Nude Nuns with Big Guns

I wanted to like this one a lot more. But there are some glaring problems that keep it from scoring any higher for me.

First the only people I felt were doing anything with their characters were the leads. Which isn't completely bad, at least they cast people who could act some in the leads.

Lighting and sound really have some horrifically bad moments in the film. Characters talking and you couldn't hear them. And the night scenes with a very nice Chevelle SS 396 where you could only see headlights.

A lot of scenes where you could almost hear the director thinking "yeah, I guess that's okay, but you know what, I think we really need all the girls to be naked and rubbing their boobies over everyone on the set." Don't get me wrong, I like naked girls, but there is a point of diminishing returns when almost Every... Single... Scene... in the film is accessorized by boobies.

There are some very good decisions made that were definite pluses to the film. The love story, while expected, did add to the story and was not completely gratuitous. David Castro's villain has most of the best lines, and several times comes dangerously close to being sympathetic. Asun Ortega does crazy very well, and the 'dress whites' as seen in the poster for the film really added to the moment.

This is not a date movie, shoot it's not a mixed company movie in any manner. But for a guilty pleasure movie to watch when you are home alone, you could do worse.

It's been a while since I could forgo the details of a film's plot and just reiterate the title for reference. But that is exactly the shortcut I could take with Nude Nuns with Big Guns. The film, as directed by Joseph Guzman is about, well, nude nuns with big guns. More specifically, it follows Sister Sarah (Asun Ortega) who after becoming a nun is drugged and forced into a world of crime by the corrupt priests and padres of the clergy.

But after a near fatal encounter, Sister Sarah receives a message from God, one that tells her to kill every last one of those that exploit drugs, the church or any of the innocent workers of the clergy. Lucky for us, a chance encounter leaves Sister Sarah with a big gun, one big enough to help her do God's work in the most violent and exploitive ways possible. As Sarah sets off to religiously 'off' anyone that looks at her funny, the church hires a bike gang called 'Los Muertos' to track down Sister Sarah and stop her before she brings down the entire drug running operation.

Nude Nuns with Big Guns is undeniably 70's sexploitation brought to us with 2010 orchestrated violence. There are equal parts nudity and violence and there is plenty of each to keep audiences grinning from ear to ear with each new character introduction. Just about every female character but one bares her breasts for the film and I, for one, am a better man because of it. Sister Sarah in particular has no qualms about doing scenes involving full nudity between all her gunslinging and brain blasting. Priests, nuns, bikers, lesbians…no one is safe once this sister straps herself with a sizeable firearm.

There is a semblance of a story in Nude Nuns with Big Guns, but the plot goes in usual directions ensuring that what it lacks in originality as a revenge flick it makes back up in sheer audacious and gratuitous nudity and violence.

Asun Ortega is competent (and evidently confident) in the lead role and everyone involved in the production hams up their part with just enough cheese and lack of seriousness that the film actually works as a watchable piece of exploitation.

Director Joseph Guzman takes a major step forward from his 2009 debut in Run! Bitch Run! While both Run and Nuns are of the same genre that Robert Rodriguez tried to capture with 2010's Machete, Guzman has shown a maturity with both the camera and with the promotion of lurid subject matters.

Nude Nuns with Big Guns isn't for everyone, but it is for everyone that reads the title of the film before putting it into the DVD player or downloading through VOD. It is guaranteed to entertain while titillating and it proves that exploitation films are alive and can work given the right exposure and attention.

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Full of enough eye candy to make any adolescent boy's (or girl's) sex drive go full throttle, the film finds a drug cartel run by a sinister church who see fit to reducing their ordained sisterhood to nothing more than a nudist colony of cheap labor chemists. As the story opens we are introduced to some of the main players in a dope exchange gone horribly wrong. The lone (innocent) survivor is our heroine, Sister Sarah (Asun Ortega), who is subsequently thrown into forced prostitution by the bikers and drugged out of her mind as she "services" the customers.

As fate would have it, however, a kind-hearted doctor (I use that term loosely) named Mr. Foo (Maxie J. Santillan Jr.) releases Sarah from her bondage and flushes out all the drugs from her system. Upon awakening, Sister Sarah reveals that she has received the "word of God" which has entrusted her with dishing out some divine justice on those who did her wrong. Foo then proceeds to arm are with a pair of silver pistols to help her on her mission only to have Sarah put a bullet through his noggin (not cool, man). Thus begins our heroine's journey of hate-fueled revenge served cold and hard with the most translucent metaphor for phallic aggression a lesbian nun can holster.

