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Italy
/ 1988
Directed by Michele Soavi
Starring
Tomas Arana
Barbara Cupisti
Asia Argento
Color / 102 Minutes / Not Rated
Format: DVD (R1 - NTSC)
Anchor Bay Entertainment
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2007
Blue Underground Edition
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Produced
and co-written by Italian terror maestro Dario
Argento, this film was originally intended as
the second sequel to Lamberto Bava's supernatural
splatterfest Demons.
Instead, director Michele Soavi — a
young protégé of Argento's — fashioned
a more serious, certainly more stylish horror
thriller than can stand on its own merits. This
was the follow-up feature to his low budget, maniac-on-the-loose
"slasher" debut Stage
Fright
(1987). With The Church,
Soavi demonstrates a flair for the visual to rival
his mentor.
The story borrows elements
from both Demons
(infectious evil can spread like a contagion)
and Argento's own Inferno
(the very structure/design of a building holds
the key to unlocking supernatural forces). In
this case, naturally, it's a church — an immense
gothic cathedral in a unnamed city in Germany.
In the film's opening we see the events that took
place during medieval times which led to its construction.
A squadron of Teutonic Knights, believing a group
of peasants to be devil worshippers, brutally
slaughter the lot of them... men, women, children
and even livestock. When the corpses are dumped
into a pit and buried, a fanatical priest sanctifies
the ground and commands that a house of God be
built over the mass grave to keep its evil spirits
forever entombed in the earth.
Flash forward to modern times.
The church's baroque artwork is being restored
by Lisa (Barbara Cupisti), a perky young artist
who's instantly attracted to the new librarian,
handsome yuppie Evan (Gladiator's
Tomas Arana). Sparks fly — much to the disdain
of the creepy old bishop (Fedor Chaliapin)
— but Evan's actually
more fascinated with an ancient parchment
Lisa's found hidden inside a wall than he is getting
into her pants. (Idiot! She's a babe!) Deciphering
its coded
Latin leads the inquisitive Evan to a "seal
with seven eyes" set in the floor of the
church's dank, moldy catacombs. Could treasure
lie hidden beneath the stone? Secrets long kept
from Mankind? Curious as the proverbial cat, Evan
removes the seal to reveal an opening to the chamber
beneath... and lets loose into the church a force
of evil that will possess not only him but everyone
setting foot within its walls. Should it escape
to the outside, the entire world will fall under
the Devil's sway.
Visually striking, The
Church is a stylish chiller
with a superb "look" — the iconography
of Hieronymous Bosch by way of MTV. The gothic
environs of the church, in which almost all the
story take place, are used to marvelous effect.
Particularly well executed are sequences involving
secret machinery built into the structure of the
cathedral. Production values are high for Italian
cinema of this period. Soavi
handles both the medieval and modern with equal
aplomb; the opening with the Teutonic Knights
has a grubby "Bring out your dead!"
feel that lends authenticity even when accompanied
by synthesized music. The gore effects are quite
good and used judiciously — this
isn't a splatterfest like
Demons, which went
over-the-top too often for its own good. (Rest
assured, there's still enough of the squishy stuff
on hand to please most gorehounds.) The acting
ranges from good to passable — not
always the case in Italian horror — with
Arana, Chaliapin and
Argento's then-teenage daughter Asia, as the daughter
of the church Sacristan, fairing best.
(Cupisti is
sexy and likable; her nude scenes are much too
brief.) Even the
dubbing is above average. The composite score
by Argento veterans Keith
Emerson and Goblin, while not as memorable as
those for Inferno
or Suspiria, strongly
compliments the film.
The goodies highlighted above
compensate for some weaknesses. The narrative
isn't particularly focused, as the story essentially
exchanges lead characters three times. The final
forty minutes sees the oh-so-convenient introduction
of a parade of potential victims, including a
crew on a photo shoot, a guided tour of school
kids, a batty elderly couple, and a pair of quarreling
biker teens. There are a couple of humorous faux
pas of note... In one scene Lisa, dressed in a
nightgown, makes the cleanest headlong dive through
a plate glass window I've ever seen — she
isn't even scratched. You'll also witness the
fastest police response time in film history,
as the cops show up in 10 seconds flat
after Lisa makes a terrified emergency phone call
for help. (Soavi, by the way, cameos as one of
the officers.)
With The
Church, the sum of the parts are certainly
better than the whole. But Soavi's eye and sense
of atmosphere makes for a rewarding experience.
For aficionados of Eurohorror this is a can't-miss
film.
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Like
Demons, The
Church has been released on DVD by Anchor
Bay as a part of its Dario Argento Collection
even though Argento did not direct the film. It's
a bare bones disc —
atypical for the company —
with only the theatrical trailer and a text bio
of Soavi as extras. Too bad Soavi doesn't merit
at least a short video interview like that afforded
the much less talented Bruno Mattei found on the
Hell Of The Living
Dead DVD.
On the plus side, picture and
sound quality are excellent. The blemish-free widescreen
transfer is anamorphically enhanced for 16x9 TVs;
the disc's Dolby EX audio mix sounds great, adding
to the spooky ambiance. A segment of the 'rampaging
knights' music plays over the colorful menu screens.
Given the technical quality of the disc and a relatively
low price, The Church
is an excellent value for the Eurohorror enthusiast.
2/10/02 |
| UPDATE
The AB disc reviewed here went OOP in early 2007.
On October 30, 2007 Blue Underground is reissuing
the title using the exact same transfer and extras. |
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