Alpine Entertainment | Review by Dan Taylor
Those
of us that attended Catholic school during
their adolesence are no strangers to visions
of killing nuns. Many a day I passed the
time with violent fantasies dancing in my
head as I dozed off in class: "Eat
lead Sister Mary Jude! Burn in hell Sister
Dolores!" And while some of us turned
that rage into angry little balls that will
surely mean a date with an early grave,
others channeled that energy into more creative
pursuits. Like Mike Mendez and Chaiton Anderson,
the respective director and writer of the
wonderful horror flick blast from the past,
THE CONVENT.
This one has all the earmarks
of the kind of slasher/demon-possession
junk hardcore horror fans have seen over
and over since about 1980. You know the
drill: we open up "several years ago"
or something to that effect, witness a horrible
catastrophe (son drowns, kid murders sister,
etc.), and then sit back and laugh (or hide
our eyes) as the dopey present-day kids
get their just deserts at the hands of reanimated
demons, zombified corpses, or maybe just
a thrill-seeking gardener.
It's the rare film that can
step out of this paint-by-numbers morass
and deliver a whopping blow to the psyche:
Raimi's EVIL DEAD flicks, Stuart Gordon's
Lovecraft entries, Bava's original DEMONS,
and Fulci's THE BEYOND (just released uncut
with a buttload of extras on DVD) certainly
spring to mind.
Well, you can add THE CONVENT
to that list. It has all of the standard
horror elements mentioned above (flashback
opener, horrible occurence, dopey kids),
and even comes off a little like the movie-within-the-movie
from the aforementioned DEMONS. But there's
more at work here than the typical straight
to video shlock clogging the rental shelves.
Sure, it's as gory and violent
as you could want – complete with unexpected
virgin sacrifices, tongue rippings, blood
showers, demon blow jobs, and the ol' flashlight
through the demon's head – but the
flick is chock full of self-effacing good
humor, a likable cast full of unknows (except
for Coolio as a pot-smoking cop and Adrienne
Barbeau as the leather-wearing, hog-riding
heroine), and a wicked sense of humor that
plays around with Satanism, and much more!
Plus, we're in love with Megahn Perry as
Mo, the tough-but-virginal punk/Goth hottie
who is saving herself for Marilyn Manson!
One can only imagine what
it'd be like to see this balls-to-the-wall
horror blast on the big screen with a bunch
of jacked-up horror afficianados!
"So, you wanna go to
Denny's?"
