The Church

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Cecchi Gori Group & Tiger Cenematografica S.R.L. & Reteitalia/Italy/Not Rated</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Director.............Michele Soavi (Dario Argento's World of Horror)</B></div> <div> <B>Screenplay.......Dario Argento & Franco Ferrini & Michele Soavi</B></div> <div> <B>Music................Philllip Glass & Keith Emmerson & The Goblins</B></div> <div> <B>Producer...........Dario Argento</B></div> <div> <B>Executive Producer.....Giuseppe Mangogna</B></div> <div> <B>Based on a Story by Dario Argento & Franco Ferrini</B></div> <div> <B>Special Effects by Renato Agostini</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Cast</B></div> <div> <B>(Not Available) Hugh Quarshie           </B></div> <div> <B>                Tomas Arana          </B></div> <div> <B>                Feodor Chaliapin(Curse IV, Moonstruck, Name of the Rose)                  Barbara Cupisti      </B></div> <div> <B>                Antonella Vitale     </B></div> <div> <B>                Giovanni Lombardo Radice   </B></div> <div> <B>                Asia Argento (Palombella Rossa, Trauma)              </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Critique</B><B>: The cathedral is fun. In general this is better cut than "Suspiria".  Shades of Indiana Jones, Nietzsche, the great heresies, and every other tradition in this truly Argentoesque number. After the church is closed up we are presented with a set of new characters that we don't care about and are forced to watch them go through their paces. This is not a formula for success. Likewise, the Italian humor may strike the viewer as incomprehensibly slapstick. There is a ridiculous scene in which two idiotic elderly people can't figure out a telephone and later slapstick about with biscuits. On the other hand, it is at other times just as pleasingly off the wall: an old lady rings the church bell with her husband's head. The boundless Italian joy at the fear of medieval sectarians is as always a plus and a joy. The description of the Teutonic knights (which Teutonic knights?) as forerunners of the Nazis is, although not completely without merit, as accurate as the first pope as forerunner of Mussolini. The American horror movie like American culture obviously has through its mishmash composition (the Puritans would have made movies like this) forgotten the gruesome European transformation from heathenism to Christianity, a strain Catholic European culture has tenderly preserved in the modern Italian/Spanish zombie films, in which the uneasy sleep of the heretic, dead Etruscans in Mortuary?, dead Knights Templar in Horror of the Zombies, and later revisited in the French Nazi/Zombie movie Zombies' Lake, stays scary. The American equivalent is the Catholic possession movie, also an Italian standard.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Plot Summary</B><B>: Teutonic Knights thunder along until a man lures their quarry into a cave where a stone is marked 666. Outside, Vera is washing her foot in hot springs. A beggar says she's a witch, upon which one of the knights reaches over and kills her, revealing a cross-shaped stigmata on her foot. The people in hiding are slaughtered and their bodies are buried lest they come back to life. One of the knights is buried there as well. The Inquisitor commands that a church be built on that spot to imprison the heretics forever. One boy is killed outside the pit. Back to the future: the ancient stone church in modern times is falling apart and its restoration has been ordered. A woman is working on a fresco restoration depicting the massacre. The new librarian is Evan. Lotta is the Sacristan's daughter. She jingles a bell and asks if he can hear the horses. At mass, a sermon is given from Luke in which a possession is described. The renovations, which include drilling in the basement, turn up a cave beneath the church. The work stops. However, a hole was drilled in the floor. Water drips underneath. The restoration woman finds a compartment in a wall and pulls out an ancient document. The parchment bears the symbol of the order of Teutonic nights. The Teutons are supposed to have been an inspiration to the Nazis. The black priest is chided at dinner for not knowing Latin very well. The librarian suggests that there might be all sorts of things stolen from the holy lands. The librarian hypothesizes that the tables of law kept in the ark of the covenant were buried under one of the cathedrals. He wonders if the finder could be a superman. The restorer says it's sacreligious to dig up these things and he doesn't seem to mind. He notes that this is the only cathedral in which no king or duke was buried. His study quickly shows that the document is written backwards. In the reflection it says beneath the church lies a stone with seven eyes where "something" is hidden. Young Lotta climbs down beneath the church and descends into the cave. She hears something that sounds like a horse clumping around and hurries away. The jingling of the restorer's bell seems to start something and she thinks a horse is riding down on her. But then it passes. Is it the Teutonic knight who fell in with the devil worshipers still trying to protect them from demons? As the black priest does archery, he