SPOILERS WARNING!
IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN AND INTEND TO,
DON'T READ!
What's your favorite religious horror flick. I'm going to go with the Exorcist Exorcist III as well as Rosemary's Baby and the Omen followed by Stigmata and The Wicker Man (the Christopher Lee version). I can't take Nick Cage seriously in the remake. Gabriel Byrne is hot in Stigmata. I know he's old and not that attractive, but what can I say, I love all Irishmen, young and old, dark and light, but especially the "black" Irish with their ebony hair and their piercing blue eyes, hot! Can you say, Johnathan Rhys Meyers for instance, yeah!
The reason why I love Exorcist III is because the "Gemini Killer" is the actor that voices Chucky in Child's Play, Brad Douriff. His first movie was One Flew Over The Coocoo's Nest, who would've thought? Anyway, I digress, back to the list of religiously creepy films that scare the be"Jesus" out of us.
Before their was Jennifer Tilly, who is, of course, the Bride of Chucky, speaking of which, there was Meg Tilly, her big sister who looks very much like her, but not as full and busty. She sounds a little bit like her, though. Agnes is a modern day saint some think, but she's seriously creepy and talks about how Christ impregnates her and laid on top of her and sang...as she hums an eerie tune. She also committed a little bit 'o infanticide, giving her illegitimate baby back to God. Did I mention Agnes is a nun who grew up in a convent in Montreal, Canada? Nobody seems to know where her baby came from, but Agnes said it came from "God".
2. The Sentinel (1977)- is everything a creepy seventies horror movie should be. A weak, frail, and stupid model named Alison, who has a fiancee that takes care of everything for her yet she wants to be independent, but she's too dumb to be moves into an apartment with weird characters in it and finds out basically that the portal to hell is in the attic and all her neighbors are killers and people who pretty much are supposed to be in hell, which they sort of are.
The notion of two women who were lesbians living next door in the seventies to this sheltered moron idiot of a girl freaks her out and she is disgusted by them. Beverly D'Angelo is one of them and creepily doesn't speak much and is always rubbing on her parts and doing creepy crap in front of her innocent and stupid eyes. I don't even remember her name, but to make a long story short, she is supposed to take the priest's place who lives on the top floor and is a vegetable with glazed over eyes so she can guard the gates of hell and all that good stuff. Its a good flick, though.
Women were portrayed terribly back then, but that's part of the fun. You want the bad guys to get her! I do, anyway. Does that make me mean? Basically, she is a drama queen who slits her wrists and for whatever reason gets stuck being the stupid Sentinel.
There are a ton of notable actors in this film even in minor roles, including Ava Gardiner, Beverly D'Angelo, Richard Dreyfuss, who is on the sidewalk just walking down the street as an extra, Jeff Goldblum, Tom Berringer, who has a very minor role, Jerry Orbach, John Carridine, Christopher Sarandon, and Christopher Walken.
3. Children of the Corn- Issac, Malekai, getting scarified on your 18th birthday, children ruling the land and killing all adults, Stephen King, ergot poisoning, OUTLANDER!!! Have I explained myself, enough said! Anything besides the original gets way out of control stupid so just watch the first one and stop there!
4. Bless the Child (2000) - Maggie's heroin-addicted sister comes unexpectedly to her house to drop off her newborn baby, leaves, and doesn't come back until she is married, appears to be drug-free, and comes for her baby. The problem is that her daughter has been adopted by her aunt and has Autism so she needs special care. Maggie is a nurse. Anyway, the sister only appears sober and is on drugs, steals the kid, and takes off with her rich husband who is in a cult (he heads the cult). Its a Satanic cult in disguise and apparently, her niece is special alright, she's sort of the Christ Child. They kidnap the kid and try to murder her so the Antichrist can come and all that good stuff. I'm not sure exactly what she, but she's "special" and born on the night that Jesus Christ was supposed to be born.
5. The Ninth Gate - Creepy! Directed in 1999 by Roman Polanski, who is sort of creepy himself, The Ninth Gate stars Johnny Depp, a book collector looking for a "demon text", one of the last three copies in existence. The book is reported to contain rituals to summon Satan.
Here is the Wikipedia explaination (edited by me for skimming purposes):
Dean Corso is a New York City rare book dealer motivated solely by
financial gain. Wealthy book collector Boris Balkan has recently
acquired a copy of
The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows by seventeenth-century author
Aristide Torchia,
one of only three copies known to exist.
According to legend, the book
is Torchia's adaptation of an older book written by the
Devil
himself and purportedly contains the means to magically summon the
Devil. Balkan believes two of the copies are forgeries. He hires Corso
to
authenticate all three copies, and acquire the legitimate copy by any means necessary.
Balkan's copy of
The Nine Gates had previously belonged to
bibliophile Andrew Telfer, who committed suicide soon after selling the
book to Balkan. Telfer's widow Liana wants the book back. It was bought for her. She tries to do Dean so she can get it back and fails.
Dean's business partner, Bernie,
with whom Corso had hidden the book, is murdered; his corpse is posed in
imitation of an engraving in
The Nine Gates. Corso goes
Spain,
where the Ceniza brothers, book restorers, show him that three of the
book's engravings are signed "LCF", which Corso understands to mean that
Lucifer himself designed and cut them.
He hops a train to
Portugal to compare Victor Fargas' copy of the book to Balkan's. Corso discovers that the signature "LCF"
is found in three different engravings in the Fargas copy, which vary in
detail from their counterparts in the Balkan copy.
In Paris, Corso visits Baroness Kessler, the owner of the third
copy of the book. The Baroness refuses any contact with Corso
at first upon realizing who his employer is, but he returns and intrigues
Kessler with evidence that the engravings differ among the three copies.
Gaining access to Kessler's copy, he finds the "LCF" on three different
engravings, which are also slightly different from their counterparts
in the two other copies.
Later, Kessler is killed, and the Girl rescues
Corso from Liana's bodyguard. Corso believes that each copy of
The Nine Gates
is genuine, but that each contains deliberately falsified images,
requiring possession of all three copies to make sense of the ritual.
Liana steals Balkan's copy from Corso's hotel room.
He follows her to a
mansion and sees her using the book in a
Satanist
ceremony. Balkan interrupts the ceremony, killing Liana and stealing the engraving pages and his own copy and flees. Corso pursues Balkan to a remote castle, depicted in one of
the engravings and in a postcard that Corso found in Kessler's copy and finds Balkan preparing to open the Nine Gates.
After a struggle,
Balkan traps Corso in a hole in the floor so he can do the summoning ritual with Corso as a
'witness'. Balkan recites the phrases in the ritual to each of the
nine engravings then douses the floor and himself in gas and lights it, because he thinks he will be immune to the flames.
Balkan's
invocation appears to fail and Balkan begins screaming as he burns. Corso gets out safely and does the humane thing, shooting Balkan in the head so he doesn't have to burn as he dies. Outside the building, the Girl appears to Corso and they get down by the light of the flames.
She tells him that Balkan
failed because the ninth engraving Balkan had used was a forgery. Corso,
following her directions, returns to the Ceniza brothers' shop. Upon
arriving, he finds the store gone and the last piece of furniture being
removed. From the top of it falls the "real" ninth engraving,
which includes a picture of the mystery girl. With the engraving, Dean returns to the castle it shows and crosses the
threshold of the Ninth Gate.
You really have to follow this one and pay attention to appreciate its creepiness, which I didn't do the first time I watched it and had to review it more than once. Its one of those guys. You might not get it at first thought.
