Killer Nun

(1978) *1/2

"This film was based on actual events that took place years ago in Central Europe."

...that absolutely nobody cared about, is the end of that sentence. The Killer Nun follows Sister Gertrude through a series of murders for which she is present, but was obviously incapable of having committed, for various reasons. The film concludes with the unveiling of the real murderer -- Gertrude's nubile lesbian roommate at the nunnery. I promise you I'm not revealing anything by telling you this that you wouldn't have picked up in the first five minutes of this movie. If this movie had ears, it would maybe have heard us groaning, "it's the roommate," 5 minutes in, and then it would say, "oh, you've heard this one before," (if it had a mouth too) and then, mercifully, shut itself off.

Sister Gertrude works as the head nurse at a Catholic Hospital in Brussels. She's not a terribly nice person. She stomps on an octagenarian patient's dentures in the middle of the mess hall; she withholds IV medecine for a critically ill patient until the supervising doctor busts in on her; she enforces strenuous exercise on her charges and reads horrifying passages from the bible while the patients eat dinner. There's a reason why she's such a bitch-queen -- she's recovering from cancer surgery and insists she's still in tremendous pain. Rebuffed in her request for morphine medication, she swipes a ring from a recently deceased patient (unfortunate denture-lady) and sneaks out of the hospital. Donning an outfit that accentuates her rocket-boobies, she heads into the city to pawn the ring and hangs around just long enough for an anonymous sexual encounter before returning to the hospital.

A series of deaths ensue at the hospital. Gertrude is on the scene for all of them, but we know that she couldn't have committed any of them because she's high on morphine for all of them. This movie doesn't really pull out all the stops to create a long list of potental suspects. There's Sister Mathieu, who sleeps naked and professes love for Gertrude and a willingness to do anything for her. And then there's...nope, that's it. That's kind of the central irritation of this movie: it expects us to be stunned at the revelation that Mathieu is behind everything, but doesn't bother to give us any reason to expect otherwise. If this were a Wes Craven movie, Mathieu would be the chick that gets killed 3rd or 4th, in the picture just long enough for you to think, "mmmaybe," before providing a more detailed characterisation of the actual killer. But no, here, it's the perv, case closed.

Things this movie had going for it: well, there was the shot of Gertrude spattered with blood dripping from a murder victim suspended above her from a high vaulted ceiling -- the shot sort of reminded me of that story about the girls in high school who play a prank on their bookish friend, tying a dead hand to a light pull-chain. Also, the actress who played Mathieu is Paola Morra, an Italian Playboy Playmate. There's another nurse on the staff who's pretty hot too. That's about it though. The rest of the movie was a waste of time.