Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with the next installment of A Movie A Day: Halloween 2010 edition!
[For the entirety of October I will be showcasing one horror film each day. Every film is pulled from my DVD shelf or streamed via Netflix Instant and will be one I haven’t seen. Unlike my A Movie A Day or A Movie A Week columns there won’t necessarily be connectors between each film, but you’ll more than likely see patterns emerge day to day.]
There’s a very important tradition in film exploration, used by the brave men and women who slough through title after title, looking for a diamond amongst the coal. It’s called “Gonging.”
During certain films it becomes apparent from the very beginning that there’s no hope for it and it will be “gonged,” stopped early to save the eyes of the viewer and rescue the endangered hour and change of his or her life from being wasted on a turd.
Inspired by The Gong Show, in which a panel would observe an act or routine and would signal they’ve had enough by striking a gong, To Gong a movie is, in some ways, an admittance of defeat.
That is exactly what happened with me and The Video Dead. I couldn’t take anymore. I threw in the towel. I fired up my Instant Netflix on the ol’ Xbox 360 with the best of intentions, gave the film 20 minutes and gonged it. I gonged the fuck out of that movie.
Amateur hour all the way, make-up that would make even Uwe Boll shake his head in disapproval, canned sound, horrible photography… I couldn’t do it.
Luckily for me I was scanning through Netflix’s horror line-up for an article I’ll be running sometime before Halloween and I found Michele Soavi’s THE CHURCH, produced by Dario Argento and starring a very young Asia Argento.
So, I gonged The Video Dead and instead moved to:
I’m a huge, huge fan of the Argento produced and scripted Demons and Demons 2 directed by Lamberto Bava. Especially that first film about a demon possession epidemic in a movie theater. It’s killer.
The second film, set in an apartment building, isn’t as great, but I think it’s pretty damn good.
THE CHURCH is apparently Demons 3, but it’s different enough to garner it’s own title domestically. Of the three films, it is by the far the worst, but still a huge step up from The Video Dead.
Directed by Cemetery Man’s Michele Soavi, the film tells the story of a Church which rests upon one of the doorways of evil into this world. That’s not a particularly original idea, especially from Italian horror of the ‘70s and ‘80s, but it usually leads to a lot of fun, so who cares?
The flick opens in medieval times (the period, not the fine dining establishment) as Christian soldiers find a cave with a bunch of people that have crosses carved into their feet and arms. The stigmata apparently means they are evil, so everybody is slaughtered. Hell, a Christian soldier and his horse fall in to the death pit at the end of the slaughter and they just cover his ass up, too.
I like how they know this is an evil area because there’s a rock with three 6s etched in it at the entrance.
Anyway, after they slaughter and bury these supposedly evil people they throw a giant-ass concrete crucifix on top of it, which seems to lock the demons below.
By the way, the only sign these people are anything but scared peasants is that after they’re slaughtered and thrown into a mass grave creepy demon hands pull in that Christian soldier and his horse down in with them. We only see them as terrified women and children.
Cut to modern day (ie late ‘80s) and we’re in a giant cathedral that we soon come to discover rests atop the mass grave and keeps the demons from rising.
This flick isn’t like the previous Demons movies where when people turn they become crazy monsters… well, they kinda do, but this one’s more psychological. Sometimes we see the infected as crazy goat-headed abominations, sometimes as people.
That’s one of my problems with the movie is there really aren’t any rules. Sometimes when a character sees an infected in a mirror they see their true form, sometimes they just see the character. The film plays fast and loose with any kind of real rules and as a result it feels kinda like just anything can happen, which isn’t nearly as effective.
Also unlike the other Demons films this one takes a long, long time to get going. We get to know the people in the Church, the strict old priest, the cute artist girl painting a fresco, the smooth young Black priest (who apparently is an archer in his spare time, something I was really hoping would pay off in the chaotic finale, but never did), a cleaner and his family, including a clueless wife and party girl daughter, a preteen Asia Argento.
When a guy comes in to catalogue the Cathedral’s massive library he becomes obsessed with an ancient parchment that claims a giant secret lies beneath the stone with seven eyes, somewhere in the church.
He gets it in his head that he could become a God if he finds this secret. Of course, that stone is built into the giant concrete crucifix down in the bowels of the church and is what’s keeping the demons at bay.
When the shit finally does start going down there’s a lot of promise. As a preventative measure the Cathedral has a lockdown mode and trapped inside are tourists (including an elderly couple with a grumpy husband and a wife who thinks ‘60s slang makes her sound cool), a middle school tour group and their young teacher, a pampered model and her crew on a photoshoot and our regulars.
There’s a lot of gold to be mined, especially with the kids in peril aspect, but what we get is kind of a scattershot effect. Too much is possible and most of it is just dropped, so it feels like a lot more interesting stuff is going on during the finale that we’re not seeing.
Now there are some great kills and some creepy images, like the Lust Mountain which is revealed, basically a giant pile of creatures and humans fucking in goo.
I was kind of hoping for more of a visceral experience than a cerebral experience. The hunter/prey aspect is touched upon, but kinda left alone for a more surreal experience, which didn’t fit with what I wanted out of the movie.
The acting, as far as I can tell, is fine although the dubbing is horrible. Good God did they get some bad voice actors for this movie. And I also hate it when they have an adult putting on a child’s voice, which is essentially just a high-pitched nasally sound. Maybe they did bring in kid actors for the voices of the children, but if so they were the fakest sounding kids ever.
Final Thoughts: While a mixed bag, there’s enough in here to like for a horror fan that it’s definitely a recommendation, especially since it’s easily found via Netflix Instant. Soavi isn’t as fun of a director as Lamberto Bava and this movie feels a bit Frankensteined from a few different thoughts and ideas leaving us with a film that has a lot of great moments, but isn’t a cohesive whole. If you want a totally kick-ass stuck-in-a-church horror movie stick with Carpenter’s PRINCE OF DARKNESS.
Currently in print on DVD: YES
Currently available on Netflix Instant: YES
Tuesday, October 19th: THE BLACK CAT (1981)
Wednesday, October 20th: THE BLACK CAT (1934)
Thursday, October 21st: THE COMEDY OF TERRORS (1963)
Friday, October 22nd: DOLLS (1987)
Saturday, October 23rd: SILENT SCREAM (1980)
Sunday, October 24th: SCREAM OF FEAR (1961)
Monday, October 25th: THE MEPHISTO WALTZ (1971)
We move from Argento and Soavi to Lucio Fulci with tomorrow’s The Black Cat! I love me some Fulci! Can’t wait! See you then.
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
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