The Other Hell (1991) Is Bootleg Nunsploitation Vaporwave
Bruno Mattei would have remade all of his movies. I'm paraphrasing, but he said as much in an interview on the Blue Underground DVD for, I think, Hell Of The Living Dead. I respect his honesty. I also respect his callous disregard for the notion of creative licensing. Mattei was a schlock-man of the highest caliber. Need a Rambo knock off? Mattei has got you (Strike Commando). Looking for the lowest common denominator of both The Terminator and Aliens? It's just a Mattei of time (Shocking Dark or Terminator 2 if yer' nasty...And unafraid of the long dick of Cameron's legal team).
Now granted these movies are all pale/melanoma-level sunburnt imitations of their source material. However, there is something to Mattei's Aldi-brand artistry. By first creating a thin shell that vaguely resembled/plagiarized the source material, he had to then provide the filling. This is where Bruno's directorial idiosyncrasies came into play and things got interesting. That filling is doubly deranged when you consider Mattei's long-time writing partner was Claudio "Actors are dogs" Fragasso. There's definitely a cum joke what with the "filling" bit but I'm pulling a Mattei so just insert one from Last Podcast or whatever. So how did these boys wrangle the sub-genre of Satanic nunsploitation?
Mamma mia, we have-a Alucarda at home! Mattei had a lot of steal from when it came to this flick. The foundation is Inferno in both the use of lighting gels and the poster design. However, outside of that we get a little of The Devils and the requisite amount of The Exorcist/The Omen. The final product is a goulash (Or should I say Ghoul-ash! Is promptly shot dead) where a priest has been sent to discover the perpetrator of multiple hyperviolent deaths at a convent. Is it Satan himself or something equally insidious?! It's the latter by the way.
The Other Hell is like walking through a nunsploitation-themed backyard haunt. The players either react with Xanax-calm to blasphemous insanity, or have Italo-style histrionics till they drop dead. The costuming feels corny in a charming way that conjures the gatefold photo from a Venom album. Franco Garofalo (He's the Michael Madsen to Mattei's Tarantino) shows up as a pervert-coded gardener, eating scenery like he just completed an asbestos fast. The final act feels like a bizarre fusion of The Omen and God Told Me To (Check it out if you haven't, it's a horror/sci-fi paperback acid flashback) but it's ultimately about the journey and not the destination. You're good with that right? After all, to paraphrase a great screenwriter: You are like dogs!
-Dr. Benny Graves
