The Church

HEEEELLLLOOOOO
Dear readers, this is another edition of the Final Girl film club.  This month we get to dig into some italian and you know that can be both very filling and very spicy.  We are doing "La Chiesa," otherwise known as...

Everyone needs a good dose of church!

So come with me, and I'll show you some interesting things!

When I was a lad, I was far away from theaters and video stores that would have a film like "The Church," in it.  But I did have loads of film magazines like "Fangoria."  I remember clearly some still shots from the film that looked wonderful.  So I always had an interest in the film.  Finally, I did manage to see it last of a five film marathon, and while I liked it I was also somewhat disappointed.  So, it's interesting to me now to reappraise this film.

Now here is a shot from the opening credit sequence.  Not very exciting, and it was rather confusing to me when i first watched, maybe because it was three a.m. in the morning.  Now I can see it's a bit more subtle than I'm used to in my Italian movies.  The twigs above are forming sort of a natural spire.  It's almost a shadow of the Church that is to come.  At least that's how I see it.

This film by the way is done by Dario Argento who is famed for his "Demons" films.  This was actually first pitched as "Demons 3," but eventually the story went in a different direction.  It also has Goblin doing the music as well.  With all this going in, one might think it would look more like "Demons" style fun and games, but really it has its own funky visual style.

We are the Knights who say Walla Walla Washington

 So we  begin back in the time where men were armor plated, and women  were sore.  More to the point it's a whole gang of knights on the war path.  They are definitely not the shining knights type either.  You definitely get the feel that you could probably smell the horse funk two miles away.

CROSS CAM!

Seriously he was in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, right?

Our knights right to a large cave where they meet a small creep.  Said creep is slinking, oozing and capering on about some people he rat out to the knights.  Seriously, the fellow looks both mentally deranged and probably in danger of losing bowel control.  He points out the address of the cave is 666 before leading our knights boldly forward.

On the other side of the cave there are a bunch of harmless looking women and children.  One rather pretty girl is soaking her foot.  The knights come and are joined by are rather shifty looking priest.  The Girl offers one knight water, but the priest warns that she is possessed and to take nothing from her.

I think Ash said it best when he said, "Lissen up you primative screw heads...."

 The knight obviously considers what the girl is offering for a moment.  Then he takes off his screw top helmet revealing a rather handsome if incredibly dirty man.  He looks at her maybe with kindness, or just faint interest then crushes her skull.  Rather gently, it must be so noted.  The priest and creep take off the bandage on her foot revealing a crucifix shaped wound on her foot.  See?  She was obviously possessed.  Therefore, logically (well their logic) everyone else here must be possessed here as well.  So that means...

He has her in his cross hairs

Bring out your dead!  (I know another monty python reference but really, it fits)

Scratch out one village.  Heads roll, people roll.  Babies are squished by horses.  Welcome to Law and Order, Medieval Style.  Soon they are stacking up the death wagon up to the brim and then they take them to a pit for disposal.  I mean, they are even dumping dead ducks and dogs and such into the mix.  This village is now seriously dead.

Wearing a dartboard over your face is no way to go through life son....

Well not everyone is dead.  There is one young person who is hiding by a combination of stealth and looking like a large basket.  This witness watches as not everyone in the pit is dead, but the knights bury them anyway, even burying one of their own horse and all when he's pulled into the pit.  Dirt and lime are poured over the bodies as our witness tries to leave.  That is until a goose of all things squawks and sets a Knight after her.

Run in the forest run!

 The Knight catches the witness and pulls off the wicker mask revealing a young girl.  What happens next between the two is not shown.  What is shown is that the Knights finish their work by putting a huge cross over the death pit.  The priest tells the knights that the only thing they can do to contain the evil is to build a church over the site.

Cross marks the spot

We now come to a rather cool way to come to the present day.  The camera pans back from the cross and it is now clearly a part of a dark floor.  We travel backwards from darkened corridors, and now we are in the church that they obviously must have built.  We are confronted with a rather foreboding statue of a monk.  Ten seconds in this place, and it's definitely not the type of uplifting place of worship I would choose.  I'm not alone in this since the place is in obvious disrepair and has a congregation of about a handful.

This is the church, you don't want to know what's in the steeple
When the demons get out they are going to open up the people

 From being introduced to our setting we are now introduced to some of our characters.  Notably Evan, as seen above.  Man, he gives off the scent of Uber Nerd, he's like Herbert West's brother.  That's not a good thing dear readers, and he's being treated at the moment as our main character. 

As disturbing as the painting is, what's worse is it is a portrait....

