The Convent

Let me begin by saying that I dont believe a movie needs to be "good" to be entertaining. I myself am in love with some of the worst movies ever made, and find myself watching them over and over again. If you'd like to know what they are, drop me a line.

This movie, however, is miserable. The gore isnt gorey. The Horror isnt horrifying. The jokes arent funny (and are WAY out of place).

This movie was given a lot of hype a few years ago. Trailers of the film were all over the web, and they were interesting. It was hinted that it was too graphic and violent to be released, and "oh, please help us find this future horror masterpiece a distributer before it fades away into obscurity and is never seen." Well, maybe that would have been best.

This movie semed to steal the plot of "Night of the Demons" and mix it up with some banal Scooby Doo episode. They even offer characters ripped out of Saturday Night Live's "Goth Talk".

It opens in 1959 with the torching of a all girls Catholic school/convent by a disgruntled student. She hauls guns, gas and explosives into the chapel and destroys everyone in sight, all to the tune of Leslie Gore's "You Don't Own Me". Next, we are brought into present times with two girls, one a simple sorority pledge and her former best friend, a goth chick. The goth chick is the only interesting/sympathetic character, so of course she is the first to go. Some more 'zany teens" show up, and all head off to "The Convent". Its become the local urban legend hot spot and make-out point.

That is really all you need to know. You know where its going...you know where it's gone. Someone gets possessed, they, in turn, possess someone else, and so on, and so on, and so on. Until someone has to run and get the chick that torched the place 40-some years ago in the first place.

Its just horrible. Im so sorry for Coolio, who has a sad little cameo in the film. Im so sorry for Adrienne Barbeau who apparently doesnt have anything else to look foreward to.

"The Convent" is a very UNoriginal but fun splatter-horror flick with the usual formula of dumb teenagers awakening an ancient type of evil they can't possibly deal with. The very cool and mood-setting opening sequence shows a young girl gunning down a bunch of nuns and a priest before setting fire to the convent/boarding school they're living in. The urban legend says that this girl – Christine – went insane after a forced abortion and that the convent is haunted by the restless souls of the nuns ever since. Now, 40 years later, a group of crazy college students breaks into the abandoned convent to play fraternity jokes, but soon they get possessed by demons in nuns' clothes and they're recruited to assist in performing virgin-sacrifices to Satan almighty. There's few tension or atmosphere but the script luckily enough inserts a lot of OTT-humor and ingenious ideas (a bunch of unbelievably clumsy devil-worshipers!) that makes this routine horror flick worth watching. The make-up effects are quite grotesque and nasty, with blood spurting out of every body hole and heads that are chopped off by the dozen. The dark and ramshackle convent makes an excellent horror location and the nun-costumes are really terrific. The true heroine of this film is Adrienne Barbeau ("The Fog", "Escape from N.Y") as the skilled demon-killer who comes to save the day. There equally are splendid cameo appearances for rapper Coolio and Bill Mosely ("House of 1.000 Corpses"). "The Convent" isn't exactly fundamental viewing, but it's good and unscrupulous horror-entertainment that fans will surely appreciate.

The horror genre is undoubtedly more diverse than any of cinema's other genres, and while that does mean that there's a lot of different and original horrors; it also means that any good idea liable to be done more than once. This has become a big problem for the modern genre with the recent wave of remakes. The Convent isn't a remake by name; but it could easily be a remake of the eighties classic Night of the Demons as the basic plots are more or less identical - but at least enough of it has been changed to ensure that it gets away with being a different film. This is how remakes should be done! Anyway, anyone that has seen the aforementioned eighties horror will recognise this story instantly. The film begins with a cool sequence that sees a young girl brutally execute a bunch of nuns with a shotgun. Fast forward fifteen years and a bunch of school kids are planning to break into the convent where it all happened to see if it really is haunted by the dead nuns...

It has to be said that this film isn't a piece of high quality film-making. The acting is largely ridiculous and the special effects are so bad that they make the majority of the cast look on par with some of the greatest performances of all time. However, the film was clearly never meant to be seen as great horror; and thankfully it does work as a fun, trashy horror comedy. There's always plenty going on and the film never really has time to get boring, which is certainly to its credit. The majority of the characters are rather dull, and this is not helped by the fact that the most interesting one is killed off towards the beginning; but the loss of her presence is somewhat made up for the appearance of a couple of bumbling 'Satanists' that provides the laughs. The film also features a few cameo appearances; we've got rapper Coolio and Bill Moseley as a couple of coppers; and even better Adrienne Barbeau as motorcycle riding demon killer. Overall, I really wouldn't recommend anyone goes out of their way to see this film; but it's fun enough for what it is and people that enjoy this sort of film surely wont be too disappointed.

