The Unholy — The Unholy(Blu Ray)
The opening scene shows a priest, Father Dennis (Ruben Rabasa) praying at the altar of his church. A devilish beauty with red hair approaches the altar and stands before the priest, she is wearing a sheer dress that reveals every inch of her voluptuous figure to the terrified priest who finds it impossible to draw his eyes away. She approaches and kisses him before finally ripping out his throat. All this before the credits have even rolled.
We are then introduced to Father Michael (Ben Cross) who is attending a car accident where the victim tells the Father with his dying breath that “she is coming for him.” The following scene again shows Father Michael as he attends to a potential jumper. As the Father approaches the jumper, he is thrown from the apartment window, he miraculously survives the fall with no damage. The Archbishop (Hal Mosely) believes this to be a sign that Father Michael may be the chosen one, this is backed up by the blind seer Father Silva, played by the legendary Trevor Howard, just months before his death who proclaims that he has foreseen it. Father Michael is given his own parish, that,
formerly under the stewardship of Father Dennis who we saw murdered before the opening credits had even rolled.
Michael is visited by Lt Stern (Ned Beatty) who tells the Father that he is convinced he is in danger. This leads to Michael investigating his predecessor’s links to a young woman called Millie (Jill Carroll), who works in a local club peopled by drunken revellers and alleged Satanists. Millie tells the Father that club owner Luke (William Russ) is the devil and she has sold her soul to him. This leads
Michael down a rabbit hole as he becomes ever more involved in the relationship between the girl, Millie and the club owner, Luke. Michael believes this is all somehow connected to the death of the previous incumbents of his post and he is determined to get to the bottom of it.
The Unholy features some pretty surreal, but graphic imagery that lifts the film above the myriad of generic horror fare from the time, this is most notable in Father Michael’s dream sequences and the film’s finale. Overall, The Unholy is a solid supernatural horror movie with a few interesting plot twists that I won’t reveal in this review. At times it is fairly gory, but it relies more heavily on its
ability to tell the story. The film’s original ending was changed late in the day and the hastily assembled alternative has some pretty ropey practical effects, but this didn’t detract too much from my enjoyment of the film. I am reminded of the work of Charles Band and Stuart Gordon from around the same time, certainly stylistically they share a very similar aesthetic to one another, however The Unholy is perhaps representative of a slightly higher budget version.
The print on this new disc is clean and crisp and the colours look very natural for a film of this era. There is some nice use of colour, particularly during the dream sequences but overall, they aim for a pretty natural colour palette. The supplemental material on the disc is a mix of the expected trailers, radio and TV spots, and image gallery, however, there is also an audio commentary with the director, an isolated score and various interviews and featurettes with cast and crew. The featurette looking at the making of the monsters is quite enlightening, however, the chance to view the original unreleased ending is probably my favourite aspect of the bonus material.