The Church

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

		Review by Brian Lindsey

6     5   10 = Highest Rating

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.

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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