Tonight's movie was directed by Michele Soavi (the dude who got his brains ripped out after his girlfriend puked up her guts in City Of The Living Dead) and written by Soavi and Dario Argento (Suspiria). So it has an excellent Italian pedigree. However, it does not actually meet the "zombie" part of the criteria for this section of the OHMC, as it's about demons, not zombies. My bad.
The Church begins with Teutonic knights (who look like the knights from Monty Python And The Holy Grail meets the armor-clad Sauron from the beginning of Fellowship Of The Ring) brutally slaying every man, woman, and child in this one 12th century village in the belief that the place is overrun with witches. They dump the bodies into a mass grave. Even a dead duck and a knight on his horse that fall into the pit are buried immediately so the "demons" won't come back to life. Finally, a giant cross is laid on the burial ground and the monk who accompanied the knights tells them to build a church on that site - "a holy shrine to imprison the demon." You gotta figure that will come back to haunt... somebody.
So that's how we get to the titular church in more-or-less the present day. The great big Catholic Gothic cathedral is undergoing restorations, particularly to the crumbling catacombs in the sub-basement. The church's new librarian, Evan, explores the catacombs and wouldn't you know it? He disturbs the buried cross and releases the evil buried underneath.
The evil force possesses Evan first, followed by a Phil Collins-looking church custodian who goes on to commit suicide with a jackhammer over the cross in the basement. Suddenly, the one exterior door in the cathedral closes, trapping priests, parishioners, and visitors inside. And that's where the fun really begins.
One guy hallucinates a fish-monster leaping out of a bowl of holy water and attacking him, then seeing his girlfriend wrapped naked in the arms of a man-sized demonic winged gargoyle. A senile old woman uses her husband's severed head to ring the cathedral bell. A woman is smashed flat against the windshield of an onrushing subway train. A woman is offered up for sexual congress with Satan in the form of a giant winged goat-man creature. Finally, a writhing pile of the corpses from the mass grave rises up from beneath the cathedral.
The organ and synth score by The Goblins, including a song written by Phillip Glass, is full of rapid and repeating scales that give the scenes that feature it an urgency and nervous energy. The cast is solid, with a couple of "hey, it's that guy" folks thrown in (one of the priests is Queen Amidala's bodyguard/military advisor from the terrible Star Wars prequels, for instance). The visuals are surreal and bizarre, shocking and frightening. Your jaw is bound to hit the floor a couple of times throughout this one. Strange as it is, The Church is artful, creative, and appropriately horrific.
If you want a peek at most of the messed up stuff in this movie, check it out on YouTube: Not Safe For Work Or Kids. The one thing it's really missing is the astounding subway kill. You'll have to watch the whole movie to see that one. Or you can watch the spoileriffic trailer, which shows it pretty thoroughly. Enjoy!
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