And Then There Were Nuns

Why are nun movies so hopelessly estranged from the reality of religious life? And why do all nun movies eventually plunge into a dark whirlpool of lunacy? The easy answer is: Oliver Reed and Meg Tilly are on the set. But that only applies to a couple of movies. The reason that all the other nun movies go completely off the rails is much simpler. It's the music. Go see virtually any nun movie and at some critical juncture a group of sisters will be spotlighted in a grotesque, stomach-turning musical number, often featuring a lethal stringed instrument intimately associated with Joan Baez. Shortly thereafter, a senseless, horrible tragedy will occur, and the film will spin hopelessly out of control.

For example, in The Sound of Music, not very long after spunky novice Julie Andrews strums a God-awful number on the guitar, the Nazis rise to power in Germany, annex Austria, and wreck the 20th century for everyone except Melanie Griffith, who still gets to infiltrate the Nazi high command in Shining Through. In The Devils, Oliver Reed's misfortunes occur shortly after Vanessa Redgrave and her fellow nuns are seen chanting Vespers in the chapel. And in Airport 1975, it is only after Helen Reddy picks up Linda Blair's guitar and begins to sing a song with the lyrics "I am a best friend to myself"--a statement I have no trouble whatsoever believing--that a private plane crashes into the cockpit of the jet, kills flight engineer Erik Estrada and copilot Roy Thinnes, and blinds pilot Efrem Zimbalist Jr., thus leaving the aircraft in the hands of the cross-eyed stewardess, Karen Black. Only then do the passengers realize that they should have flown United or Delta, rather than Air Bimbo.

The intimate connection between singing nuns and senseless human tragedy is a staple of virtually every nun film ever made. Take The Singing Nun: moments after Debbie Reynolds wreaks carnage with her avenging guitar, a little Belgian boy is hit by a truck, apparently while trying to get out of earshot. In Sister Act, not very long after Whoopi Goldberg induces a group of dowdy, prune-faced nuns to abandon their tired old hymns and sing a bunch of tired, old Motown songs, Harvey Keitel, quite justifiably, attempts to murder her.

And that's not even mentioning Change of Habit, the curious project in which Elvis Presley plays a crusading Johnny Reb physician who has fled the backwoods of Tennessee for the inner city of Detroit. Not long after the King of Kings has taught Mary Tyler Moore how to play the guitar, a local loser shows up and tries to rape her. And while it is true that Kathleen Byron has been gradually slipping over the edge since the very beginning of Black Narcissus--in part because of her obsession with David Farrar, a failed Stewart Granger impersonator who wears a Jolly Green Giant hat throughout the movie, making him look like an Anna-purnan Robin Hood--her final catapult into the abyss of mental illness occurs shortly after Deborah Kerr and her fellow nuns sing a loathsome Irish yule-tide carol called "Lullay My Liking."

What is most troubling about the demented music in nun movies is the staggering variety and styles of horrendous numbers conjured up. In Agnes of God, it's Meg Tilly chanting in Latin. (Apparently, just as Spanish is the loving tongue, Latin is the appropriate patois for nuns who have strangled their illegitimate children.) Nuns with guitars--truly the single most frightening sight in the entire solar system--surface in Change of Habit, Airport 1975, The Sound of Music and The Singing Nun, whereas nuns armed with keyboards appear in Sister Act, Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit and Black Narcissus.

In an especially unnerving sequence in Almodovar's Dark Habits, a nun armed with a pair of bongos begins banging on them in the backyard of the convent. Luckily, she is interrupted mid-bongo by her pet tiger, who reaches out with his paw and forces her to stop. Almodovar's symbolism is clear: the nun with the bongos symbolizes the boundless power of Almighty God, who can fuck around with us as much as He likes, and there's nothing any of us can do about it. The tiger, on the other hand, symbolizes tortured humanity, who would like Almighty God to give us all a break. I admit this pattern of symbolism might be a bit hard to follow.

Dark Habits is worthy of mention in another context, because it is the seminal nun movie of the post-Mamie Van Doren era, the nun movie of which at least two other nun movies are a direct ripoff. Released in 1984, Dark Habits is a film in which a destitute lounge lizardess takes refuge in a convent after her lover o.d.'s on heroin, and then ends up transforming the grim old convent into a veritable isle of Capri with her pep, her personality and her large stash of cocaine. Also bear in mind that the climactic scene in the film features the lounge lizardine performing her cabaret act in the convent itself, in front of a bunch of rapturous communicants, with musical accompaniment provided by three nuns, one even armed with an electric bass guitar. Does this sound a little bit like Sister Act or what?

Or consider Change of Habit, the 1969 film in which Mary Tyler Moore plays a feisty upstart nun who comes to an urban ghetto where she does not exactly blend in and is initially greeted with frosty disdain by her aging, conservative superior, but who ultimately manages to win over her aging, conservative, disdainful religious superior with her gusto and oomph and all-around musical expertise. Does this sound a little bit like Sister Act or what?

Or consider Nuns on the Run, the 1990 British comedy in which Eric Idle and Robbie Coltrane play two people who hide out from the Mob by disguising themselves as nuns in a convent headed by the crusty old Janet Suzman who doesn't actually like them. Does this sound just a teensy-weensy bit like Sister Act or what?

Besides insufferable music and crusty old Mother Superiors played by frosty British actresses, the one other staple of all nun movies is a scene where a heavenly miracle occurs. In Lilies of the Field, there are two miracles: the first, when the bricks needed to make the chapel miraculously appear out of nowhere; the second, when the German-speaking nuns learn to speak English by singing Negro spirituals with Sidney Poitier. In The Bells of St. Mary's, a miracle occurs when the church is saved from demolition by the change of heart of a hardened businessman who takes a shine to Bing Crosby. In The Song of Bernadette, a miracle occurs when the Blessed Virgin appears to a dimwitted peasant girl in a grotto in France in the middle of the 19th century and the town is miraculously turned into a booming tourist attraction, a sort of Niagara Falls for Catholics. And in Airport 1975, a miracle occurs when Helen Reddy picks up Linda Blair's guitar and begins strumming a song, yet none of the other passengers try lynching her. What's more, a second miracle then occurs, when cross eyed actress Karen Black guides the aircraft to safety long enough for Charlton Heston to attempt a daring, mid-air helicopter-to-airplane pilot transfer. This, of course, is just the sort of thing that eventually drove Laker Airways out of business.

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