The Sect / La setta (1991)

Beautiful dreams turn into pulse pounding nightmares in Michele Soavi’s highly intricate cult-conspiracy masterpiece, THE SECT (aka THE DEVIL'S DAUGHTER).  

Soavi is the type of director that seems to make every movie as if it was his last, taking the chance to squeeze in as many ideas, symbolism, and set pieces as possible. The result is eclectic and convoluted but also spellbinding, as in THE SECT and CEMETERY MAN, with the former being the more ominous and downbeat of the two, likely the result of everyone working to appease the boss-man, Dario Argento. 

Part of the reason for the intricacy is because THE SECT is a product of three different writers, Argento, Soavi, and Gianni Romoli,* all of whom seemed to have their own visions. The production of the movie started with a screenplay for an unrealized movie called CATACOMBS by Romoli, and Argento took it and added his input, which included references to The Rolling Stones (he’s a huge fan).* Soavi further incorporated a script from an unrealized movie of his, THE WELL, and layered it with esotericism and Celtic symbolism, and the seemingly independent ideas from three different heads was further refined and finalized by Romoli* into one hellava movie.

Nevertheless, the convoluted nature of the film has harmed it for a large fraction of viewers, making it difficult to follow and giving it an underlining annoyance that the movie may not be going anywhere. Therefore, the recommended way to view this is to just concern oneself with what is taking place at hand without worrying about where the story is leading to. It’s best to enjoy the individual segments for what they’re worth, and being that there’s a lot of gold here, they’re worth a lot.

Blogger Zombie Walk Feature: Burial Ground (1980)

If a zombie is supposed to be a degraded form of pure motorized instinct to carnivorously feed, why do they still have the ingenuity to use axes, power saws, and battering rams or to throw knives with extreme precision to get what they want? I suppose there is some sort of unholy guidance that accompanies the feeding frenzy of the walking corpses in Andrea Bianchi’s BURIAL GROUND THE NIGHTS OF TERROR. 

Who knows what the filmmakers were thinking while making this, but this is a zombie film of recognizable influences that is still unlike any other zombie film by a long shot. The zombie makeup from Mauro Gavazzi is overdone to the point of being excessive, but the result is still very cool and also quite nauseating to look at. There is a lot of attention to detail for most of the zombies, such as maggots, murky green blood, and wormy eyes, and the smell of death can be sensed right from the viewer’s TV screen every time there is a close-up of one of these flesh eaters. 

BURIAL GROUND feels Influenced by Fulci’s ZOMBI 2 as well as Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD with that familiar scenario of a band of humans locking themselves inside an architecture as the living dead outside desperately try to get in. When I watch it, I often find myself chuckling at the sight of the walking dead but also a bit ‘creeped out’ and a little scared.