As a fan of fun horror movies like "The Evil Dead", "From Beyond", and "Demons" (or even "Sleepaway Camp 2: Unhappy Campers"), I find today's multiplexes a barren wasteland when it comes to frenzied, hilarious, gore-and-violence filled fright flicks. I'm forced to choke down pale simulacrums like "Valentine", "Dracula 2000", and "Urban Legends: Final Cut" in theaters, while voraciously re-watching the Herschell Gordon Lewis/Coffin Joe catalog at home. I'm a sad horror junkie aching for a fix.

That's why viewing "The Convent" in a theater packed with like-minded gore-o-philes was a near orgasmic experience. Finally, a modern horror flick that aims for all the right targets, hitting most of them and shoveling a bucket-load of entertainment down my parched, killer-nun hungry gullet.

"The Convent" tells the tale of some dopey fraternity types breaking into an abandoned nunnery only to encounter carnage-hungry ghouls, fey devil worshippers, and oodles of cool imagery, skin peeling, and decapitations. When's the last time they made a movie about that kind of stuff that wasn't crap? What's even more impressive is that this movie is funny- hilariously so, and on purpose. In fact, not only is "The Coven" better than most recent horror movies, it's funnier than most so-called comedies. I dare anyone with a sick sense of humor not to fall in love with the destined-to-be-legendary flashback scene of evil nuns running amuck through a 1950s Catholic School.

The dialog is great, too (In retrospect, I can think of only one stupid line that made me cringe, concerning saving one's virginity for pasty poser Marylyn Manson) and delivered by a capable, amiable cast who turn stereotypical roles into likable characterizations. I expected to hate the stoner womanizer and the Goth chick lead, but the actors playing them were so good that I ended up loving them. There's even two characters who seem to be straight out of those "Saturday Night Live" Goth Talk sketches, but they are funny and I was actually looking forward to seeing more of them! Throw in Coolio and Bill Mosely (Chop-Top in "Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2") as dope-snatching college cops and Adrienne Barbeau as a legendary DemoNun slayer and you've got an affair to remember!

Yet another thing that endeared me to this flick was the fact that it was obviously made by knowledgeable horror fans, but unlike similar (but far inferior) projects like "The Dead Hate the Living" or "The Dead Next Door" they don't chuck obvious, "aren't-we-cool-wink-wink" genre references at you. "The Convent" has got subtle references to "The Beyond", "Zombie", and others I'm sure I missed, plus, a "Sixteen Candles" gag! What more could you ask for?

Well, I would've asked for more gore. Except for the numerous, outstanding beheadings (and subsequent squirting neck stumps), most of the demon-attacks are shot in a shaky-cam, distorted style that makes it hard to see the details. If I was prone to cliches, I might use the words "hyper-kinetic" or "frenetic" to describe the film's style, but I'm not, so I won't. Still, this movie has much more splat-sticky maulings than any other flick on the market today, and the demon make-up is unique and creative. This movie even makes day-glow colors look cool (something Joel Schumaker couldn't do despite his huge "Batman & Robin" budget). Another minor complaint is that the movie is almost too fast paced and seems hurried and choppy in places. The kick-ass opening scene (in which a gal blows away some pious puss-faces to the chords of Lesley's Gore's immortal "You Don't Own Me") is edited like a movie trailer, and the film's climax seems rushed. Instead of a slam-bang explosive finale we're treated to some indecipherable computer effects that seem to be inserted as a placeholder until real effects became available. But those are minor caveats. Sure, this is no "Dead Alive" or "Re-Animator", but it is superior to most other recent horror offerings in every department- script, cast, make-up effects, you name it.

The fact that this momentous motion picture cannot find a national theatrical distributor proves how out of touch some movie studios are with horror fans. I'm sure no dime would be spared to promote another brain-dead "I Know What You Did Last Summer" sequel. So catch this movie wherever and whenever you can, preferably in a theater full of people. You'll be oh so glad you did.

Hell yeah! That's pretty much the feeling the average person will have throughout this compact and action-filled piece of garbage. It's an incredibly crazy, riveting and somewhat moronic 75 minutes, it's the kind of project that defines what B-list horror should be all about. The hilarious (in a sadistic way) opening immediately drags you in, and the movie just utterly refuses to let you go after that. Demonic zombie nuns, fluorescent(!) blood, hot chicks, washed-up gangsta rapper Coolio playing a cop, I thank God for showing me all this pure uncut greatness. If all this stuff can't get your attention, I really don't know what will. The Adrienne Barbeau appearance is just icing on the cake, brilliant role. Of course this movie isn't particularly well-made or well-written, but I stopped caring roughly ten seconds in. Loads of fun.