Review: The Church (1989)
(aka La Chiesa)
Directed by: Michele Soavi
Starring: Tomas Arana, Feodor Chaliapin, Hugh Quarshie
Written by: Dario Argento, Franco Ferrini, Michele Soavi
Music by: Keith Emerson, Philip Glass, Goblin, Fabio Pignatelli
Country: Italy
Available on: Blu-ray (Scorpion Releasing), DVD (Blue Underground)
IMDb
Michele Soavi is one of Italian horror cinema’s somewhat forgotten heroes. A protégé of Dario Argento, he’s directed two of the very best horror films to emerge from Italy, Cemetery Man (aka Dellamorte Dellamore; 1994) and Stage Fright (aka Aquarius; 1987). Soavi never quite gets the accolades he deserves, though — and it’s probably because his movies are so damn wacky. Genre flicks from Italy are always at least a little weird, with their atrocious dubbing, senseless plots, and characters who seem more like otherworldly doppelgangers of human beings. But Soavi intentionally kicks up the bizarre quotient through wild, pendulum-like tonal swings and inappropriately broad humor. He also loves to employ pulpy, sometimes appallingly cheap-looking special effects that add the surreal, not-quite-reality patina of a stage play. The music in his films always rocks. All of that is part of the arsenal rolled out for The Church, his second feature. Originally conceived as the third movie in the Demons franchise, this flick follows a cast of characters who end up sequestered in a church wherein a demonic presence has recently been unleashed (Italians can never keep their ancient demons in check), and each falls victim to a combination of bloodshed, insanity, and/or possession. There’s not much else to the movie, and its clear lack of storytelling inertia is its main weakness. There is no central protagonist and everyone who’s initially set up as a hero is killed off promptly or just disappears. Eventually, we’re left with Father Gus, but he never seems in peril and there’s never any climactic confrontation with evil. But that aside, The Church gorges itself on strange and unsettling imagery, including a man who impales himself on a jackhammer; a woman who claws her own face off; a woman who’s raped by a goat-headed demon; a totem of mutilated, writhing corpses; a woman who, completely out of nowhere, finds herself in the path of a subway train and, from the point of view of the train conductor, is splattered on the windshield; and a young girl propositioned by a sweaty, skeezy dude who then seeks refuge with her sweaty, skeezy dad (skeezy men are an Italian horror specialty — you’ll find at least one heavily perspiring, leering man mumbling to himself like a masturbating madman in every flick). Soavi is definitely a few artistic steps ahead of many of his contemporaries, though, and his excellent eye for composition and staging, as well as his fine-tuned sense of the dramatic, elevate the impact of many of these diabolical set-pieces. The swag score is an amalgam of a few pieces from Keith Emerson’s original score that producer Dario Argento didn’t hate as much as most of the stuff Emerson wrote for the movie, a couple pieces by Philip Glass, and some cues written by Goblin bassist Fabio Pignatelli (here just credited as “Goblin”). Like the film as a whole, the music is discombobulated as hell but somehow works. The Church is a fine slab of cinematic hell from our Italian friends, even if it’s more a patchwork of cool shit than any kind of coherent movie.
Overall rating: 7.5 out of 10
