(1989) ***I feel compelled to rate this lower in comparison to Michele Soavi's top notch work in Cemetery Man, although I have to say I did enjoy The Church. The film starts off in the time of the crusades where a village has been condemned as evil. All the villagers are killed and buried in a mass grave sealed by a giant cross. They build a massive cathedral on the site to prevent the evil from coming back(you know it's not going to work). We then jump to a modern 1989 where renovations are being done in the church. Evan, a scholar working in the church library, decides to meddle with the seal and lets all the bad stuff loose. Once Evan opens up the proverbial can o' worms he starts to transform into a man-goat-lizard demonic creature thing. Evilness ensues, a young girl(Asia Argento) trapped within the cathedral must escape before it's too late.
There are a lot of sub plots in this film but still it flows along quite nicely. This film was originally billed as the third installment of Dario Argento and Lamberto Bava's Demons series, it really has little connection to the previous films. The demons never seem to finish the transformation. Still it has some redeeming qualities and even a bit of intentional humor, not often seen in these Italian flicks. Worth watching, if for nothing else the final climactic moments are a good payoff.
5 comments:
Wow, I bought this movie for a song several years ago to boost my numbers. I was lured in by Argento's name but then realized he had nothing to do with the movie. That Horrorthon I watched a slew of god awful Italian movies and then just assumed that The Church was crap. Glad to hear it's decent!
Have you ever seen any of those Demons movies?
Yes, I've seen both of them. Argento and Bava wrote The Church as a sequel. I'm not sure if something got lost in translation because the screenplay changed hands so many times or if it was just Soavi's interpretation that lost the connection.
I love Italian horror and sounds like one worth checking out.
I think you'd really like it, the setting is very gothic.
This is one of my "partial movies". Each year as time starts dwindling on Horrorthon I find myself starting, then second-guessing, movies and stopping them with the intention of returning to them later. I have a number of partial movies in a pile. I'm glad to hear that this once is decent.
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