Naughty Nuns

Product Information

The men of nunsploitation are generally destabilizing and punitive forces. They arrive as investigators, inquisitors, archbishops, dukes, domineering fathers, and exorcists, cloaked in the patriarchal power of church and state. Rape scenes are not irregular. The patriarchal fist is always closing around the final act of nunsploitation films, handing down sentences and doling out medieval punishments. This is a rare subgenre where you can almost always expect the Spanish Inquisition.

In Fellini's Casanova, the first woman Giacomo Casanova has sex with in the film is a nun, who also made sure her other lover (the French ambassador in Venice) can watch her and Casanova get down to business through a hole in a fish fresco's eye. Some of these (complete with Les Yay) appear in the Music Video for E Nomine's hit song "Das Omen." Justified Trope, as the nuns are not Catholic nuns, but nuns associated with some sort of (perhaps Satanic) Cult or Religion of Evil. Although undoubtedly significant the prominence of the Catholic Church in Italian society is perhaps a less direct influence on the profusion of Nunspolitation films made in Italy in the 1970s than the economics of the exploitation film industry at that time. Popular Italian film genres such as the peplum, the giallo and the cannibal movies were crowded with as many imitators as innovators and the large number of Nunsploitation movies made in a relatively short period is consistent with this pattern. As previously noted producers were obviously keen to cash-in on the notoriety of Ken Russell's The Devils so welcomed any controversy and it’s worth noting that these were many of the same filmmakers who were concurrently churning out a cycle of Nazi-themed sexploitation films so it’s doubtful that they were too concerned about who might take offense.Italy was not the only country to exploit the bad habits of nasty nuns in cinema at this time. During the golden age of the exploitation movie in the 1970s naughty nun cinema exploded around the globe. The video for Jon Spencer Blues Explosion's "She Said" from the album Plastic Fang featured a nunnery seduced by a vampire, causing the nuns to strip and grind on the stairs. A different kind of "naughty" is seen in the complex board game Nuns on the Run . This has novices sneaking through the corridors at night in search of "secret wishes" (cake for the Mother Superior's birthday, a bottle of brandy, medicine for sleep, a letter from home, or books of "dark magic and vices" — one reviewer pointed out that the cards contain locations, so you can invent more wishes and make them as innocent, or not, as you like, and print them out on cardboard). You have to find the keys and obtain your wish without getting caught by the Mother Superior or the Novice Mistress. Wasteland 2: One of the pieces of Shop Fodder that you can find is Nudie Magazine, with the flavour text Naughty Nuns Issue #74 "Meet Sister Tiffany — She's Hot for Preacher!" "Mother Superior Says You're Inferior!" Arcana Heart's Clarice di Lanza. Not only she is a nurse, she is also quite impure, starting from her demon heritage (but she's not 100% evil) and her light and very playful personality.

Invoked in The Traitor Son Cycle, when the company learns that their next job is protecting a convent of young, pretty nuns.

Examples:

In Rangers At Roadsend by Jane Fletcher, Chip (who spent some time in the temple as her parents wanted her to become a Sister) tells Katryn that the Sisters are, in fact, not as chaste as the public believes. Sister Sara in Two Mules for Sister Sara is a whiskey drinking, cigarette smoking nun who it turns out belongs to the other kind of Nunnery (i.e. the best damn cathouse in town). Lucifer. Lucifer offers a priest a Place of Protection. Cut to several nuns descending a staircase in what appears to be a candle-lit crypt... until they throw off their veils to reveal themselves as strippers in Lucifer's nightclub. Fortunately the priest is entirely unruffled by Lucifer's attempts to expose him to temptation.

Deep Cover: During a mob meeting at a strip club, there's "entertainment" from a Fanservice Extra in a nun costume. A nunnery hired Kelly to advertise their olive oil, dressed as a nun. She couldn't fulfill the morals clause in her contract. Bud manages to get his "chaste" mother the part, but she hardly acted nunly. Having contributed entries to almost every exploitation movie sub-genre it's hardly surprising that workaholic Spaniard Jess Franco should also be responsible for Nunsploitation outings The Demons and Love Letters of A Portuguese Nun. The latter story was re-told a couple of years later by The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue director Jorge Grau as simply Love Letters of a Nun. Red Ears: Usually played straight, with nuns being objects of desire. Subverted in one strip, where a nun plays up to the stereotype when she's sexually assaulted by a rapist. When his pants are all the way down she runs away so he falls flat on his face.In Bloomin Faeries, two nuns have sex with Sir Thane, whose curse makes him irresistible to women and makes those same women beautiful and promiscuous, and subsequently become much more sexual in nature, and find it harder to keep their vows of chastity given their bodies are much more sensitive than before. Pops up in Exalted, where one of the Infernal Exalted signature characters wears a Naughty Nun outfit (as seen in this post on the official White Wolf livejournal). This is totally nonsensical, since we never once see anyone in Creation wearing an even slightly similar outfit - the local equivalent would be Immaculate Monks (who can be either male or female), but apparently it was too difficulty to make a fetishized version of brown robes and a shaved head.