Nude Nuns with Big Guns

This film definitely isn't trying to mascaraed as something that isn't; it's a low, low budget, strange exploitation film with nuns at the helm of it. The plot of this film seems to be completely all over the place, and the acting is god awful, but I oddly found some kind of weird enjoyment in it. I don't quite know how, or why, but something at this film had my attention wrapped up. I think it was the songs, or specifically the "I didn't kill her", I thoroughly enjoyed that song and I still listen to it I ironically now to this day. You can definitely tell that the people making this film were trying to emulate the films of the 70s, it is clearly seen on the style of filming here and maybe that's what had my attention, something like those Grindhouse films.

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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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.

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.

B) If you are hoping the same level of entertainment as a Rodriguez/Tarantino film, than this is not it. A) It's not the worst film I've seen, but big screen no-go.

It's some amount of crazy, but not enough to be entertaining. Crazy enough to be "Ewwww... and?", but not enough to go "Ewwww... Ohh!?!?!?!". In essence the film lacks the irony in the story.

This film is of the same genre as Kill Bill, Sin City, Gringhouse and Machete. However, this is one of the worst representatives of that genre. It's most comparable to Machete, but the storyline is not augmented by the irony and there is nothing to hook you onto in the story. The script is dragged out. The story could be presented in a 30 minute film. It's a good story for a depressing documentary, not a action, violence, blood and gore film.

This is not about some clergy members being represented corrupt. This is not about drugs. This is not about violence. It's just a shooter with a lot of vengeance, poor action scenes and a too thin layer of the story sprinkled around.