And Then There Were Nuns

After watching 29 nun movies, our intrepid reporter feels certain that everyone associated with these films--producers, directors, writers, stars--will burn in hell for all eternity. Of course, as he also notes, "Everyone who works in the movie business is going to burn in hell for all eternity anyway."

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In every human being's life, there comes a moment when he finds himself trapped in the epicenter of the vortex of the eye of the storm of the most viscerally and emotionally disequilibrating experience he will ever know. For many of us, this will occur when we take our marriage vows; for others, when we make the belated discovery that the person sharing our bed in the Econo Lodge this evening is not of the gender we initially thought he/she/it was. For still others, it is the moment when we agree to spend a night at Michael Jackson's house.

In my own life, the most emotionally discombobulating experience I have ever undergone is watching Mamie Van Doren erupt into tears in the back of a chapel at a Catholic girl's reform school while Paul Anka sings "Ave Maria" to her. This scene occurs toward the end of the acrobatically awful film Girls Town, in which the top-heavy Van Doren, easily pushing 30, perhaps from the other side, plays a wayward teen sent to a Roman Catholic halfway house for alleged psychopaths while the local police investigate charges that she murdered her boyfriend, Chip.

Eventually, we learn that Chip was actually pushed off a cliff by Mamie's kid sister, who ultimately seeks refuge in the same halfway house as Mamie, doubtless hoping that Frankie Avalon will show up and sing "Tantum Ergo" or "Adeste Fidelis." But before anything this sublimely odious can happen, she is kidnapped by aging crooner Mel Torme, one of the strangest-looking people to ever inhabit this planet, who plays a lecherous, hot-rodding teen who finally gets popped in the kisser by Anka, an even uglier actor, an even more annoying singer, and an even shorter human being. At which point, Torme swoons into a velvet fog.

All of this madness is finally brought under control when Mamie gets down on her knees and prays to Saint Jude, the patron saint of hopeless causes. Run to earth by a contingent of vigilantes headed by a nun armed with a large wooden mallet, Mel Tonne's reign of terror finally ends, and everyone else lives happily ever after.

If the preceding plot line sounds completely insane, that's because it is. How then, one wonders, did the people involved in the manufacture of this cultural anomaly ever stray so far from their psychic and cinematic moorings that they could end up filming a scene in a dimly lit chapel in which Paul Anka sings "Ave Maria" to Mamie Van Doren, she of the nuclear bosom, who doesn't give the impression that she actually understands what Anka is singing, and probably thinks he's warbling something like, "My God, you've got amazing tits" in Latin?

The easy answer to this question is: it was 1959, the Russians had recently sent up their first unmanned rocket ship, everyone was zonked out by fear of nuclear war, Castro had just taken over Cuba, Nixon looked like a pretty safe bet to become the next President of the United States, and everybody in America was completely bananas. But this is not an acceptable answer. Elvis Presley playing a youngster whose dad wants him to finish high school so he can become a pharmacist? Stupid. Creatures from another planet invading serene, Middle-American communities and destroying the delicate fabric of society as we know it? Wacky. Charlton Heston cavorting in a loincloth and pretending to be a likable Jewish chariot driver? Definitely peculiar. But Paul Anka singing "Ave Maria" to a lachrymose Mamie Van Doren in a chapel shortly before she gets down on her knees and prays that Saint Jude will give Paul Anka a voice like Neil Sedaka?

Now, that's insanity.

How did all of this mental illness come about? The answer to this question is surprisingly simple: The filmmakers were making a nun movie and all nun movies ultimately descend into a dark abyss of lunacy. Whether the setting is 17th-century France (The Devils), late 20th-century San Francisco (Sister Act), the highest reaches of the Himalayas in the '40s (Black Narcissus), contemporary Madrid (Dark Habits), Belgium in the mid-'60s (The Singing Nun) or 12,000 feet above Salt Lake City circa '74 (Airport 1975), all movies that feature nuns in a prominent role ultimately end in a teeming cesspool of incurable dementia.

