Tuesday, June 18, 2024

Nasty Habit

Killer Nun (Trailer)
Giulio Berruti, 1979

Swedish bombshell Anita Ekberg frolicking in the Trevi fountain in Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960) might be peak cinema to snobbish cinephiles, but she'll be remembered as a drug addicted, dentures-stomping, horny nun in Giulio Berruti's nunsploitation/giallo and one time video nasty, Killer Nun (1979) by film degenerates like myself. At the risk of offending both sides of the kino taste spectrum, I can't say I'm a fan of either of those films. However, one particular track featured on Killer Nun by composer Alessandro Alessandroni has been a fave of mine for many years; which at least makes it somewhat redeemable.

Alessandro Alessandroni - Suor Omicidi, Seq. 4
 Killer Nun/The Strangler of Vienna/Lady Frankenstein compilation, 1999
 

Something about Suor Omicidi, Seq. 4's jangly acoustic guitar strumming away while the sounds of an ominous choral build in the background, concluding with a manic church organ, really does it for me. Little wonder it’s amongst my favourite giallo tracks of all time.

Killer Nun's soundtrack didn't get a vinyl release until twenty years later. The tracks finally appeared in an Alessandroni compilation containing two other scores of his: Lady Frankenstein (1971) and The Strangler of Vienna (1971). The latter, I have yet to see.

Lady Frankenstein (Trailer)
Mel Welles & Aureliano Luppi, 1971
 

From Orson Welles to Mel Welles; you know Joseph Cotten's career hit an even greater decline than Anita Ekberg's when he went from Citizen Kane (1941), Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and The Third Man (1949) to Italian horror Lady Frankenstein; a far cry from his classic earlier body of work. Far more entertaining than Killer Nun and La Dolce Vita, though.

2 comments:

  1. That's a sick song.

    I'll never get the time back I wasted watching Fellini's two main movies. I'll never get the money back I wasted on hiring them from the library either.

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  2. Co-signed. Hated 8 1/2 and La Dolce Vita.

    His Toby Dammit short film from the horror anthology Spirits of the Dead (1968) was decent, though.

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