Nude Nuns with Big Guns (DVD)VL [Import germany]

The Catholic church is renound for misdemeanours and questionable ethics, though I'm not sure if they are heavily involved in drug production as depicted in this film. The first fifteen minutes of Nude Nuns with Big Guns shows how nuns staff small heroin factories under the supervision of priests. It's a fairly slick operation until complications lead to a nun being 'gifted' to a gang boss where she is subsequently drugged and used as a prostitute. The rest of the film is set a year later, and Sister Sarah is after revenge.

This is reminiscent of a Western, much of the music wouldn't sound out of place as you watch cowboys and the fonts used for any on screen text looks like it's straight from a 'wanted' poster. I wasn't expecting much from this film, the title and any promo material you may have seen makes this out to be a cheesy action flick - but it's actually well directed and often quite with stylish use of on-screen graphics resulting in a film which looks pretty good.

I've seen the film compared to Tarantino works and although there seems to be a definite influence it would be wrong to call Joseph Guzman a poor-man's version of Quentin Tarantino as he has his own style which works very well here. Quickly edited when it needs to be and interspersed with super grained black and white images with colour filters and slow-motion to add atmosphere at times - the film contains some impressive cinematography and it certainly doesn't look like the cheap feature the title would lead you to believe!

'Nude nuns...' is a violent film, but not hyper violent to the extent of many other shock-features on the market (particularly the Japanese ones like Machine Girl). The gore here looks quite realistic and it gives the film a brutal feel rather than one which contains over-the-top 'cartoon' violence. The most disturbing scenes are the ones involving sexual abuse, one in particular was particularly difficult to watch but it certainly succeeded in making you despise the bad guys even more. You really want to see Sister Sarah bring them to justice. This film may contain some powerful religious imagery but ultimately this is a violent revenge film which doesn't waste any excuse to show naked females, and they all seem to be very liberal with their sexual attitudes - this is never going to be regarded as a modern classic, it's not a great film but it manages enough quality to ensure it isn't awful.

This Blu-ray release looks good, the transfer captures plenty of detail and for a low budget film this looks better than you'd probably expect. The audio however isn't great. There's not much depth to the audio and although the music sounds okay, the dialogue often sounds a bit distant and some scenes look redubbed in post production (perhaps to make it more audible) and in those scenes the lip sync looks a bit clumsy. I suspect the lines were altered and in high-definition the mismatch between mouth movements and the actual words delivered are more obvious. For anyone wanting subtitles - there aren't on this disk.

In a nutshell: Though 'Nuns With Big Guns' depicts a corrupt clergy where blind faith is used to abuse the trust of nuns and involve them in terrible crimes and contains something of a modern satire on how people often cherry pick the parts of the bible which support their actions - it is essentially a 90 minutes vengeance piece which watches like a cross between From Dusk 'Til Dawn and Unforgiven. It contains cheesy dialogue but nowhere near as much as I was expecting. It's a run-of-the mill guns `n gore film but with better production values and fairly good acting compared to the usual fayre. I expected this to be a terrible film and it turned out to be not quite as bad as I thought it would be.

This is without doubt one of the most awesome films ever made!! If you love grind house style exploitation movies then you will not want to miss this!! The film is your classic revenge story about a Nun who is drugged and raped after being involved with drug dealers and manages to escape and has a vision from God to kill all those who have sinned!!! This movie is packed to the wall with female nudity, lesbians, Loads of awesome blood and violence!! Everything you want from this type of movie. Its very Robert Rodriguez in a few places you can see the influence, and the title score is dangerously close to planet terror!! Over all this is a fantastic straight to DVD film I would have paid good money to watch it in a cinema!! Great cast Asun Ortega plays the lead character a very sexy actress, good editing well directed and buckets of fun, blood and boobs, pure grind house exploitation gold worth every penny, gem of a film!!!!!

**As a postscript** - I did buy the DVD and apart from a couple of thin sounding tracks, the sound issues aren't really a problem. Still not the best sound quality out there but better than my original review might suggest.

*original review*
Pun intended. Three stars signify 'it's OK', but 4 (I liked it) would be more appropriate as I did but overall, it's not such a great movie, but is enjoyable.

This was on The Horror Channel and Radio Times didn't give a rating, nor even marked it up as a film, even! Their scantiest of synopsis forced me to look elsewhere and here on Amazon, a number of positive reviews had me checking it out. I had been expecting the worse and whilst not a classic, was certainly better than I anticipated.

Yes, the nuns are often completely starkers and occasionally get shot in the head in a similar state. There is an element of style over substance, with the warm-tinged colours of New Mexico and with an atmospheric, screechy, very Spanish sounding wailing guitar soundtrack, that does indeed come right from a Robert Rodriguez flick. The ultra violence, with quite a lot of bullet generated spatter, with slo-mo camera and emphasised music is very Tarantino. The quick cut to red/sepia/black and white and meaningful-looking panning in some scenes add interest and variety.

With a topless bar called The Cherry Popper and the film's title, you sort of know where you are with this one. Obviously one for adults only, for liberally minded heterosexual males (most likely) and for late nights, to unwind to and to not take very seriously.

The actual story is a bit of a mess but I didn't watch this film for its storytelling, nor its screenplay - and I doubt if many will. Having said that, it's not just a soft core nude fest, this is also a thriller, with horror overtones.

At the moment, I'm seriously thinking of buying the DVD, which is quite an endorsement as it means that I obviously want to see it again. I was a bit disappointed with the rather thin sounding, almost mono soundtrack and I'd be keen to know how this sounds on the DVD. I guess it would be the same.

Yes, the title is shamelessly attention grabbing, but for once that's OK, because there are indeed nude nuns, with big guns. But you get a whole decent movie as well, which certainly wasn't expected. Bonus!