For some reason I feel like I remember this movie or remember when this movie came out – maybe in some tv ads or something but it sounded super familiar when I was reading about it and then I started it and I hated it and thought how could I bring myself to remember such a thing and who wrote this and how did we make it past the year 2000 and what is this shit and who took too much X or ecstasy it was called once and nice day glow body paint and what a load of shit but by the end of it I actually kind of liked it but that was probably just because of Adrienne Barbeau and I don’t mean because she was going around with her top off and all of my childhood dreams came true finally because she wasn’t doing any of that but her character was the best part of it and because of that I rest my case that this was decent enough and I’ll probably need to go watch Escape From New York again or maybe the original Swamp Thing or Cannonball Run if I need to drift back into my youth and dreams of frolicking and playing in the sunshines and glades. But in the meantime there’s this movie that hmm well it’s um uh well I don’t really know. I see it listed as a comedy but it’s not funny whatsoever at lest not to my sense of humor but it’s also labeled horror and I guess ok maybe there’s some good practical effects and well, I suppose, demons and don’t fear – Coolio is in here as a security guard so you know it’s quality – but despite being relatively stupid as shit for most of it, it gets decent towards the end when Barbeau comes around to chain smoke and save the fucking day. But enough of that, is this movie called The Convent about a convent?

Not really. To start our proceedings off some nuns and a priest are performing some sort of ceremony on some dark night in some sort of bricky place that reminds me of buildings in the downtown area where I live that were built back in the 30s and were probably warehouses of some sort or reminds me of that jeans factory where Ignatius worked in Confederacy of Dunces but not really a typical convent. So they’re doing this thing whatever they’re doing and this chick busts in with a cigarette hanging from her lips and blows everyone to smithereens with her firearms. The whole thing goes on with “you don’t own me” by Leslie Gore playing and made me think of someone trying to copycat Robert Rodriguez and Tarantino but in a much cheaper, less cool, over color contrasted fashion.

Skip ahead 30 years and there’s a sorority if something and the straight laced preppy girl is waiting for her horny friends – the beer guy, her horny boyfriend, the cheerleader, the innocent virgin dude pledge and guy named Frijoles who likes pot and mushrooms – the trippin’ balls kind – so they can all go to the old convent and look for ghosts. As she’s waiting the local goth witchy girl comes up and begs to be taken along and after plenty of arguing she bribes uptight preppy girl to take her along with her if she’ll show everyone pictures of her she took with (I think) The Cure (or maybe) Morrissey or something similar so they all hop into Frijoles’ jeep to go to the old convent and get laid and high and maybe see a ghost and I feel like there was some other reason among the group but it escapes me and if probably all boils down to getting laid or high AF.

At the convent they have to break in using the pledge’s head as a battering ram because this building is clearly some sort of old factory that was built back in the 30s or 40s and was probably some sort of warehouse or maybe a jeans factory and it’s covered with those old faded Americana types of building letters that read things like AMERICAN MERCANTILE SUNDRY AND TEXTILES or UNITED BOX SUPPLY CO or WOODY JOHNSON AND SONS LUMBER SUPPLY or even WOOLEN UNDERGARMENTS &c.

Inside the joint, they split up and get scared and the cops show up and cop Coolio acts up like he hates the thought of marijuana and hates people who use it and I think that was Richard Brake in there and they make everyone leave except for the gothy witch girl who ran off to hide so she didn’t get picked up by the cops again and instead she gets taken from her hiding place and very loosely strapped to the ground to be a sacrifice for Satan. That’s right, also inside the convent warehouse jeans factory are two flamboyant homosexual males and their three scantily clad female followers who want to sacrifice gothy witch girl to Satan for sone reason that I don’t remember why but you know come on there’s always a reason. At his point I really didn’t think things were going so great and then everyone started getting possessed by demons or something and they started really overusing that gimmick where the actor or model holds their body still and moves their head around and they speed up the film so it looks like the head is really going nuts – trust me you’ve seen it even if my description skills are poor. Flappity flappity flappity go the sound effects and when the person is done moving their head around they’ve transformed into some creature from hell complete with glowy eyes and lots of streaks of neon glowing paint everywhere like veins. I’ll see if I can find a nice picture here. This isn’t the best thing but it’s all I can find so hopefully you get the idea.