Though short lived, Mr. Foo is a pretty cool character- equal parts Yoda and Tommy Chong, Foo exudes a hipster charm that helps balance the darker elements of the story. Unfortunately, what follows after his demise is bleak mess of boobs and talking (plus more boobs), with very little scenes of heavenly justice doled out and nowhere did I ever really see any "big guns" (with great exception to scary ass Xango Henry as Kickstand, a Dulé Hill (Psych) look-a-like). When the biggest threat of a film is a black man's genitals as he violates elderly nuns, there's not much else that needs to be said.

In the end, as much as I wanted to like a film with a name as cool as Nude Nuns with Guns it simply didn't push any one boundary far enough. In fact, I couldn't help but think that this was really lost footage from Machete, given the overall borderland motif and bad-ass, Mexican bikers. It even goes so far as to riff on Rodriguez's Planet Terror theme from the Rodriguez/Tarantino Grindhouse double feature. Yes, there are nuns and they're (generally) nude. Yes, there's softcore rape and bullets to the head. However, a lack of any real action will likely see you walking away limp from this peep show long before the credits ever role.

Well personally I am not a fan of the sexploitation movies, not the ones back from the day in the 60s-70s, not the ones from today. But still, being a movie enthusiast, I do try to spread out and watch a multitude of movies.

The story in "Nude Nuns with Big Guns" is about Sister Sarah who is abused by the clergy and subjected to drugs. Recovering from the drug abuse, Sister Sarah is visited by God, who gives her a sacred mission to purge all those who oppose him. Armed with God's will and some big guns, Sister Sarah sets out on a holy mission.

I will say that the story was entertaining enough, but at the same time it was so cheesy and full of plot holes that anything even resembling a coherent storyline fell through and scattered before the wind. This movie is not the type of movie you watch because it has a riveting story.

And it should be said that there is a great amount of nudity and lesbian scenes in this movie, after all it is a sexploitation movie. And there is also a lot of what could best be described as religious sacrilegious stuff (as regarding to Christianity) going on throughout the entire movie. There was something Tarantino and Rodriguez-like over this movie, but then at the same time it never really fully rose up to even reach those directors to the knees. But it was a great enough attempt to imitate their styles. Oddly enough, the movie here did pull that off well enough at its own pace and level. There was that old 70s feel to the movie, gritty and dirty.

As for the acting in the movie, well don't get your hopes up, as most of the people in the movie just put on average performances. However, it should be noted that David Castro (playing Chavo) actually did most of the lifting in the movie, carrying the movie a great way with his performance. The cast is not to blame though, as the script didn't allow the characters to be explored and fleshed out in any type of depth, making them appear as shallow characters, with only Chavo and Sister Sarah showing any kind of character development. The rest of the characters were like generic drones just standing in as fillers.

One thing that was great about the movie was the music, even though they had one particular song that was either used in a previous movie or just a blatant almost note by note copy of that particular song. I just can't remember where I heard it before, though I am partial to say either "Planet Terror" or "Machete". It was something from either a Tarantino or Rodriguez movie, of that I am almost certain.

As a plus, this movie had the most hilarious choking scene I have seen so far in a movie (where Sister Sarah is choking someone with rosary beads).

I am pretty sure that if you are fan of this particular genre of movies, sexploitation, then you might find "Nude Nuns with Big Guns" to be an interesting movie. Personally, I didn't find this movie to be overly interesting, as I am not a fan of this particular genre, but I stuck with it and watched it through to the end.

The title is unfortunately way funnier than the movie itself. I guess this also works as a trailer, but not as a whole. Acting and general "execution" (pun intended) are not up with the high concept idea of the movie. The main actress is anything but convincing, the villain on the other hand shows that he had the time of his life (actually some of his quote are really good, but I don't know who to credit for them: screenwriter or the actor himself).

All in all a rather weak "nunsploitation" movie (I think that's the correct term/genre), but then again it is in good company I guess. And as I stated above, some of the quotes are really funny, so it wasn't a complete waste of time.