invokes images of knights. The dour monsignor is looking through the plans of the church for something. The librarian arrives to begin looking for the stone with seven eyes. There is one sarcophagus which says "That which was entrusted to you keep safe'. He finds that the stone with seven eyes fits in the huge crucifix we saw thrown over the pit in the beginning. water drips on it from above. He pries it from its place, removing it reveals a manhole. As he watches, the crucifix falls all the way to hell and then a blue mist rises. He pulls a leather sack up out of the crucifix shaped hole. Undoing it, however, frees slimy hands which wrap around his throat. He awakens to find the crucifix still in place and that his wrist has been slit. When he hears an intruder, he returns the stone to its place and hurries to hide. Lotte is followed by her father. The father discovers the librarian and Evan strikes him. The restorer dreams of plunging herself into holy water and descending through the crucifix shaped hole. She is awakened by the librarian, Evan, grunting incoherently to her on the phone. He looks to be possessed. He pulls out his heart and holds it beating before him. We see a car racing. Next we see the restorer is simply fixing herself a snack in bed. Someone is in her house. She tries to call the police, saying that they should come quickly. The phone is pulled out of her hands by whatever's behind the door. She leaps out the window into the arms of the waiting police. She was lucky they traced the call. Huh? She mutters about a monster. Lotte's father awakens to find that he, too, has become a monster. The restorer comes to work the next day to find that Evan is a bit odd. She tells him it was a monster. He leans over her quite strangely. She asks what happened. He says the sacristan jumped on him. Evan then begins attacking her sexually, but she fends him off. He tells Lotte that Rita must be suffering from nerves. You can never tell with women. Next he notices Lotte's legs. Soon he's all wild eyed and on her too. He suggests they open up her tummy to see why it aches. When she goes to her father he says Evan is a good man. Next he's dragging her to the basin and washes her mouth out with soap. She catches sight of his image in a mirror and he looks like a demon-monkey. During a tour it comes up that these cathedrals are built so that pressing a button is sufficient to destroy them. The black priest hears a confession in which Lotte's father, Herman, admits he no longer believes. He admits he's no longer human and says that he wants to do evil. He's possessed by the angel of evil. He runs out of the confessional and down toward the crypt. He scratches some people on the way out. The priest finds that the sacristan has killed himself with a power drill and the drill's embedding itself in a certain rock begins a chain reaction. Fluids are poured, vessels emptied and winches go to work. The doors close catching a bride's gown up above. They have to cut her out. The demons have been trapped inside. A stone turns and the monsignor reads the Latin, and it says that the secret has been unearthed and hence those within are locked in. The groom who was scratched soon swells with infection. A trilobite seems to leap out of the holy water at the groom. The mural on the wall disappears. Rita begins drinking holy water. People are generally beginning to act out in the church. The somehow revived sacristan runs at the pinned bride with a gate and skewers her. The characters trapped in the church search for ways out. Meanwhile, the escaped Lotte is in a disco and decides she ought to get back to the church. The cathedral is infested with evil. The architect designed the closing of the doors. The monsignor says it's either demonic possession spreading like a plague or touching the button that will bring the church down. When the black priest struggles with him the monsignor falls to his death. The punks hear something and begin to dig down. This creates a hole in the floor they hang on for a moment and then she is smashed by a street car underneath. Somehow the bride is still alive and sees herself in the mirror grown suddenly old. Rita says she must find Evan. She goes naked down to the crypt and is painted. Then Evan and some others appear in a straight quote of Rosemary's baby, devil face and all. The point in this remains obscure. Lotta has gotten back into the church and father Gus wants to find the way out. They tortured the architect. Lotta admits that she had seen it all. She leads Gus to the statue of the architect. The secret is there. They descend to the crypt and see the demon grunting over Rita, they pass this by as though it is only of mild interest. Gus is torn between wanting freedom and keeping the demons from the Earth. He releases the secret from the architect's mouth. The demons begin to rise from their grave Gus grabs the pin from the architect's mouth. Gears start to turn and then stones start to fall. The people and the rising devil worshipers are crushed. Lotta continues to bear witness, stumbling around the ruins of the fallen church. She finds the stone with the seven eyes. It flips out and the blue light from below starts to shine on her. We get the obligatory child's demon smile at the end.</B></div> </td> </tr></table></body>