The Killer Nun

The reason I enjoy exploitation films despite many reasons I shouldn’t is because they’re honest and straight-forward wish fulfillment, even if that wish is rather perverse. You wanna see a bunch of naked ladies? Or some extreme violence? Or a lot of cool cars going fast and sometimes crashing? There’s entire exploitation genres for such things. It is therefore probably not surprising that there is an exploitation sub-genre called nunsploitation. It’s exactly what you’d expect. It’s a genre of nuns misbehaving, generally in a sexual way but sometimes in a violent way too. However, while The Killer Nun does some sexy stuff, that’s not the major way their main nun character acts naughty. It’s mostly her abusing senior citizens. But if exploitation films are just wish fulfillment, does that mean that there are people who wanted to see a movie that’s primarily elder abuse? Personally, I kind of doubt it.

The Killer Nun follows Sister Gertrude’s growing drug addiction which causes her to descend into sex, abuse and murder. Things jut sort of happen without lead up because that’s how exploitation films do. It’s less about overarching story and more about immediate moments of interest. Of course, Gertrude and the rest of the nuns at this convent are buxom, beautiful women who wear a full face of makeup and sleep naked. Frankly, I’m not sure that this movie cared about giving an accurate portrayal of nuns.

Obviously, part of Sister Gertrude’s descent into general sin involves her engaging in a lesbian relationship with a fellow nun. It’s not the focus of the story but there are a few scenes of it. I actually do think there was potential for this story line to go somewhere interesting. On the other hand, it’s possible I think this just because these characters are so flat and so little attention is paid to this relationship that it’s pretty easy to input my own story for these characters and not have it be contradicted.

The relationship itself is… not great. Mostly because Gertrude is kind of the worst. It starts in a way that seems positive. The other nun, Sister Mathieu. Mathieu expresses actual love for Gertrude and I did buy it. These characters do at least initially have an emotional connection. After the establishing scene for this relationship though, it’s not brought up again until much later in the movie. The next scene featuring these characters is less positive. Gertrude is angry at Sister Mathieu for sleeping with a male doctor and casts aspersions on Mathieu’s identity of a lesbian. Gertrude then professes her own preference for men before she engages Sister Mathieu in a dubiously consensual sexual encounter that happens off screen. And that’s the last you see of these characters interacting in an overtly queer way.

The fact that the previously mentioned dubiously consensual lesbian nun sex scene happens off-camera is indicative of a major problem I have with this movie, that being that there’s not enough scenes of that perverse wish fulfillment I mentioned earlier. Exploitation films should be unflinching and indeed relish in whatever fucked up stuff they’re putting on screen. By contrast, The Killer Nun feels timid. There’s a heck of a lot of filler in between any scenes of anything interesting or fucked up happenings. If you were going to cut this film down to just it’s actually exploitative bits, it would be a short film and even then, not a particularly extreme one.

The Killer Nun is only listed as a horror movie because it doesn’t really fit into any other category. But this movie is neither scary nor even gross. It’s just unpleasant to sit through because of the scenes of elder abuse. In between those scenes are absolutely tedious filler and little plot to speak of. The Killer Nun is very much a style over substance film. Too bad it’s not particularly stylish.

Overall rating: 4.1/10

Other WLW films in similar genres