So as he strides through the church we see various priests and parishioners doing their morning thing.  He passes by a truly evil looking painting going through restoration and stops.  It's worth stopping for, it's truly hideous.  Again, this is certainly not the church of the warm fuzzies.   Suddenly from up top comes an avalanche of art supplies making our creepy hero drop his type writer (dang doesn't that just take you back?).


sorry about your brush with danger!

 From up top, Lisa the pretty artist apologizes.  They make small chat and it is revealed he's the new librarian and he's late already.  They make plans for coffee later as they are obviously the cutest people in the Church, and they don't have any entangling vows.

By the way, special bonus points if you notice the creepy old woman.  Don't worry, it might mean something later.

Not saying he's old, but he still remembers when Mass was in grunts

You might also have noticed the Bishop, who likes to pretend he's one of the monk statues at the crypt.  As you may guess with that sort of out look on fun he doesn't take the librarian being a bit tardy well at all.  He's obviously at the stage of his life where the endtimes look jolly compared to the threat of another bowel movement.

 On the opposite end of the spectrum our librarian discovers Lotte underneath the desk.  She's the Sacristan's daughter and she really doesn't like being cooped up in a church all the time.  She's not quite a wild child but you can see she would like to be.  While not a priest, there's just a little creep factor here between Herbert West Librarian and flirtatious girl child.

No Sir, I don't like it....

 Later on, we get to see the Bishop in action in the pulpit.  He reads about Jesus' encounter with the demon Legion (gee, what coincidink that is).  Lotte is bored and is spending time on her lips when caught by her father the Sacristan who is to say the least unhappy with her lack of focus.  As an aside, we will see several times women work on their lips as well as other lip imagery.  It's an almost subversive undertone of female sexuality.

At last my very own necronomicon.....

Don't worry this means nothing, move along

 After a hard day's work of drooling over books our librarian comes to find Lisa.  Lisa is however in the basement stopping restoration workers from destroying the place.  A few light taps with a pneumatic hammer has given the basement more cracks than when Joan River smiles.  Later as she tries to fix one pillar she finds a secret parchment.  She shares the secret parchment with our librarian and their nerd love is secure.

so you like sodoku?

It says, "Should have turned right at Alburque..."

I am better than you

No you aren't

 Meanwhile, at a meal we are introduced to the two priests under the Bishop.  One is an old school fellow that is clearly in the bishop's good graces.  The other is a younger priest and obviously one of those priests who care too much for humanity to study up on proper Latin.  Oh, and he's black.  So, you can guess who's at the bottom of the confession booth.  As they eat, the Bishop suggests to his top priest that he use "The World is the Devil's," in his next outing.  Later the Bishop will spend time with old cryptic books, and one might be suspicious of how much the Bishop knows.

gotta kiss a lot of frogs

Billy Joel said "you catholic girls start too late," but in Lotte's case I think she's early

Speaking of suspicious, there's a light in a nook where there should be none.  Suddenly we see Lotte sneaking out for a night on the town.  Certainly, knowing a secret way out of the church might be a good bit of knowledge, but who knows.

Camp Crystal Lake?

 So back to our nerds in love.  Here Evan goes off on a tinfoil hat tangent as they get all sexy with each other.  Evan, talks about a theory that the contents of the ark of the covenant were buried under one cathedral, or some other secret.  He believes if someone discovers that secret they might become as gods.  He didn't laugh maniacally, but I'm sure that's just an oversight.

 Caught with a sudden spork of inspiration, Evan blows off hot sex to wave a lighter over the parchment.  Reading the words clearly now in the curve of the lighter he now knows that the secret to church is behind a "Stone with seven eyes." 

The only real response when your lover blows you off to solve the mystery of the ages.

seems like everyone is looking over ancient parchments.  Tip, though: you probably
shouldn't have a lit cigarette in one hand

Nothing like a close family (and this is nothing like one)

Who is the mysterious person that always haunts the pews?

When a phantom horse chases you out of church you should get your resume ready

I wouldn't think you could see well enough to be able shoot at any distance

The next day can be seen as a day of omens.  Lisa is chased down the center aisle of the church by phantom hoofbeats.  At around the same time, Father Gus (the black one) has a vision of a knight shooting at him with a bow and arrow as the good Father practices his archery.

That night Evan prowls around looking for a seven eyed stone.  First he finds a fresco of St. George battling the dragon and takes that for directions.  It's not long before he finds a certain huge crucifix in the floor.  He also discovers that the lump in the center is when clean a depiction of a seven eyed goat.  After a brief consultation of "rightie tighty/lefty loosey" he figures out how to open it.  Now the fun begins!

oops

Get a hold of yourself!

