And for our final review of the month, our good friend Prof. Aglaophotis contributes his take on the Michele Soavi horror classic The Church! He seems to thoroughly enjoy it, so give it a read by clicking on the poster art!

Although we did not get to meet the full 31 reviews that we did last year, this still turned out to be a decent Halloween Horrors celebration! We here at Varied Celluloid would like to thank everyone who hung in there despite all of the problems we have had this month, including a virus nearly destructing the website. Thankfully, that was fixed promptly and should not return. We sincerely hope all readers have a fantastic Halloween and hope that you will stick with us during our next movie celebration, December’s Kung Fu Christmas which is only a month away!

The Plot: Our story opens in Germany in the 1600’s where Teutonic knights are lead to a small village supposedly housing devil worshippers led by a carrier of demons influencing them. The knights quickly descend on the villagers, murdering men, women, children and animals left and right. Once the onslaught has finished, a Christian leader in charge of the knights orders all of the villagers, now all infected by an unleashed demonic force, to be buried. Their burial ground is sanctified by having a large gothic church constructed over the corpses thus sealing the demons along with the bodies. A century passes and the church is a fully functional public cathedral. Because the church is so old, a young historian named Lisa (Barbra Cupisti) is working on restoring the ancient details of the church’s interior, while the church’s new librarian Evan (Tomas Arana) walks in and is slowly introduced to almost everyone residing there, including the rebellious young Lotte (Asia Argento). Evan soon gets involved in the secrets of the cathedral once Lisa finds a parchment hidden in the decrepit under halls of the church, telling of a secret sealed away in the deteriorating basement. After finding and opening the seal, Evan unleashes the contamination of dormant damnation and the church doors eventually close up, sealing a large number of civilians inside. It’s now up to Lotte and the diligent father Gus (Hugh Quarshie) to figure out what is going on, how to stop the demons in the church from leaving their confines and how to survive in the process.