Nasty Habits (film)

Nasty Habits is a 1977 British comedy film directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, starring Glenda Jackson, Melina Mercouri, Rip Torn and Susan Penhaligon. It is based on Muriel Spark's novel The Abbess of Crewe.

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.

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.

• Sister Alexandra - Richard Nixon
• Sister Gertrude - Henry Kissinger
• Sister Prioress Walburga - H. R. Haldeman
• Sister Winifred - John Dean
• Sister Mildred, Mistress of Novices - John Ehrlichman
• Sister Geraldine - Gerald Ford
• Ambrose - E. Howard Hunt
• Gregory - G. Gordon Liddy

Cast

• Glenda Jackson as Sister Alexandra
• Melina Mercouri as Sister Gertrude
• Geraldine Page as Sister Prioress Walburga
• Sandy Dennis as Sister Winifred
• Anne Jackson as Sister Mildred, Mistress of Novices
• Anne Meara as Sister Geraldine
• Susan Penhaligon as Sister Felicity
• Edith Evans as Sister Hildegard

• Jerry Stiller as P.R. Priest
• Rip Torn as Father Maximilian
• Eli Wallach as Monsignor
• Harry Ditson as Ambrose
• Christopher Muncke as Gregory
• Anthony Forrest as Father Thomas

Reception

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.

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