Nunsploitation pt. III (666 Movies)

School of the Holy Beast

Dark Habits

Bless you, dear readers. Hold your rosaries and prepare your Hail Mary’s as you read this: we have reached the 666th films to be viewed and reviewed on this holy blog. And as blasphemous as it may be, I felt that I could only celebrate this milestone with films that are an affront to all things good, graceful, and godly. I contemplated a few different possession films, as “666” is famously the mark of the devil and the number of the beast, but apart from The Exorcist and its many parodies, I don’t particularly care for the possession genre. The history and premise of demonic forces being tied to “666” is not strictly biblical, but as with many man-made fears, it was the Christians that really popularized this idea. I don’t have time to get into this rather fascinating history of numbers and their connection to Satan, but I do have time to watch other kinds of heretical cinema. We gather at this holy blog for another‍ ‍round of nunsploitation films—a subgenre of exploitation that I am learning to love more and more—from its salaciously exaggerated Italian roots to its modern, more mainstream iterations. Though I had a sampling of nun nonsense with my viewing of The Trouble With Angels back in February, it’s somehow been three years since my last proper nunsploitation excursion. I randomly love this subgenre, and perhaps this is my privilege and skewed taste as someone who didn’t really grow up religious at all, but I just think nuns are kind of badass—fictional or otherwise. I enjoy nunsploitation so much, in fact, that I watched a third film this week, Ms. 45, which wound up not being nunsploitation at all, but rather a violent rape-revenge film wherein the anti-heroine just so happens to wear a nun costume for about 15 minutes of the film (which was nun enough for me, but I digress.) This is a surprisingly dense, illustrious, and diverse subgenre of film, full of creatively godless concepts that would make any actual nun blush. The depiction of weed-smoking sisters in Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another (inspired by the real-life Sisters of the Valley) proves that nuns can do many things and take many forms in this day and age, but tonight’s two international portrayals of sinful sisterhood—from another day and age—really push the limits of what “sinning” can look like.

Up first is a film so shockingly sexualized and scandalous that it made me think, why can’t all porn have this good of a script? This is Norifumi Suzuki’s 1974 film School of the Holy Beast. Also sometimes titled The Transgressor, this film introduces us to an 18 year old woman named Maya, who, after a fabulous day of riding around Japan on her boyfriend’s motorcycle, declares that she’s had enough fun for now. Her ominous message becomes more clear when we see Maya, donned in a super cute mini skirt, arrive at a place where “women long for eternal virginity”—akaThe Sacred Heart Covenant. The once-free-wheeling Maya has committed herself to a life of chaste servitude, and she learns that at this convent, the three main disciplines they must follow are no theft, no murder, and no adultery, which is singled out as the worst sin of all. In the bedroom the nuns all share, Maya witnesses a sister flagellating herself topless, which another sister explains she’ll get used to. They do this when they are tempted to sin, but we soon learn that some of these nuns are already sinning. A few nuns outrightly question if immaculate conception is even possible, and furthermore, how can sex be so shameful if we all are born as a result of it? A couple of other nuns are caught feasting upon food in the pantry, and two more are caught having sex with each other—all of whom must endure the same sadistic and oversexed punishments of whipping each other naked, among others that I dare not describe here. The sisters suspect that there is an informant amongst them, and ever since Maya showed up, the Superiors have been rather… informed. And while Maya does seem rather suspicious, her secret mission goes much deeper than snitching on her fellow sinners. You see, Maya’s mother was once a young nun here, too, but 18 years ago, she mysteriously disappeared. Maya searches through the convent’s records, and finds that her mother’s death was recorded as a “heart attack.” But with all of the strangely brutal rituals and cruel punishments being carried out on a daily basis, plus the arrival of a rather creepy and suspicious priest, Maya suspects that there is more to the story, and will stop at nothing to avenge her mother. There is so much passionate, unwieldy, over-the-top sexy sin in this movie, it’s a wonder I was able to even locate and watch it, considering the current pornography ban in Texas. School of the Holy Beast clearly takes pleasure in each silly, salacious moment, with egregiously-extended sequences of tits and skin and moaning and groaning, and that’s to say nothing of the inclusion of smaller sins like theft and smoking pot and talking severe shit. Even for a nunsploitation film, School of the Holy Beast was another level of scandalous and sacrilegious and horny. In my research, I could find almost no information about this film beyond the fact that it remains to be one of Japan’s most beloved “pink films”, but given it’s hyper-specific, unholy, overtly-sexual nature, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that this nun-skin-flick didn’t get a ton of press, even bad press. Parodies and commentaries on Christianity are still rather taboo, especially in this frighteningly trad-wife-positive, Christo-fascist era we’re currently experiencing in the culture. But that’s why, even if I’m not obsessed with these movies, they deserve to be seen and dissected by audiences, now more than ever!

