Nude Nuns With Big Guns
Director: Joseph Guzman
Cast: Asun Ortega, David Castro, Perry D’Marco
Review by Brian M. Sammons
This is an example of the title being so much better than the actual movie. Come on, how can you not love a movie called Nude Nuns With Big Guns? Well when it’s rather boring, that’s how. This flick can be so dull at times that all the naked ladies (and there are a bunch of those here), the few naked guys (for the ladies and dudes who are into that), and all the people getting shot by a vengeful nun with a collection of big guns can’t save this movie from just sort of being a chore to sit through. I know, going into this film I expected it to be a lot of things, but boring sure wasn’t one of them.
So is this latest modern day attempt to cash in on the grindhouse nostalgia wave ushered in by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino when they released their fan-appreciated, but financially bombing, double feature Grindhouse in 2007, a complete wash, or can some giggles and ogles be found in this uneven movie? Well grab your habit and your .44 Magnum and let’s find out.
The story begins with a bus full of nuns driving through the desert so that the priest in charge can sell some drugs to a skevy looking couple of bikers. When it is discovered that a package of drugs has been stolen by one of the nuns, the leader of the bikers, Chavo, shoots all the nuns except Sister Sarah. The priest, in order to make things up to the bikers, gives the nun to the bikers who quickly turn her into a drug addicted whore right out of Thriller: A Cruel Picture. Continuing the rip-off … I mean “homage” of that Swedish cult classic, Sister Sarah gets a message from God during a drug trip and soon turns into a nun of vengeance! She goes after the gang that turned her out and the entire Catholic Church that seems to do nothing but produce and sell drugs.
What follows is lots and lots of nudity, as pretty much every woman in this movie gets naked in some degree, ranging from popping their tops to full frontal. If you’re a fan of that, rejoice as this movie delivers the NUDE part of its title in spades. As for the BIG GUNS, the violence here comes in two varieties. There are at least three prolonged rapes (two are of nuns, and one is a very old nun) so if that turns you off, as it very well should, then know that before you go into this movie. As for the titular guns, their use is far less graphic and that’s not a good thing for gorehounds like me. Sadly the nun’s rampage of revenge is mostly resigned to blood splattering on walls or pretty fake looking CGI bullet holes.
CGI blood effects, my old nemeses, oh how I loathe thee.
Sorry about that, back to Nude Nuns which has lots of nudity but rather disappointing violence. Perhaps the blackest mark against it is that it’s just boring. A grindhouse movie should be many things, but boring shouldn’t be one of them. Even with all the gratuitous nudity and violence in this flick, I found myself checking the time again and again, wondering when this movie would be over. It had none of the crazy zaniness that other recent grindhouse-inspired movies had. But it did have a lot of the tedium that quite a few of the original exploitation flicks from the ’70s and ’80s had, so kudos for “keeping it real” I guess.
That is not to say that everything is bad here. The movie isn’t really horrible, just sort of monotonous. It had a sort of good idea with nun version of Thriller, a great title, and surprisingly at least one actor who was entertaining as hell. David Castro, whom I’ve never seen before, was wonderfully icky as the murderous, insane leader of the bikers. Whenever he was on the screen he easily stole the show. Then there was the look of the avenging nun, with her white habit and crisscrossed with gun belts, that looked totally badass. Sadly these good parts added together could not a great whole make.
To top off this rather lackluster stab at over the top cinema, the Blu-ray from Image Entertainment is very lacking in the extras department. There is only a trailer (yay) and a three minute short film also called “Nude Nuns with Big Guns.” However, the entirety of that short film was worked into the larger movie as a scene where the killer nun seduces a lesbian bad girl in order to make good her escape. The scene (and therefore the short movie) isn’t bad, but since you’ve already seen it if you watched the feature film, it makes its inclusion here as the only extra unnecessary, disappointing, and a bit of an insult. To be fair, the HD transfer of the movie looks great, but even that might be a bit of too good looking for its own good. Grindhouse movies really shouldn’t look this good. I’d rather the film had some of the faux grain and crappy film quality that made the Grindhouse and Hobo With A Shotgun movies look the part. But then that could just be me.
Nude Nuns With Big Guns took a shot, missed the target, but it was not a huge miss. If it would have had more going for it, or perhaps been a little shorter, it would not have outstayed its welcome so much and have been better overall. As it is, I can only recommend this one to the most diehard fans of nunsploitation films, revenge films regardless of quality, or complete collectors of the modern grindhouse movement.