Of course, most of them begin in a teeming cesspool of incurable dementia. Shirley MacLaine as a roving, polylingual missionary cantering around on a little burro during a civil war in 19th-century Mexico in Two Mules for Sister Sara? My, that sounds sane. Kathleen Byron as a neurotic nun sequestered in an abandoned harem in the Himalayas who gets her jollies by dolling herself up behind closed doors in a little black cocktail dress she purchased through mail order from Calcutta, then tries to push Sister Superior Deborah Kerr from a bell tower in Black Narcissus? Gee, that sounds plausible. Vanessa Redgrave as a hunchbacked, sex crazed, demon-possessed lunatic in The Devils? What a refreshing change of pace. A bunch of German nuns marooned in the Arizona desert waiting for Sidney Poitier to show up and build them a chapel in Lilies of the Field? Well, we certainly haven't tried filming that one in a while. Whoopi Goldberg as a person that a large group of white people--or anyone--would cheerfully welcome into their midst in Sister Act? Terrific idea. And while we're at it, how about Helen Reddy as a nun who sings to Linda Blair in Australian shortly before an epic aviation disaster in Airport 1975?

Credible.

Believable.

Bankable.

Sane.

The most interesting kernel of truth about nun movies is that throughout the entire history of the genre, there has never been a movie that accurately portrays nuns the way they really are. As a Roman Catholic who has only attended Roman Catholic schools and universities in his lifetime, as a person who has never set foot inside a non-sectarian institution of higher learning, and as a person who has watched 29 nun movies in the last two weeks, I can say with complete confidence that there are no nuns on this planet who look anything like Ingrid Bergman in The Bells of St. Mary's, Audrey Hepburn in The Nun's Story or Deborah Kerr in Black Narcissus.

There are also no convents on this planet that house nuns with names like Sister Manure and Sister Rat, as depicted in Pedro Almodovar's Dark Habits. Nor are there any religious orders I know of that would willingly accept into their community a fruitloop like Meg Tilly in Agnes of God, a bimbo like Mary Tyler Moore in Change of Habit, or a sex-crazed maniac like Vanessa Redgrave in The Devils. The portrayals of nuns in these movies are complete and utter lies, and everyone associated with these products will burn in hell for all eternity. Of course, everyone who works in the movie business is going to burn in hell for all eternity anyway, so this is no big threat.

Interestingly, what makes nun movies so outrageously inaccurate is not the obsession of the directors and screenwriters with the nuns' imagined sexual problems, but the persistent failure of Hollywood to depict nuns as the remorseless terrorists they truly are. In preparing this article, I watched 29 movies in which nuns play a prominent role. In vain did I wait for the truly explosive violence that is an integral feature of all nuns' lives. True, Kathleen Byron did try to push Deborah Kerr off that bell tower at the end of Black Narcissus, Meg Tilly did strangle her newborn baby in Agnes of God, and the surprising twilight arrival of a nun at the end of Vertigo did scare Kim Novak so much that she plunged to her senseless death hundreds of feet below. Yet in not one of the movies I watched was there a single scene in which anyone gets hit with a ruler.

This is preposterous. As anyone who has ever attended parochial school can tell you, a movie that attempts to portray a day in the life of the average nun without including at least one scene in which a recalcitrant student gets worked over with the ruler or yardstick is like a movie about the Mafia in which not a single person gets whacked. The closest any of these 29 movies come to portraying nuns as the remorselessly vindictive papal enforcers that they are is The Devils, in which Vanessa Redgrave's false testimony against Oliver Reed leads to his having his tongue run through with a torture implement, his legs smashed to smithereens by a deranged inquisitor, and his body set ablaze in the public square while his own illegitimate son looks on. Which is, believe me, still a lot less painful than being hit by a nun with a ruler.

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