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'''''The Church''''' ({{lang-it|La Chiesa}}) is a 1989 Italian [[supernatural horror film]]<ref>{{cite web |title=The Church (1989) |url=https://www.allmovie.com/movie/v120480 |publisher=[[AllMovie]] |access-date=1 September 2019}}</ref> co-written and directed by [[Michele Soavi]], and produced by [[Dario Argento]] with [[Mario Cecchi Gori]] and [[Vittorio Cecchi Gori]]. It stars [[Hugh Quarshie]], [[Tomas Arana]], [[Barbara Cupisti]], [[Asia Argento]], [[Feodor Chaliapin, Jr.]] and [[Giovanni Lombardo Radice]].
Although it was originally conceived as the third installment in the ''[[Dèmoni]]'' series, Soavi insisted the film to be distant from the series, wanting it to be “sophisticated”, and re-wrote the screenplay to remove any connection to the series. Filming was primarily shot in the [[Matthias Church]] in [[Budapest]], with additional footage filmed at studio sets in [[Rome]] and in downtown [[Hamburg]], [[Germany]].
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The next day, Lisa goes to Evan's office, where he is acting strangely. He tries to molest her and she flees, shocked and horrified. Evan likewise menaces the sacristan's daughter Lotte, with whom he'd previously been amiable. Evan and the sacristan both become increasingly disheveled, unkempt and violent. Lotte flees her apartment when she sees her father (who was in the process of abusing Lotte) reflected as an ape-like demon. Having a moment of clarity, the sacristan rushes to the confession booth, and tells Father Gus that he has become demonically possessed and fears losing control. To Gus' horror, he rushes to the cellar and kills himself with a [[jackhammer]], begging for forgiveness before he dies. But the possessed sacristan managed to touch two attendants of the church before his death.
His death seemingly triggers security mechanisms that cause the church to seal shut, trapping everyone inside. Among the occupants are a class of schoolchildren on a field trip led by a teacher named Bruckner, a bridal model taking wedding dress photographs along with her groom model named Bruno, a bickering elderly couple, and an argumentative pair of teenage bikers named Freddie and Joanna. The occupants begin experiencing increasingly elaborate and deadly hallucinations. Bruno, who got into physical contact with the possessed sacristan, begins to get sick and sees a fish-like demon bites onto his affected body part but the demon is not seen by others. One of the schoolchildren sees his friend (who is also affected by the possessed sacristan) turn into his doppelganger before being killed. Freddie sees Joanna in the embrace of a [[gargoyle]]. As the occupants futilely try to find a way out, Gus confronts the aloof Bishop, and discovers him on the rooftop with a stash of occult parchments and schematics for the church.
Those inside start to either go mad or die in droves; reverend Dominic attempts to call outside for help only to realize the phone line is unresponsive, is trapped in his own room and is soon murdered thereafter by an unseen force. The biker couple manage to dig through a thin section of the floor and rappel down beneath the church, only to unknowingly enter a subway tunnel and be struck and killed. The elderly couple who went to the top of the church to toll the bell as means of signaling for help reaches the bell, the wife proceeds to toll the bell - with the decapitated head of her husband. The sacristan reanimates as an evil specter, proceeds to impale and kill Bruckner. The bride sees her reflection rapidly age, and in a fit of madness tears the large chunks of skin off her own face before presumably dying of shock.
While all these supernatural madness are taking place inside the accursed church, at a [[nightclub]] in town Lotte senses something wrong and rushes back to the church, using a secret passageway in the [[Aqueduct (bridge)|aqueduct]] to get inside. As the bride practically mutilating herself to death, Lisa who was with the bride enters into a trance and wanders into the cellar in search of Evan completely naked, finding herself in the same candlelit atrium of her dreams. Surrounded by the reanimated specters of the church's victims who chant blasphemy, she lies atop an altar and is raped by Evan, now fully transformed into a goat-headed demon.
Searching the Bishop's office, Gus finds the ancient records recounting the church's bloody creation. Lotte enters, and upon sees someone who looks like her in a woodcut depicting the massacre (implied to be her in a past-life). At this point, Lotte and Gus are the only two people who are not either dead or gone demented by the corrupting influence of the force that had taken over the church. Suddenly flooded with memories from centuries prior, Lotte reveals that the church's architect was also the practitioner of an alchemy, and the Catholic that intended to maintain the church's unholy background in secret, used this as an excuse to condemn the architect to die in the church he had built, and that his body contains a self-destruct mechanism for the entire building should the evil beneath the church ever be revived. Gus tells Lotte to flee, and he makes his way through the cellar and to the chapel hall.
At Some time later, Lotte returns to the ruins of the church with flowers. A passing truck uncovers the stone seal and blows it open. As she hears the sounds of horses running, blue light emits from within, just like when Evan first opened it, and she smiles enigmatically.
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