The Other Hell

Starring:Franca Stoppi, Carlo De Mejo, Francesca Carmeno, Susan Forget, Franco Garofalo, Paola Montenero, Sandy Samuel, Andrea Aureli, Tom Felleghy
Director: Bruno Mattei
Studio: Shriek Show
Product Type: DVD

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Demons Triple Feature: The Other Hell/Demons III: The Ogre/Black Demons
Starring: Demons Triple Feature
Manufacturer: Shriek Show
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ASIN: B000IMVE50
Release Date: 2006-12-05

Description

Black Demons Finally, the seldom seen 1991 zombie film from Umberto Lenzi arrives stateside, uncut, digitally re-mastered, and in English for the very first time. The Black magic rites and powers of Voodoo and the Macumba are used to reanimate the corpses of zombified, revenge-seeking, black slaves. Acting out of retribution, the zombies tear, rip, and bite anyone in their path of vengeance. The Ogre Cheryl, an American author, goes on holiday with her husband and young son to an ancient, cursed Italian villa. Cheryl slowly and shockingly begins to realize that an evil, demon-like creature that haunted her childhood nightmares is real and alive; inhabiting the dark, cavernous cellar of the old mansion they are living in! The Other Hell When a brutal series of murders plague a convent, a priest is brought in to investigate the tragedies. As the remaining nuns become increasingly disturbed, he must wonder if this is the work of a psychopath, or that of the devil. Bruno Mattei, of Hell of the Living Dead and Claudio Fragasso of Zombi 3 unite again to ensure this tale of "nunsploitation" and possession rises above the rest.

Average customer rating:

Nuns and madness
Bland Bruno does it again
A worthy addition to your Italian-horror collection

The Other Hell
Starring: Franca Stoppi , Carlo De Mejo , Francesca Carmeno , Susan Forget , and Franco Garofalo
Director: Bruno Mattei
Manufacturer: Shriek Show
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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Demonia
Anthropophagus - The Grim Reaper
Killer Nun
Images in a Convent
Baba Yaga

ASIN: B00006LPG9
Release Date: 2003-01-28

Customer Reviews:

Nuns and madness.......2006-09-26

"Lurid" is close, but still doesn't begin to describe this messed-up horror/exorcism movie. Beginning in the cellar of a convent, a nun who has lost her way stumbles into a gruesome chamber where another nun is busy mutilating a dead body in a rather less than professional manner. The crazed "surgeon" nun raves for a while about demonic possession and the sins of the flesh, and after thrusting her knife into the bloody groin of the corpse, she stabs the terrified intruder to death. The opening credits then roll over pretty shots of the other sisters about their peaceful business, leaving the viewer slightly shell-shocked, probably wondering how such depravities are going to be concealed/explained/topped throughout the rest of the movie.

Well don't hold your breath. "The Other Hell" is a garbled mixture of occasional graphic imagery, wild acting and terrible scripting. The events on screen seem completely unconnected to each other a lot of the time, but the story basically follows an investigation into the weird supernatural happenings at the convent, and why so many of the nuns in the convent keep on dying, but it's pretty hard to apply normal logic to the story when it's not presented in any believable way. Anyway, a high ranking clergyman visits the convent in attempt to purify it, and he ends up getting burned to a crisp pretty promptly. Then the church authorities send another - younger and more handsome - priest to replace him without any fuss at all. This newcomer, Father Valerio, is a bit feistier and soon finds a lot of awfully suspicious goings-on, such as the basement charnel house where the mad nun is still crazily carving up dead bodies un-checked, despite having just murdered one of the nuns. And how about that cobwebby attic full of suspended child-sized dolls? Oh yes and the severed head of the first priest that turns up at the altar. This all looks very suspicious to say the least (!) but when the Mother Superior tells Father Valerio everything is fine and to stop meddling, that seems to be it, and we move on to the next nasty event. I think there is some mention about the church preferring to hush up it's own dirty goings on, rather than expose them to the police, which would have been far more interesting if explored further, but it's scarcely enlarged on, thus leaving the various horrors of the convent to just carry on unchecked with no sight of any resolve. This is not, of course, until a hilarious flashback shows us the true source of the malevolent presence and the person behind it all is finally revealed.

Despite some great imagery, such as the delapidated convent interiors, especially the room full of hanging dolls, most of the shock scenes are flubbed. Scenes of hysterical nuns falling out of closets or running hither and thither have no shock value after been seen for the third time. A vague glimpse of some kind of demon manifestation proves to be something like two red lights in a shapeless mound of modelling clay. Worst of all is the big flashback "reveal" - an attempted infanticide - which is laughable. Firstly because of a really stupid attempt to suggest that Father Valerio is watching the flashback as somehow supernaturally recorded on his reel-to-reel audio tape recorder!! Secondly, the pivotal close up of the (live) baby's "evil stare" is done using a rubber doll's head with a plastic eye. I can't believe this was seen in the rushes and passed as acceptable, it's so inept! About the only scene that does work is the opening, what a shame the film did not manage to keep up the mood of depravity suggested in this opening 10 minutes.

At least the film does a decent job of staging the mayhem: as mentioned before, the action is all filmed in a great crumbling location. And the odd-looking Franca Stoppi ( who played Iris in "Beyond the Darkness") does a reasonably good job as the Mother Superior, with several scenes of manic face-pulling. But ultimately it's just too poorly put together to work. Even the score fails the film - a recycled Goblin-style synthsized job, that was somehow deemed appropriate for a film about nuns and demonic possession (it isn't), is repeated over and over to little effect, in fact it even sounds identical to the one used for "Beyond the Darkness", and I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same one. Not one event is believable or convincing, and when the film is trying to hit the hardest is when it fails the most spectacularly.