Let’s move on to another beautifully blasphemous, uniquely unholy nunsploitation classic, Pedro Almodóvar’s third film ever, this is his 1983 black comedy Dark Habits. After releasing his 1982 film Labyrinth of Passion, he was approached by Hervé Hachuel, a multimillionaire who wanted to start a production company with the sole intention of making films starring his girlfriend, Cristina Sánchez Pascual. Young and ambitious and unlikely to be in a position where he could turn opportunities down, Almodóvar did exactly as he was asked, and wrote this film for Ms. Pascual. She stars as Yolanda, a troubled but talented cabaret singer whom we meet just as her boyfriend has dropped dead from a heroin overdose. Unfortunately for Yolanda, she’s the one who handed him the last dose he took, and his diary is full of shit-talking about her, so it’s not a great look. She tries to perform the next night, but when two suspicious men show up looking for her, she pulls a Sister Act and escapes this dangerous situation, still in her dazzling dress. In her purse she finds a business card for the “Humiliated Redeemers Community”—a local convent that offers shelter to fallen women—and makes her way to this safe space. But what Yolanda finds isn’t exactly pious perfection, but a mostly empty church and a sisterhood in disrepair. The man who was funding this order has just passed away, and his glamorous but parsimonious wife La Marquesa says the payments will be stopping, which is the last thing this already-struggling convent needs. Despite this dire situation, Mother Superior (Julieta Serrano) is such a big fan of Yolanda’s that she welcomes her with open arms, and puts her up in the convent’s nicest room (which used to belong to La Marquesa’s wayward daughter, before she ran away to Africa and got eaten by cannibals, of course.) The nuns panic over how they’ll keep the convent afloat without donations or women to redeem, but Mother Superior assures them, “We’ll fill this place with murderesses and prostitutes and drug addicts once again, don’t worry.” To reinforce their vows of humility, the Mother Superior has given the nuns quirky and repulsive new names like Sister Manure, Sister Damned, Sister Snake, and Sister Rat, and with no real opportunities for spiritual ministry, they have all begun to indulge in their own idiosyncratic hobbies, drugs, and profane literature to pass the time. Yolanda makes herself right at home in this colorfully chaotic place, though she grows weary of the clearly smitten Mother Superior—Yolanda is seemingly more disturbed by her than she is by the full-grown tiger that one of the nuns keeps in the backyard. But as Yolanda settles into the community more, doing drugs with the sisters and becoming more accustomed to their increasingly bizarre habits, she tires of the Mother Superior’s desperate neediness, and has a desire to be on the outside again. Things only get messier and more maniacal as it goes on, and as with most Almodóvar films, you’ll be left wondering if you should laugh or cry. Even in the nascent stage of Almodóvar’s career, Dark Habits is a compelling, fully-realized story, with his trademark gorgeous aesthetic beginning to bloom—he even made the dingy heroin apartment and the decrepit convent seem chic. Critics were split on this film, as the Venetian Il Gazzetino described the film as scandalous, but his counterpart in Corriere Della Sera saw Almodóvar as a true heir of the acclaimed Italian film director Pier Paolo Pasolini and applauded his attack on Christianity. But Almodóvar doesn’t consider this to be an anti-religious film, he argued these nuns and their acceptance of the downtrodden and drug-addicted of society is “true” religion: to be able to love the sinner and to become like the sinner, for only then can one appreciate the nature of sin. I think it takes a religious person, or a raised-religious person to make a truly effective movie surrounding religion—but I’m just a secular sinner who was raised just kinda Jewish, so what do I know? Dark Habits was wild, wacky, and hilarious, but compared to the downright deadly, sinister, and pornographic nuns in The School of the Holy Beast, these sisters were rather tame. There is actually quite a bit of tragedy mixed in to both of tonight’s films, but their divine comedies overshadowed any true sadness, thank heavens. Well, that’s enough sinning for one evening, I suppose, but until next time, bless you and gesundheit!