Nun of That

Nun of That is a pretty awful shoot ‘em up movie involving a vigilante group of nuns actually working for the Vatican and fighting crime – they’re called the Order of the Black Habit. All of the nuns are named after the seven deadly sins. That’s about as interesting as the film gets.

The movie starts out in a pasta bar/strip club where there’s a nun dancing. The dancing nun starts killing the Italians and then ends up dying at the hands of one of the mob bosses. Luckily the Vatican is tracking her with a TRS-80, so they know she’s been killed and can send out a replacement. Cut to nun lesbian shower scene. Then cut to a nun, Sister Kelly Wrath, who has a bad temper and has been kicked out of her convent and sent to the hood. She is then recruited (by Jesus) to fight for these assassin nuns after these Italian mobsters gun her down in an alley. Moses and Gandhi give her some fighting skills in a completely asinine musical song and dance scene in heaven.

We see the nuns go to a ridiculous dive bar called Bar Nun (get it?) and sadly there’s a nun band playing behind a chicken wire fence that gives a nod to the Blues Brothers. The nuns are fighting an Italian mob family who has been running the town and not in a good way. None of the Italian guys are actually Italian, but all are wearing these tacky sports jackets, smoke-darkened sun glasses, and have ridiculously fake accents. The Italians seem to be everywhere and the vigilante nuns are going to put a stop to them. Cut to another lesbian nun scene.

The Italians eventually capture Sister Wrath and hold her hostage. There’s a Jewish guy working for the Italian family and he has Star of David throwing stars. Hilarious. He brings up these sort of demons named Eli and Levi and they know… wait for it… Jew-jitsu. Then they fight to Hava Nagila – really stupid. The Jewish guy wants first crack at Sister Wrath, but the other nuns are on the lookout for their fallen partner. And of course Lloyd Kaufman is playing the Pope, as any terrible movie should have. Absolutely the worst ending to a movie ever. I’m not even sure what it means.

I can’t begin to explain how bad this movie is. I’ve tried here, but this doesn’t do it justice. Don’t bother with this film. I thought it would be good for a laugh and it isn’t at all. It sounds like it could be a hilarious concept but it falls flat. It doesn’t help that there are soooo many terrible puns using the word “nun” that it’s painful. The terrible special effects don’t make it any less painful.

Shaolin vs. Evil Dead

For those of you not well-versed in traditional kung-fu movies, vampires are white-faced and hop around with their arms out. This movie explains that a monk walking in front of the vampires rings a bell to intentionally make them hop and keep their arms out. This is done so they keep a safe distance from the zombie in front of them and by hopping, they keep out of trouble. I didn’t say it made sense, I just said it got explained.

A Master and his two young underlings are parading a group of undead through the city. They stop for food where the master whips out this magical viewfinder to see that everyone is a zombie in the restaurant. The trio ends up getting attacked at the restaurant and for some reason, the master never thinks to ring the bell (that would have been my first reaction, honestly). Considerable fight ensues in the faux restaurant and just when it looks like they’re about to die, a pair of zombie hunters show up (from the same school as the Master vampire-walker) and help them out. Unfortunately, one of the two underlings gets a spirit shoved down his throat and is now secretly possessed. Meanwhile, the older underling makes eyes at one of the zombie hunters that shows up to help.

They master and his vampires get back to the mortuary and get the vampires all buried and the trio go about their business the next day. The zombie hunters turn out to be not the nicest people in the world, and the oldest underling is torn because he really likes the lady zombie hunter. The zombie hunters raise a demon for the villagers and then defeat it in a show of power. Various battles ensue.

Then, out of nowhere, the movie ends. I thought the DVD had frozen up, but it was actually the end of the movie. It gets worse, people. During the final credits, there’s a split screen: cast and crew on one side, action clips from the film on the other side. I would normally be fine with that, except for the fact that none of the clips they were rolling were actually IN the film. And what’s worse, is I couldn’t tell if they were scenes that had been cut out of this one, or came from a prequel that I didn’t know about or are scenes from Part 2, if that exists. They looked like there were the same people, but fighting various CGI monsters and blowing things up - none of which I saw. Super weird.

Despite the abrupt ending, this film was really well done. The CGI could use some help, but the fighting was good and the acting was pretty good. Watching with the subtitles and the English audio is always hilarious, so I think the story was good as well – if it actually had an ending. It isn’t an amazing film or anything, but as far as martial arts films shot in modern times to look like traditional kung-fu, it’s pretty good.