Hornball Nuns of the Himalayas

I just watched Black Narcissus, one of TCM's "Essentials." That's a movie they show on Saturday night, and replay on Sunday, that a snooty lady says every movie fan should see. Seriously. You should hear this woman. She's like, Snooty McSnoot. That would be her name if she were a cartoon character.

All I could think when this movie ended was, "Wait. What the fuck WAS that?" The basic premise is that a group of Anglican nuns, isolated in a high-altitude palace in the exotic Himalayas, experience a sort of sexual awakening they can't--but must!--resist. Soon enough, the loopiest of them all, Sister Ruth, has ordered a tarty dress from a mail-order catalog that delivers to palaces 9,000 feet up in the Himalayas. (They must use DHL.) The ultimate sign of her "mountain madness" is when she applies-gasp--lipstick! (Really, it's hilarious: the camera gets reallllly close to her face, and she takes like 7 minutes to put it on.) Then she cackles--yes, cackles--as she escapes the clutches of the Mother Superior and makes her way down the mountain for some sweet nunny love with the local British agent, Mr. Dean.

Oh, and when he rejects her, she makes her way back up the mountain and tries to throw Mother Superior OFF the mountain. Of course, it's the hornball Sister Ruth who winds up making the fall, making this movie part Hitchcokian suspense (think Shadow of a Doubt), part Sound of Music, and part American Pie. And if they remade it today, Sister Ruth would totally be killing off all the other nuns with a garden hoe or something. And she'd be played by, like, Rose McGowan.

Deborah Kerr played Mother Superior in this movie, and, as usual, her posture was perfect. They don't give out Oscars for posture, Deborah! You're an actress, not a hat rack! Slouch! Slouch! Slouch!!