Catacombs, les couloirs de l'enfer

Originally filmed in 1988 under the title Catacombs but not released until 1993 due to the production company's bankruptcy, Curse IV is a surprisingly entertaining film. Under the direction of frequent Charles Band collaborator David Schmoeller, the film creates a strong feeling of unease early on and keeps the suspense going fairly strong throughout. Feodor Chaliapin is especially memorable as a dying priest. He comes across with just the right amount of sincerity so that one could honestly see him as a man of the cloth. While far from the greatest film to come out of Empire Pictures, Curse IV is still a fun movie that is worth a look sometime.

When I had the chance to sit down and watch the 1988 horror movie "Catacombs" here in 2024, of course I did so. Sure, I had never even heard about the movie, prior to sitting down to watch it. But with it being a horror movie, that in itself was more than enough to make me give the movie a fair chance.

However, writers David Schmoeller and R. Barker Price put together a script and storyline that failed to entertain me. The movie started out nice enough, but then lost its momentum and sort of went from being a horror movie to being a boring pseudo-religious movie without direction and contents. Truth be told, I fell asleep along the slow paced narrative, yeah, the movie was that boring.

Of the entire cast, I was only familiar with Ian Abercrombie and Vernon Dobtcheff. The acting performances in the movie were good, and the actors and actresses did portray their characters nicely on the screen.

Visually, not an overly impressive movie. So "Catacombs" didn't even have that working in favor of it.

"Catacombs" was a swing and a miss of a movie. And this is definitely not a movie that I would recommend that you waste 88 minutes on watching. Some of us suffered through this ordeal, so you don't have to. You're quite welcome.

My rating of director David Schmoeller's 1988 movie "Catacombs" lands on a generous two out of ten stars.

In the 16th Century, a group of monks trap a demon in the catacombs under the Abbey of San Pietro en Valle in Italy. Centuries later, the demon is accidentally freed and possesses visiting teacher Elizabeth Magrino (Laura Schaefer).

David Schmoeller started his directorial career with the excellent offbeat horror Tourist Trap and followed that with the oddball Klaus Kinski chiller Crawlspace, but his later career saw him turn to schlocky B-movies for Charles Band's Full Moon studio. With its religious setting and a cool Omen-esque score by Pino Donaggio, it initially seems as though Catacombs might be a little classier, but in the end, it just another piece of straight-to-video nonsense, but one that isn't trashy enough to be fun: the film is very light on the gore and features no gratuitous nudity whatsoever, redheaded beauty Schaefer staying fully clothed throughout.

Half of the film consists of shots of people walking down a spiral staircase and through the tunnels of the catacombs; everyone does it at least once. Much of the remainder sees the same people pretending to be struck by the demon's supernatural force. It all gets very boring. There's not much in the way of special effects to speak of, the budget only allowing for a smoke machine, a wind machine, some white slap and a pair of black contact lenses. The much touted 'Jesus coming alive on the cross' scene is very disappointing: it's just a bloke wearing a nappy, a bad wig and fake beard, and the subsequent killing of a monk with one of the crucifixion nails is totally gore-free.

The ending, in which Father John Durham (Timothy Van Patten) banishes the demon with a heavenly beam of light reflected off a golden monstrance, makes no sense at all and closes the film in a very unsatisfactory manner.

Catacombs (Curse IV on video) is a boring religious drama that is trying to pass itself off as a horror movie , it pretty much isn't. It involves an albino demon who is the only interesting thing this film offers , oh and Jesus murders a priest for eating a candy bar..that was dandy. This movie pretty much has the look and feel of those cheesy cheap movies that church's and evangelist produce warning people they are sinners. Only 84 minutes it feels like it's 3 hrs , and it also feels like hours are going by without any action at all. I'd avoid this one

2/10

Before I watched this horror I watched another one coming from the same year. It's easy to see, again, that horror wasn't very popular around that era. Of course there were some highlights as Hellraiser (1987) but here again, it surely isn't a slasher or a gory piece. But there is a bit of suspense here although that you easily can see who will be possessed by the demon. There is almost no blood in it and the effects used are very cheap. What I mean is, the bodies are doing the tricks and now and then a cross or other things just fall of the wall. The acting is reasonable well and it is strange that this flick never had a proper release. Still up to now it isn't available on VHS or DVD. If you want to see it you will have to find it on rental VHS. It wasn't that bad but it's easy to see that it was a low budget. A perfect example that the latex and slime effects were over, which mostly look gory, and that a new era was on his way, the computer era or better known as CGI. But if you can find it than I would recommend it to watch it.