Drive-In Dust Offs: Of Soavi, Shrouds, and THE SECT

For many longtime voyeurs of Italian horror films and their creators, Michele Soavi is a name as revered as Dario Argento, Mario Bava, and Lucio Fulci. Makes perfect sense; Argento was his mentor, and he was assistant director on several of his films. But besides the pedigree earned by growing past Argento’s shadow and making his own mark, Soavi simply made very good films–mostly well performed, incredibly shot, and always engaging. That goes for The Sect (1991), aka The Devil’s Daughter, or its original Italian title, La Setta. It’s an epic tale of a worldwide conspiracy to bring forth the Antichrist, one of my favorite sub-genres in horror and a guaranteed way to get my ass in the seat; that it turns out to be excellent is just gravy. 

Soavi’s next film, Dellamorte Dellamore, aka Cemetery Man (1994), was his worldwide moment in the spotlight, a funny zombie comedy made with a whimsical touch. But The Sect is playing for solemn–profound, even. Well. Ambition is a wonderful thing. 

The film opens in 1970, in the desert of ‘South California’ (did I mention Argento wrote the prologue?) as a group–A gaggle? A bushel?–of hippies are listening to a song by popular American group America from 1972, time traveling to the future to offer their righteous squishy-soft rock to the masses. Anyway, they have a cool caravan and they’re cooking up the couscous when a stranger comes upon them spouting the wrong lyrics to The Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil”: a stranger with a cadence not unlike an ex-theatre actor turned coked-out street urchin. His name is Damon (NOT Damien) and after he proclaims the importance of The Rolling Stones, he accepts an invitation to dinner.

Upon the hippies’ sleep, Damon calls in the other members of his satanic sect (you were expecting LDS pioneers?), they sacrifice the long-haired freaky people, and burn down their encampment. Damon speaks to a mysterious man in the back of a limousine (definitely not star Herbert Lom), who assures him that the time for the start of the end of time is soon. Ish. 

Jump forward a couple decades to Frankfurt, Germany, where a woman named Mary Crane (wink wink, nudge nudge) is chased down by Italian horror legend Giovanni Lombardo Radice (The Gates of Hell) and killed in her apartment. She wanted out of the sect, he obliged, and in return was given an early wrap on set. (A killer who in quick return is ended is an Italian horror trope that I hope will never die.) 

Now we meet our real heroine Miriam Kreisl (Kelly Curtis, Jamie Lee’s older sister) as she almost runs our villain Moebius Kelly (Lom) down in the middle of the road. She takes the cantankerous coot back to her place and he makes cryptic statements about her real purpose on earth, and while she sleeps, he sticks a sacred scarab up her nose, which gives her pretentious dreams that stretch the art budget. Moebius pretends to be sick, and when Miriam leaves to collect the doctor he goes down through a secret tunnel into a series of caves under her building. He performs a satanic ritual and then packs it in on the patterned tile, and when Miriam comes back with her doctor friend, Franz Pernath (Michel Hans Adatte), they find Moebius’s face covered with a shroud bearing a suspicious resemblance to cheesecloth. (The shroud finds its way onto her friend’s face as well.)

The final act takes us into the woods for some satanic fornication between Miriam and the Vlasic Pickles stork, that through shadow we see is indeed Lucifer (or just a really hung guy with wings). After that, she’s dropped down a special birthing well, where approximately forty seconds after the sex, she gives birth to a baby boy. Huzzah! Will Miriam and her evil imp take over the world in the name of The Sect? 

The Sect will more than likely not cause you to reconfirm or be born again, but it should cause smiles at the very least. Late-stage Satanic Panic? Yes, please! 

Soavi plays it straight in a couple of familiar subgenres; even though his sect is unnamed and little is known of them, he tries to give it a weight that would hold up to a global catastrophe–not that the viewer of such films needs credibility to see them through. It’s just nice when they try. The other device is the woman in peril, specifically one used to carry out satanic prophecies–which is all of them. In any satanic rite I’ve ever witnessed onscreen, the quickest way to a devil’s heart is through his pitchfork, and Miriam is certainly worthy of love, satanic or otherwise. Played by the elder Curtis sister Kelly in a very solid performance, she is a repressed and underseen schoolteacher who becomes the focal point on the world’s stage and must navigate through her own paranoia and trauma to decide the fate of the world. There are moments where certain angles trick you into seeing Jamie Lee, but this is the late Kelly’s show all the way. She’s grounded and centred.

Okay, not completely her show; she spends a lot of screen time with the legendary Lom, he of the sonorous voice and twitchy eye, and here, a weary but bone-deep determined evil. (Crazy rolls off the tongue pretty easily too.) He does hold a certain affection for Miriam, being the devil’s baby mama, and to the film’s credit, the decision is hers alone: To raise the baby with the cult or turn her back. 

Miriam goes for a third option. Hell hath scorned like the fury women does, the saying definitely goes; Curtis does a great job of conveying Miriam’s strength and resolve, and Lom covers crazy with the religious zeal one would hope he’d bring. 

One of the biggest selling features of The Sect is its look and feel, aided greatly by the beauty of Germany and the gorgeous cinematography of Raffaele Mertes (Trauma); Soavi and Mertes use the camera to tell their story with style yet a slight reserve that doesn’t distract from the story but moves it forward. 

Not that it could; between Lom wearing a face mask (as in a mask made of face) that was twisted off a poor woman like the tab on a sardine can, and Curtis being raped by a pelican-like demon that enjoys giving her hickeys of maggots and worms. You’ll remember the story, trust me. 

For me a great Italian horror film–and that goes for non and giallo alike–only needs a couple of dream wheels to work: A pleasing palette and an engaging story. Oh, let’s add a third: Good special effects. Not essential but damn near, and poor effects can quickly remove one from the illusion; this film has Sergio Stivaletti (Demons 2 and many other Argento projects) as part of the team, and hats off to them all for creating some really weird shit. It’s a goofy tinfoil hat of a film, but that hat’s encrusted with diamonds and shines bright as long as the conical tip doesn’t bend and reach for the ground; I suppose when you’re busy watching waterfowl-on-human, insemination it’s hard to nitpick about the veracity of the events unfolding on the screen, boned Stones’ lyrics or not. 

The Sect is available on Blu-ray from Severin Films.