A present day setting, demonic possession, a gothic cathedral, an unlikely assemblage of potential victims, and a connection to Crusading, slaughtering medieval knights? Add in horror maestro Dario Argento as co-writer, his protege Michele Soavi as director, and a film concept that started out as the third part of Lamberto Bava's Demons series. Mix well and what do you get? An Italian horror flick that is equal parts cheese and art with a splash of blood.
I first saw this on VHS years ago when I was looking for anything that was also directed by the director of Cemetary Man. The first, and only, one I could find at the time was The Church. I wasn't sure I liked it when I first saw it, it seemed rather pedestrian even if it did have a good and creepy score and some good gore shots. I quickly forgot about it, and never did find any of Soavi's other films. Recently my mind had wandered back to Cemetary Man, what with the glut of zombie films filling the market recently, so I ended up importing a copy of it as there is no official DVD in the US. Then while browsing one of the local DVD selling chains, I came across a copy of The Church, I immediately snatched it up, regardless of my previous reaction, my viewing of films is a lot different now than it was then. I brought it home, popped it in, and ended up liking it considerably more now than I did the first time I had seen it.
The film opens in medieval times, Crusading knights enter a town of suspected Satan worshippers and proceed to slaughter every living thing there. They then seal all of the bodies in a mass grave and cover everything over with a cathedral. Jump forward to the present day, there is a restoration going on in the cathedral, during this restoration, the secret buried there is unearthed. That there is the setup. Inside the church we have a couple of the restoration workers, a group of school kids on a tour, some other random people, not to mention the priests.
The film takes it's time setting up, and it all works to slowly build the tension of what is to come. Once the demons of the past are unleashed from the basement of the church people start dying. And die they do, in various gruesome ways, impaling, subway, various other bloody ways. The heroes are Lotte, played by a young Asia Argento (xXx), and Father Gus, played by Hugh Quarshie (Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace). They are the only ones that stand between the spreading evil and the rest of the world. For more, I suggest you see the movie!
Soavi's direction stands between generic horror splatter and poetic art. A fine line to balance, which, while not entirely successful here, he takes to great effect in the masterful Dellamorte Dellamore. There are visual flourishes and camera moves not normally associated with your standard horror film, combine that with the great cathedral setting and the nice blood, you get a creepily effective film. If there is one thing that is holding this movie back, it's the acting, to put it bluntly it's bad. Acting is wooden, and just does not ring true, this leads to the bad dialogue, the script is poor and doesn't give the actors much to work with. Despite that, it works and I liked it a lot this time around.
Video. Presented in it's original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and is anamorphically enhanced. The image looks good, not great, but what I expect from an 80's era Italian horror film. The image is always clear, but always a bit soft, not as sharp as I would have liked. Again nothing to complain about.
Audio. Presented in Dolby Digital 2.0, this track serves it's purpose but is nothing special. The clarity is good and it is at it's best with the Goblin score, which helps to create that eerie atmosphere that serves the movie so well. The problem is with the dialogue and sound effects. It sounds as if they were just laid on top of everything else and placed slightly out of synch with the video. This is probably like it was when it was released, but it could have been made to sound more natural. A few times it became a little distracting, but I didn't let it detract too much from my enjoyment of the film.
Extras. Now I can complain. All we get is a trailer, which gives away a number of surprises, and a text bio of Michele Soavi. It's good to have the trailer and the bio is actually quite good, but there could have been so much more. A commentary track with Michele, Asia, and Hugh would have been nice, and I'm sure there is probably a bit of behind the scenes footage laying around somewhere. In the end, I'm happy to have the film on DVD.
Bottomline. If you're a fan of giallo films, or films of The Evil Dead persuasion, I think you would like this film a lot. It doesn't contain the humor that Evil Dead does, but that doesn't detract from it. Good gore, excellent direction, and cheesy dialogue combine to make one good horror flick.
Recommended.
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