Two brilliant horror films directed by Michele Soavi (Dellamorte Dellamore aka Cemetery Man), and produced by Dario Argento (Suspiria) are now out in definitive, glorious, 4K UHD Blu-rays from Severin.
The Church (1989) Michele Soavi’s gothic shocker opens with a band of Teutonic Knights brutally slaying everyone in a village of witches and tossing their lifeless bodies in a huge pit which is covered over with a massive cross. A church is eventually built over it and Tomas Arana plays the new librarian at this massive cathedral which is now undergoing renovations. He accidentally breaks open the seal protecting the world from an invasion of demons. A very young Asia Argento plays the teenage daughter of the live-in sacristan who knows a secret way to escape from the church at night and go clubbing. Before long the evil escapes, infecting everyone in its path. Interspersed are wonderful, surreal, nightmarish imagery. There’s a gruesome, wild, ending with all these parishioners, priests and tourists trapped inside the cathedral transforming into hideous demons.
This is a director-approved 4K scan from the Rome vault negative and comes with over three hours of special features and a CD of the remastered soundtrack by Keith Emerson and Goblin. In an interview with Michele Soavi, he talks about the fact no church in Italy would let them film so they ended up shooting at a gothic church in Budapest. The ruined church at the end was filmed in Germany. Dario Argento discusses how Soavi began as an AD for him on Tenebrae and they became best friends. When Lamberto Bava dropped out of Demons 3, Argento brought in Michele Soavi and they worked for 6 weeks re-writing the script which became The Church.
Soavi has great visual style in the film. You can see influences from Hieronymus Bosch and fantasy artist Boris Vallejo. Asia Argento discusses how much fun it was to make the film, especially since she had known Soavi since she was a child. “We had a very sweet relationship.” Giovanni Lombardo Radice (who plays a creepy priest in the film and worked with Michele in Lucio Fulci’s Gates of Hell) talks enthusiastically about what a great a director Soavi is. There is a terrific booklet included with an excellent overview of the film, “A Vision of the Future, a Rocket from the Crypt,” written by Claire Donner.
The Sect (1991) A wildly ambitious film by Michele Soavi about a mysterious satanic cult. The film begins in California in the 1970s with a long-haired Manson-like Damon (Tomas Arana) slaughtering a group of hippies out in the desert as part of an offering to this “cult.”
Then we are in Frankfurt, Germany in 1991 with an American schoolteacher Miriam (Kelly Curtis– sister of Jamie Lee) who almost runs down an old man on the road (Herbert Lom). She kindly brings him home only to begin a chain of demonic catastrophes leading to her being chosen to play a larger part in some monumental diabolical event. With wild surreal touches and elements of Alice in Wonderland– Miriam even has a pet white rabbit which leads her down through a mysterious catacomb in the basement of her home.
Michele Soavi says, in an extra on the disc, it was “inspired by Celtic culture” and the plot is a mixture of Rosemary’s Baby and The Wicker Man. But it’s got all these bizarre visuals including Miriam being violated by some sort of immense stork and a creepy bug Herbert Lom slips into her nostril while she is sleeping. Author Alan Jones (on an extra) says it best, “This is the film where Michele was finding his true voice.” And it makes sense that his next film was the brilliant Dellamorte Dellamore.
Actor Giovanni Lombardo Radice could only accept a small part because of the theater work he was doing, but is frighteningly memorable as a man carrying a human heart on a crowded German subway. “I could have never said no to Michele for any reason in the world.” Special effects master Sergio Stivaletti says that, “Michele was a very visionary director. And he still is a visionary director.” One of the fun extras is Michele Soavi taking us down a hidden staircase in the kitchen of his family home which leads to a weird well, which helps makes sense of the whole nightmare logic of this film. Also included is the soundtrack by Pino Donaggio and a handsome booklet with another excellent essay by Claire Donner.
