SEVEN NUNS IN KANSAS CITY (1972)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

Getting the phenomenality matters attended to first: in the opening scenes two prospectors are riding on their mules, and the mules talk to each other. I think the miners understand them, but the sequence is so short I rate it just a minor deviation from consensual reality.

As for the rest of this comedy-western-- right in the tradition of the knockabout slapstick flicks that the Italians prize so much-- the real puzzle is not, why is it bad, but why isn't it bad in the usual way?

Knockabout comedies only require a loose, often goofy premise that provides ample opportunities for various heroes and villains to get into big honking fights. A toss-off flick like THE STORY OF KARATE, FISTS AND BEANS may be formally bad, but it was bad in the way its audience wanted it to be bad, and so that's an accomplishment of sorts.

NUNS has the simple premise. After one of the old sourdoughs gets killed in what is supposed to a funny manner, the other discovers gold and makes a map of the location. Somehow two separate outlaw gangs start looking for the map. I forget how the crooks get the idea that two roving cowboys-- coded gay, because they wear pastel-colored shirts-- possess the desired item. The rhinestone cowboys go on the run. All of this setup is standard for this type of film.

Up to the first big slapstick set-piece, the film has been slow, but not without incident. The gay guys seek sanctuary in a Catholic convent, inhabited by something like a dozen nuns. One outlaw gang follows their quarry into the convent, and a fight erupts between the outlaws and the nuns. Apart from the usual comedy antics, like hitting the outlaws with clubs and fruits, the nuns are fairly beefy women and use their fists pretty well. The fight lasts about six minutes, which might some sort of record for female-male fights, at least in Italian cinema. 

And then the gay guys run off, the outlaws chase them, and seven of the nuns give pursuit-- and nothing happens.

Or rather, most of the same things happen, lots of shots of people riding around, one or two scenes of people shooting at each other, and no more slapstick combat. That's what I mean about the film not being bad in a way its prospective audience would have wanted, because it looks like a knockabout comedy, but it barely is one. Oh, and the two swish-kabobs end up dressing like women and joining a dance-hall to escape their pursuers, The End.

Calling them "swish-kabobs" is specifically directed to the types the actors portray, for the two cowboys are swish-types all the way, possessed of no other characteristics. Yet, while one might expect a 1973 comedy to toss out a lot of demeaning jokes, NUNS really does not do that, any more than it makes the two guys-- the default stars of the show-- admirable in any way either. It's the most neutral depiction of gay characters I've ever seen.

Though production values look reasonably high, I knew none of the actors. I theorize, for what little it matters, that director Marcello Zeani-- who has only one other credit on IMDB-- was just handed a certain amount of money with which to take a crew to the Italian countryside and shoot enough footage to make a quickie release. And if it weren't for the ambivalent blessings of streaming TV, this mostly dull farrago would never have crossed my path.