Nasty Habits (film)

Nasty Habits is a 1977 comedy film directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, starring Glenda Jackson, Melina Mercouri, Geraldine Page, Sandy Dennis, Anne Jackson, Anne Meara and Susan Penhaligon. The screenplay by Robert Enders is based on the 1974 novella The Abbess of Crewe by Muriel Spark.[3]

Nasty Habits
US theatrical release poster
Directed byMichael Lindsay-Hogg
Screenplay byRobert Enders
Based onThe Abbess of Crewe
by Muriel Spark
Produced byRobert Enders
Starring
CinematographyDouglas Slocombe
Edited byPeter Tanner
Music byJohn Cameron
Production
company
Bowden Productions Limited
Distributed by
Release date
  • 18 March 1977 (1977-03-18) (New York City)
Running time
96 minutes
Countries
  • United Kingdom
  • United States[1][2]
LanguageEnglish

Plot

At the little-known and extremely wealthy Abbey of Philadelphia, the Abbess, Sister Hildegard, is dying. She wishes her favorite, Sister Alexandra, to succeed her but dies moments before she can make her endorsement public. Alexandra conspires with Sisters Gertrude and Walburga to win the coming election, and to defeat her rival, Sister Felicity, who is openly carrying on an affair with a Jesuit priest, Father Thomas. Alexandra orders hidden microphones and cameras installed throughout the convent, and even hires a pair of Jesuit students, Gregory and Ambrose, to break in and steal Thomas's compromising letters from Sister Felicity's sewing box. The break-in is discovered, but the real meaning is kept hidden and Alexandra wins the election by a landslide. Once she is made Abbess, Alexandra expels and excommunicates Felicity, who begins a very public campaign to topple Alexandra. At the same time, the publicity brings the abbey to the attention of the Holy See, which discovers that the order is an unofficial one, with no actual ties to the Roman Catholic Church. To make matters worse, Gregory and Ambrose blackmail Gertrude and Walburga, who send the bungling Sister Winifred to pay them off only to have the whole scandal made public.

Cast

Parallels to the Watergate conspiracy

The film and the original novel were a satire on the presidency of Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal, including Alexandra's parting line as she boards a plane to Rome to answer charges from the Vatican. The characters are parallels of the Nixon cabinet and Watergate conspirators.[4]

Reception

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 40% based on 5 reviews, with an average rating of 7.5/10.[5] Vincent Canby in The New York Times wrote that Glenda Jackson had her best role in years, and that the film was "very funny" but was too uneven to be ultimately successful.[4]

The film was released on VHS in 1989 and on DVD in 2014.

References
  1. "Nasty Habits (1976)". British Film Institute. Archived from the original on 25 January 2019. Retrieved 24 June 2023.
  2. "Nasty Habits (1977)". AFI Catalog of Feature Films. Retrieved 24 June 2023.
  3. "Nasty Habits, directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg | Film review". Time Out. Retrieved 4 October 2015.
  4. Canby, Vincent (19 March 1977). "'Nasty Habits' of Nuns in Politics". The New York Times. Retrieved 6 December 2022.
  5. "Nasty Habits". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 1 April 2023.


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