Bland Bruno does it again.......2005-02-09

There is no other way to say it: Bruno Mattei is a hack. He's the sultan of schlock, the duke of dreck, the prince of pap as far as films go. His pictures move at a breakneck crawl, his actors ply their craft with the stolid assuredness of cigar store Indians, and the plotlines reek of unoriginality. I'm fairly convinced at this point that Mattei's middle initial is 'D' for "Derivative." A horror film hasn't been made that Mattei wouldn't shamelessly rip-off for a cheap buck. You want zombie pictures? Mattei's been there and done that. Interested in the women in prison subgenre? Mattei made "Violence in a Women's Prison" to capitalize on the babes behind bars phenomenon. Do you like critters run amok flicks? Welcome to Bruno Mattei's "Rats," not so much a knock off as a collection of cliches stuck together with scotch tape. Good old Bruno has done it all, from action films to exploitation epics. "The Other Hell" falls under the rubric of "nunsploitation," a bizarre horror subgenre that sees nuns going on insanity fueled killing sprees after some hidden evil possesses their souls. In true exploitation fashion, the levels of violence and bare flesh achieve sky-high levels. Italians have a weird relationship with the Catholic Church, that's for sure.

"The Other Hell" introduces us to a convent of nuns in turmoil. A series of bloody yet mysterious murders has all the sisters blaming the influence of Satan. There is good reason for this assertion considering what's been going on in the basement of the convent. A laboratory that would make Dr. Frankenstein drool with envy bubbles and churns away down there. It must be some sort of black magic laboratory too, since we can read several sinister Latin phrases etched into the walls and see some wicked looking lights flare up from time to time. Even better, this chamber houses the coffins of deceased nuns who once lived in the cloister above. The first time we see this place is when a mother superior performs a ghastly surgery on another nun. Hmmm. I wonder if this bloody operation has any connection with the killings that eventually occur in the world above? Mattei tries to keep us intentionally in the dark about that, although I suspect the murky script--probably written by a roomful of monkeys banging away on typewriters--bears just as much responsibility for any initial confusion. Anyway, the killings send the sisters into quite a dither, so much so that the Church authorities decide to send in Father Valerio (Carlo De Mejo) to investigate.

Valerio runs into many problems immediately upon beginning his inquiry. His main difficulty arrives in the form of the current mother superior (Franca Stoppi), a stony faced woman who rules her roost with an iron crucifix. The tumult in the convent doesn't faze this hardened nun for a second, and she's convinced something evil is afoot in her domain. She's also convinced that she can solve the problem herself without any outside interference. Problem is, her solutions involve scaring the nuns senseless, and even going so far as to order them to burn items "tainted" with the spirit of evil. Another problem is Bruno, the odd chap who acts as the convent's gardener and who also cares for a bunch of vicious dogs nearby. Father Valerio has a run in with this guy right away, and he will pop up at various times to serve as yet another suspect to the strange goings on in the convent. Until the dogs turn him into hamburger with a little help from an outside influence, that is. What exactly is going on here? I won't spoil the (cough cough) surprise, but Mattei reveals all in a predictably clunky way as the movie shudders to a gasping halt. I've only got one small question to ask about this film: was that a melted chocolate bar on that girl's face?

Why oh why was this film made? I'll admit I usually get a strange charge out of watching a Bruno Mattei movie. His pictures are such monuments to bad filmmaking that those of us who love watching schlock cinema just can't seem to find enough guys like Bruno. But why this film emerged when it did is a mystery to me. I thought the nunsploitation phenomenon ran its course several years earlier. Usually, hacks are the first ones to jump immediately on any successful bandwagon. Not in this case, I guess. Surprisingly, the set pieces--primarily the convent--look good and set a nice gloomy tone for the movie. The performances aren't too bad, with Carlo De Mejo doing the best job, but the dialogue is wooden and many of the scenes are utterly ridiculous. Moreover, Mattei ripped off the Goblin score from D'Amato's "Buio Omega." It's going to be tough, but try not to ask questions such as the following while watching the film: why not just close the convent down and move the nuns out until a thorough investigation clears up the problems? Why would the Church risk potentially bad press by keeping the nuns together? Why is a movie this bad available to the general public? These questions, and a few others, will keep you occupied as you trudge through the convoluted mess that is "The Other Hell."

Look at all these extras! An interview with Mattei, one with De Mejo, and trailers for "The Other Hell," "Demonia," "Hitcher in the Dark," "Zombie 3," and "Violence in a Woman's Prison" in part seek to explain the Mattei experience to a mystified world. The only thing I garnered from the two interviews is that De Mejo is a rather odd duck in real life, more interested in cracking kooky smiles and reminiscing about Italian geography than discussing anything relevant to the film in a coherent way. Give "The Other Hell" a shot if you like schlock. All others should stay away.

A worthy addition to your Italian-horror collection.......2003-04-03

In this 1980 film by Bruno Mattei, a young priest, played by Carlo De Mejo (Contamination, City of the Living Dead), is sent to a convent to investigate a series of bizarre and brutal murders. The nuns think Satan is to blame; the priest thinks the murders are the work of a psychopath. The truth turns out to be something in between.

The Other Hell has just about everything you could ever want in an Italian horror film: stylish direction by Mattei, a stunning performance by Franca Stoppi (who was even more brilliant in Joe D'Amato's Beyond the Darkness), and a pulse-pounding score by Goblin. Although not the very best of the genre, it's still a solid offering, and a worthy addition to any Italian-horror buff's DVD collection.

As always, Shriek Show delivers a solid product. The film transfer is surprisingly good, especially considering that it was shot in 16mm and blown up to 35mm. Although the sound is monaural, it's generally clear throughout. The DVD features a host of nice extras, too, including revealing interviews with Mattei and De Mejo and trailers from other Shriek Show DVD's.

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