Now imagine a bunch of people doing the head moving thing over a bunch of minutes and turning into things with glowy eyes and veins and we get to the last third of the movie which I thought was decent enough to kind of save things for me. First off, prep good girl is all I’m outta here to get some fucking help! and takes off on foot to the apartment of the local recluse who lives behind drawn shades. You see she’s the one who murdered all of those nuns back in the day over in the warehouse jeans factory and now she just sits around hiding I guess. Anyway that’s Adrienne Barbeau and she still looks completely sexy and hot and she chain smokes and tells the story of some sort of demon nurses who ran a school and blah blah and her newborn baby they took from her and her shirt really fits nice and so she killed them all and she stole her baby back and he lives or does something in Arizona or somewhere and she guesses it’s the 30th anniversary of that night she blew everyone to smithereens so those demons must be up to something again so she fires up a cig and loads up on guns and they hop on her motorcycle to go finish the job once and for all and her shirt and jeans fit real nice as they scoot off into the moonlight.

I know that if I was ever to fire up some cigs and hop on a motorcycle the main thing i would want to would be to drive the bike through the dirty old church so that’s exactly what they do. Blasting away and shootin’ things up they eventually make it to Boss Level and I’d hate to spoil it but they win. I was worried this was going to end up real bleak and grim and they would lose and maybe get skinned alive as they watch the unholy and unnamed elder gods rise from the pits to feast on human flesh. Kind of like that brief scene in Event Horizon that’s always freaked me out. But no – if you were expecting something cruel that would literally make you or me cry and think about retreating from society and living a life of piety and solemn regret – I don’t think this one will have that effect. It might. I don’t actually know anyone who might read this except for the time maybe JB stops by here but that’s very rare. I think I have a general idea of what might give some people proper fears but then again there’s some people i just don’t understand like this person I have to work with. I don’t know what his or her disorder is but it drives me nutty and it sucks to go to work every day and think about quitting even though the job is not so bad when he or she is not there but when he or she is it’s miserable.

One of the funnier things in this comedy that I found is when one of the less masculine guys is tied up with the virgin pledge guy getting ready to be sacrificed and with that, it’s time to unveil our newest feature called: Briefly Overheard Observational Blatherings:

“Why don’t you want to do it with me in the butt so we won’t be virgins I mean we’d both get off this table we’re tied up on and we’re pretty much doing it already but we’d just have to take our clothes off see and them shimmy around a little I remember when I was younger maybe ten no wait maybe eight or nine I had this babysitter over for the summer you know because I was out of school and my mom had to work at the bank I think it was called the Local Federal and my dad worked at the mortgage company so I had these babysitters every summer and this year when I was eight nine or ten I had this one and Christ I don’t remember his name at all but he’d sneak this girl over from down two streets over and her name was really Gretchen like some old hooked nose German witch and him and Gretchen would make out on the couch right behind me while I was watching old Roy Rogers reruns or maybe it was Bewitched or maybe even the Brady Bunch it doesn’t really matter but I would hear them slurping and tasting and pinching and sometimes I’d try to look behind me and catch a slip of boob you know but I never really did and I didn’t feel like I could stare because I didn’t want to get the shit beat out of me or worse have him tell my mom I was some sort of perverted peeper and then she’d tell my dad who would whip my ass bloody and ground me from my records so I didn’t start and just listened and smelled those things and this one time I don’t remember what day it was maybe a Thursday or Friday it doesn’t matter but I heard old Gretchen say no no I don’t want it there don’t you touch it there don’t you go slipping it in there and then I heard a noise like i’d never heard before or since and I couldn’t really begin to categorize it or even imitate it so you probably won’t believe me anyway but I wonder whatever happened to those two it doesn’t matter but now here we are tied up on this table getting ready to be sacrificed to Satan because we’re virgins and if we aren’t virgins then the whole thing really wouldn’t work right so come on let’s do it even if you don’t want to so they can’t slit our throats or whatever they’re going to do when they get back here just turn over a little my hands are almost free cone on stop struggling there there what’s wrong don’t you want to not be murdered if we can stop it it sheez you try and help someone out you try and do the right thing and look at the thanks you get you get nothing in return some people boy I swear how ungrateful can someone be when you’re just trying to help jeez o just wiggle around here and let me unloop those fasteners come on come on they’re coming back oh Christ here they are I guess now we’re going to die Jesus Christ well I guess it doesn’t matter now does it huh.”

Now that’s a B.O.O.B. if we’ve ever seen one here at Eric Undead.

FILED UNDER: FRIJOLES AND SMOKING CHICKS AND WITCHY GOTHY GIRL AND DOPE AND B.O.O.B.