The first of two films produced by Dario Argento and Directed by the wonderful Michele Soavi, La Chiesa has always been a movie I've never fully appreciated... until a few years ago.

Now it’s one of my favorites—perfectly encapsulating my love for escalating chaotic madness: a tower of contorted/distorted bodies covered in disgusting sludge, crazy traps everywhere, a librarian being willed to rip his heart out, crazy jackhammer impalement, beheaded priests, Satan goat man shows up, and a lady gets pancake flattened by a train... everything I could ever ask for in a movie.

Slow pacing be damned, this movie is delightfully bonkers and if you ask me, how it all unfolds is part of the magic. I adore this movie…

I was in one of those moods where I wanted to watch a “comfort food” Italian horror movie and I was looking for New York Ripper when I came across this and it’s not the first time I’vd been looking for a different Italian horror movie and came across this one and went with it instead. I’ve seen this so many times and it’s just as amazing on every single watch. 

Excellent direction from Michele Soavi who is an underrated genius. Superb cinematography. Beautiful set pieces. Terrific score that will be stuck in my head for at least a couple of days. Barbara Cupisti is gorgeous and it’s easy to see why Soavi loves her. Asia Argento was an adorable kid. Crazy…

Not just the devil but also disappointment exists behind the walls of The Church.

I still remember the first time I watched this movie in 2008, it was good but something was missing but I couldn't tell at that time what it was. But having watched it twice since then I can tell now that the problem is, not just with the movie but also not living up to the era it was made in. it's like that one student who has potential and is good too but all the other are blowing everything away and making him look like a disappointment.

For me, the 80s was the golden decade for horror cinema giving us classics such as "Hellraiser 1…

A good and unapologetically over-the-top horror film, bursting with a full-blooded and enthusiastic Gothic atmosphere and an apocalyptic mood that strikingly defines the entire experience. The film’s aesthetic power effectively holds our attention, allowing us to surrender to the negative forces lurking within the narrative and let them completely overtake us, without dwelling too much on its evident weaknesses.

These weaknesses are most visible in the thinly developed characters and their often confusing decisions, as well as in the occasionally clumsy transitions from one scene to another, where a certain incoherence tends to surface, particularly in the main expository passages. Yet instead of disrupting the experience, it becomes easier to immerse ourselves fully in the malevolent presence at the film’s…

🇮🇹 Italy 🧟‍♂️ Undead/Demons 🎬 Soavi 💎 Gem #127 (1989) 🧬 👻

"What must we do now? The men are frightened." "Bless this site and build a church on it. A holy shrine to imprison the demon in this pit forever."

Finally! A religious horror film in the style of Bosch and Bruegel, full of fish-scale demons swallowing heads and black angels turning the living into demons.

What occurs in La chiesa is madness. This is what I have been missing from exorcism films and religious horror: centuries of painterly representations of hell and the delirious nightmares of the clerical and the monastic. The demons in La Chiesa are pulled from representations in manuscript marginalia and paintings of hell, and…

Spooktober IV: Morte all'italiana

Soavi is back in our marathon with another fun and gory movie, mostly set in one location: a church infested by evil and a sect that’s trying to open a gate to hell and unleash it into the world.

Again, this is a wonderfully gory romp with tons of great practical makeup and effects, frequently verging on the silly. The plot isn't particularly original, but it's engaging enough to keep you watching to see how it all plays out. There is also some of that Raimi cheeky humor sprinkled throughout, along with a wonderful dose of campy humor that makes you wonder at points whether this was meant to be a comedy horror. The acting is…

12th Century demons trapped under the ground and a cathedral built over the top to keep them put? All hell breaking loose when they're released 8 centuries later to the sound of synth and the cool neon glow of 1989? Sounds like something I can groove to.

I expected to like this a lot more than I actually did. I really dug the last Soavi I watched, StageFright, and on paper it's exactly my kinda demonic resurrection bullshit. The involvement of Dario Argento, on the back of his gloriously deranged Opera, should be the icing on the cake. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot I liked - I relished the restless, gymnastic camera work, courtesy of cinematographer Renato Tafuri…

Before joining any church community, it’s a good idea to ask if their place of worship is built on a mass grave of witches. They’re kinda rare and you may be “pro” or “con” so it’s good to know up front.

I’m a fan of Soavi’s films. The crown jewel is Cemetery Man for me, but I could make a case that his best film is Stage Fright or The Sect. Each is unique, packed full of memorable imagery and unexpected narrative turns. While The Church is my least favorite of his films, it’s MOSTLY “unexpected narrative turns” and certainly has its share of memorable imagery:

The Teutonic knights’ massacre! A cross-shaped chasm with its beaming blue light and fog! The goat-headed…