I don't see why so many people prefer Michele Soavi's first film, "Stage Fright", to his others, especially this one. This is one of my favorite Dark Fantasy films. Of course, it's got producer Dario Argento's fingerprints all over it -- the incredible camera-track from the depths of the crypt all the way up through the building into the cathedral itself, for example... And there's one moment which reminded me of Mario Bava: when two characters are opening a door, and the camera ignores them, fixing instead on a curious dangling keychain.
This movie isn't so much a crib from the "Demons" series -- seeing as it started out as the third part of the story, from what I've heard -- as it is a blatant riff on an M.R. James ghost story called "The Treasure of Abbot Thomas". The church, the Thing in the bag, the stone with seven eyes, and the inscription: DEPOSITUM CUSTODI are all from James... but this is just the framework. The rest is pure Dario Argento/Franco Ferrini-style improvisation.
The movie begins with a slaughter of witches. The witches are shown as peaceful, innocent people, who just happen to stand for everything the Church abhors. So the Church comes down on them like a load of bricks -- literally: a cathedral is built over the witches' mass-grave. Centuries later, an odd assortment of characters are trapped in the cathedral as What Has Been Repressed comes back, in a much less benign form...
As in the "Demons" series, the contaminating evil is seen as something from outside, a point of view that's completely opposite to that of Argento's own movies. Corruption enters the body through contact with fluids or blood, and then takes advantage of our inner weaknesses. Sounds like an AIDS metaphor to me, but hey -- I'm already reading way too much into this...
The other thing I love about this movie is that some of it was filmed near the place I used to live in Budapest, and it was filmed while I was living there. The lunatic car ride over the bridge and through the tunnel, after the heart-pulling scene, ended right on my old doorstep. I saw the lights and equipment set up around St. Stephen's Cathedral, but I never knew what the film was until I saw it on video years after. :)
This movie isn't so much a crib from the "Demons" series -- seeing as it started out as the third part of the story, from what I've heard -- as it is a blatant riff on an M.R. James ghost story called "The Treasure of Abbot Thomas". The church, the Thing in the bag, the stone with seven eyes, and the inscription: DEPOSITUM CUSTODI are all from James... but this is just the framework. The rest is pure Dario Argento/Franco Ferrini-style improvisation.
The movie begins with a slaughter of witches. The witches are shown as peaceful, innocent people, who just happen to stand for everything the Church abhors. So the Church comes down on them like a load of bricks -- literally: a cathedral is built over the witches' mass-grave. Centuries later, an odd assortment of characters are trapped in the cathedral as What Has Been Repressed comes back, in a much less benign form...
As in the "Demons" series, the contaminating evil is seen as something from outside, a point of view that's completely opposite to that of Argento's own movies. Corruption enters the body through contact with fluids or blood, and then takes advantage of our inner weaknesses. Sounds like an AIDS metaphor to me, but hey -- I'm already reading way too much into this...
The other thing I love about this movie is that some of it was filmed near the place I used to live in Budapest, and it was filmed while I was living there. The lunatic car ride over the bridge and through the tunnel, after the heart-pulling scene, ended right on my old doorstep. I saw the lights and equipment set up around St. Stephen's Cathedral, but I never knew what the film was until I saw it on video years after. :)