio Berruti’s eccentric, outrageous direction delivers a comprehensive examination of the suffocating religious celibacy, the quintessential motif of the Nunsploitations.
Giulio Berruti keeps the kitsch and vulgar aesthetic tight and cool, and Ekberg’s risqué performance is fittingly histrionic. But it’s a mess of formal pretensions and sensationalist ambitions that never leaves room for sleaze and provocation. The innuendos and the treatment of the murderous subconscious done in a very pretentiously Freudian manner renders annoying ambivalences that do not allow the film to be entirely coherent, much less thrilling. Anita Ekberg’s character acts out of religious guilt and feminine sensibilities, her gestures of delirium and horniness serving as an expression of religious frenzy. It is never made clear, however, whether they act on psychological or theological grounds. Killer Nun is daring for wanting to approach the immorality of the genre with a more baroque methodology than usual, it is more identifiable with gialli procedures to the point of ending in the implausible twist of a whodunnit. That’s part of the perverse fun. Though Killer Nun is clearly infamous, it only manages to shock but not mesmerize.
