Matty sings the praises of David Schmoeller’s criminally overlooked theological shocker.

Described by director David Schmoeller as his “lost film”, CATACOMBS is bookended by a convoluted genesis and a chaotic release history.

Produced by Charles Band’s Empire Pictures, the project began as ‘The Vault’ and was assigned to Jeff Burr and C. Courtney Joyner in the wake of their horror anthology, From a Whisper to a Scream (1987) (which Band was briefly interested in distributing), and Joyner turning in his script for Empire’s Prison (1987). At the same time, Schmoeller, whom Band recruited to oversee ‘The Vault’ as producer, was busy prepping an early iteration of Ghost Town (1988). When ‘The Vault’ was nixed amidst shooting delays and budget issues — harbingers of Empire’s impending collapse — Band moved Burr over to Ghost Town (before replacing him with Aussie ad man Richard McCarthy) and tasked Schmoeller with assembling a spin-off venture, Catacombs. [1]

Given their concurrent development, it’s no surprise aspects of Prison and Ghost Town bleed into Catacombs, effectively creating a loose trilogy. However, where the spirits of Prison and Ghost Town are (largely) fuelled by revenge, Schmoeller uses his haunted house framework — spooky happenings at a monastery — to tell a quietly majestic story of good versus evil. Of course, Schmoeller being Schmoeller, the whos, whats, and whys of God and the Devil are simply a means for the auteur to probe his go-to themes of life and death, nature and nurture, and hope and regret. Sombre and bittersweet, Schmoeller underlines his thesis in one of the most beautiful moments of his career: a delicately presented and played monologue, wherein a dying cleric (Feodor Chaliapin Jr., who’d also appear in the similarly ecclesiastical In the Name of the Rose (1985) and The Church (1989)) laments his vow of chastity.

Though lacking the infamy of Crawlspace (1986) and the iconic status of Puppet Master (1989), and though never receiving the kind of retrospective ballyhoo that Full Moon bestowed upon their recent HD tart-up of Netherworld (1992), Catacombs ranks alongside the mighty Tourist Trap (1979) as the scariest picture Schmoeller ever tackled for Band (and, indeed, otherwise). A master of mood, Schmoeller fosters a powerful dread-heavy atmosphere and depicts a creeping sense of mounting hysteria as the demonic forces brewing in the titular recesses of an old Italian abbey are intensified by a young priest’s crisis of faith and the eye-catching presence of a visiting female. Catacombs‘ opening is as pomp-y as it is nerve-jangling; the imaginative ‘Christ coming down from the cross’ sequence is at once strange, absurd and wickedly blasphemous; and the pleasingly low-key finale is subtly terrifying. It certainly impressed Jean-Claude Van Damme. Despite Schmoeller’s own belief he fudged it (the perpetually self-critical maestro freely admits his script didn’t actually have a conclusion until a few days before shooting), The Muscles From Brussels watched Catacombs’ brawl-tinged denouement under the recommendation of Stuart Gordon and promptly offered Schmoeller the chance to helm Kickboxer (1989). Miffed with not being able to choose his crew, Schmoeller, alas, declined.

Completed in time for the 1988 Cannes market, Schmoeller delivered the sole print of Catacombs to its French distributor personally. By the year’s end, the film was in British stores through Band’s long-standing U.K. output deal with Entertainment in Video. Sadly, in the U.S., Catacombs joined Arena (1989) and Robot Jox (1989) in Empire’s bankruptcy shuffle. Originally slated for a September ‘89 debut from Trans World Entertainment — the company that swallowed Empire’s library — Catacombs found itself shelved until 1993, when Trans World offshoot, Epic, issued it as another sequel in their Curse series, ‘Curse IV: The Ultimate Sacrifice’, via their pact with Columbia-TriStar.

USA/Italy ● 1988 ● Horror ● 88mins

Timothy Van Patten, Ian Abercrombie, Jeremy West, Laura Schaefer ● Dir. David Schmoeller ● Wri. R. Barker Price and David Schmoeller (as ‘Giovanni Dimarco’)

[1] In a further incestuous twist, ‘The Vault’’s key art, concept and title would be cannibalised by Schmoeller and Band for Netherworld, and repurposed by Band for urban shocker The Vault (2001).