 So after Evan opens the darn thing one of two things happen.  On the one hand the crucifix falls into a deep pit.  After falling into the darkness, a blue glow comes up from within.  Evan reaches into the hole and pulls out a bag.  He opens the bag and is choked by many demonic hands.

OR...

Evan wakes up on the crucifix.  It did not fall into the hole.  Evan's hand is hurt because when he reached into the hole he got scratched by a claw embedded into the side of hole.  In either case, Evan is now definitely being possessed.  As he leaves the catacombs he has to knock out the Sacristan, and passes the possession onto him.

A bad case of cat scratch fever

Meanwhile Lisa is having dreams of watches and water.....

Look, both lips, and our mysterious cloaked figure....

Evan is all broken hearted now....

Baaaa

 Lisa is awakened by a phone call.  Evan is not making sense.  Not even making words.  Just gargling into the phone as he changes.  Soon he is plunging his hands into his chest and offering his heart to what ever force is controlling him.  Or at least that is one story.  On the other hand, Lisa is soon threatened by Goat demon and runs for her life.  Things are getting out of control fast.

All I need is some fava beans and a nice chianti

 The next day, the church fills with special victims...

VICTIMS:  Fashionistas

VICTIMS:  Cute school children and teacher...

VICTIMS:  old people

VICTIMS:  Motorcycle couple

 And now for something completely different and disgusting.  Lisa comes in and looks for Evan.  Unfortunately, she finds him.  Evan is now on full tilt possessed mode and has all the stability of Crispin Glover on a trampoline.  She basically says, "Hi, I love you, someone tried to kill me last night."  His reaction is to try to rape her.   She manages to escape, but that leaves Lotte in Evan's care.  Things get very perverse and creepy, but luckily she manages to escape as well.  Still, these few minutes made me desire a shower stat.

It's  Emo Evan

ok super creepy, all he needs is some candy

Lotte escaped but right into her father her started washing her mouth with pea soup flavored soap
This isn't her day to be sure

Lotte escapes the church just in time.  Her daddy who is now possessed crazy for coo coo poofs goes into the catacombs and kills himself with pneumatic hammer.  This causes a series of rube goldbergisms to lock down the church tight.  So tight in fact that one model has her dress caught in the main doors trapping her there. 

Ok, suicide by jack hammer is pretty original

tick....

.....tock

Things go rapidly to hell in hand baskets, which are in the church to gather tithes during services.  Seriously though, things go bad so very, very fast.  It's bewildering and rewarding.  We see the demons peel off from the painting on the wall and soon folks are beset with the uncanny, or maybe not.  Again, as with Evan it seems more of a crazed psychadelic experience as much as anything. 

Looks like they stocked the baptismal fonts again....

This might not be a bad way to go, if only the demon looked a little more enthused...

Her look of suprise is earned since she's killed by the guy who already killed himself with a jack hammer

The Bishop lives long enough to pass on a cryptic hint
to Father Gus (the black one)
Before being impaled

I don't know how she took off her husband's head
but the situation certainly rings a bell

Fashion model's nightmare

 Right, now the film here goes berserk and not in a way I like.  Lotte sneaks back in (WHY) and meets up with Father Gus (The Black One).  Father Gus has been trying to figure out what's going on from the hints the Bishop gave before his death.  But all his work is wasted when Lotte suddenly start revealing everything.  She spills it about the demons, and everything.  She also introduces the architect who has been mentioned in passing.  Now he's the key to everything.  He has the secret to destroy the church to prevent the contagion of evil from passing back into the world.

Father Gus's promotion to hero is good since Evan and Lisa really play out their tale with a whimper and a bang.  They end up being center stage in a black mass.  It's not even tragic, there's no feeling to their fate at all.  Really after following the characters throughout the tale it is a real let down.  

So with that said, Father Gus saves the day.  He sends Lotte back out into the world and opens the architect's crypt.  Finding the secret just in time as the evil in the church rises in a multi bodied writhing mass.  But like all movies of this type, perhaps it is not the end.  What does the look on Lotte's face in the end really mean?

The Police Video was better...

Bust a deal/and face the wheel

This is just sad and wrong...

The final secret.... pay attention Dan Brown

Overall I liked this much better the second time I watched it.  It is a wonderfully creepy movie with some of the most excellent sets I've seen on a film of this range.  I'm still mad that they basically wasted the initial main characters, but there is so much happening that I can forgive them this.  One thing I find interesting is the nature of evil in this film.  Is it a disease, a mental illness?  Though there are murders, there is also scenes of odd sentiment.  Is the World's the devil?  If so, does that not make all the things in this world evil to one shade or the other?  Certainly some food for thought.