There's a doin's transpirin' down at the old convent! One of the sisters has gotten herself lost in the catacombs beneath the nunnery, and when she makes her way out her hair’s been scared grey and she's got that "crazy mute lunatic" silence to her. Something spooked her big time down there. Elsewhere, while teaching another sister the fine arts of embalming (which includes beakers filled with colorful liquids that bubble and smoke in that Frankenstein fashion…), Mother Superior Sister Vincenza informs us that the subject in question was a sinful little penguin who cavorted with the forces of evil. As such, the embalming has to begin "where the sin starts", so Sister Nut Job (not to be confused with our own lovely NutJob here) stabs the corpse in her poon with a massive embalming needle and enough zeal to make Freud take notice. Further rantings from Sister Vinny reveal that the dead girl was impregnated by Old Scratch and her demon baby was aborted, only to escape into the darkened halls of the convent to attack their fellow sisters, sucking the life out of them via their boobs! Just when you're wondering if this tirade is meant to be one long metaphor from the Mother Superior about the evils born of humanity's naughty parts, a pair of blinking red emergency lights, errr, "glowing eyes of sinister, irredeemable evil" seemingly possess the crazy bag and drive her into a stabbing frenzy as she kills her habit garbed apprentice! And all of this happens before the credits even roll!

The victim's death is chalked up by the Mother Superior as "an accident" and is in no way to impact the convent's upcoming visit from Father Inardo. Of course the padre is suspicious of the number of recent "accidents" happening at the nunnery, and things don't get any less suspicious for him when, upon his arrival, one of the sisters goes batshit crazy, proclaiming that Satan lives in their walls, ascended from Hell and returned to Heaven where they must praise and worship his sunburnt ass and make sweet lip service to his cloven hooves! As if that wasn't weird enough for him, all kinds of crazy portents start adding to the mystery as the sounds of furniture being moved (evil furniture?) echo through the halls, religious books spontaneously combust, a snow white owl flies through the night in slo-mo "Baywatch" mode for seemingly no reason, light bulbs explode all around him, and a random girl sleeps alongside her cat in a concrete room/cell surrounded by lynched mannequins... half of these will be explained throughout the remainder of the movie with the other half making absolutely no sense and receiving no absolution what-so-ever.

Getting back to the newest member of the Crazy Nuns Club, the ranting Satanist sister rejects the "blood of Christ" the following morning during, uhm, morning Jesus love exercises and has another freak out. She's locked in her room until later, when she has an unexpected bout of stigmata and proceeds to bleed to death.. and all over her nice clean sheets too! While this is going on, Father Inny is giving the place the once over with a fresh coat of consecration, only to be blocked by the sisters when he asks to douse the attic. Mysterious yes, but the debate ends when the cries of Miss Stigmata distract everyone and the attic matter is dumped entirely... convenient. You know there's something going on up there. Attics are black holes of evil mojo, second only to cellars... and outhouses! Yep, consolidated no-goodness...

With yet another unexplained "suicide" cursing the con', the local Bishop pulls the Big I from the job and assigns the bearded, nigh-hippie like Father Valerio to investigate instead. Padre Val is one of those forward thinking flower child intellectual types who think that the problems at the nunnery are psychological and nothing more, as Satan only exists in the mind... and in a cryogenic storage locker 2 miles underneath Disney's corporate offices. Speaking of the wacky sinister mishaps of the convent, does Boris the groundskeeper play a part in all of this? Considering that he hates all members of the priesthood and the human race in general, I'm pretty sure he's got some evil genes in him... oh, and I think he's fucking his pet chickens too, which is pretty evil too... On the topic of suspicious activity, when Valerio arrives at the sister shack, he catches the nuns torching their recently deceased penguin's possessions in an effort to "cleanse the evil" she left behind... conveniently torching any and all fingerprints or other such useful evidence that the Father could have used in his investigation.

Despite this big boss Bishop's wishes, Father Inardo returns to the convent under cover of darkness, insistent on exorcising the demons nesting within its walls. What he should've done is brought some WD40 along with him to exorcise the squeaks out of the door hinges in that place instead. He's rewarded for his ambitious religious practices by an attack from a seemingly feral nun before those flashing red lights show up again, turning the man into a human torch, burning his remains badly enough that, when his severed head later pops up for some scares, it doesn't so much look like a torched head as it does a hastily thrown together special effect by a less-than-ambitious makeup effects crew...

The following morning at Confessional, a mysterious nun tells Father Valerio that she's in love with him, but cannot show her face for fear that he'll reject her. She also tells him to watch out for Miss Vincenza, because she plans on killing him! And so, the plot (much like Big Papi V's trouser salami) thickens... After losing the mystery girl and later discovering the aforementioned bad special effects head, Valerio's finally had it with being railroaded by Vincenza and her minions, so he starts turning the place upside down in search of some answers. Meanwhile, outside, an exchange between Boris and Vincenza reveals that he does indeed have some dirt on her that he threatens to expose. Being the "tougher than a 2 dollar steak" broad that she is, Sister Vinny replies mob style with the much more painful threat of stabbing him in the throat with garden sheers if he doesn't shut his stupid mongoloid cake hole! Man, never fuck with a Mother Superior. If you think nuns are brutal, try to imagine how brutal the king of the penguin mountain would have to be to get on top and stay there. They'll beat Satan to death with a yardstick lashed with their own rosary if given half the chance.

As Papa Val is searching the room of the mute crazy nun from before, the bitch suddenly snaps from her coma and strangles the guy with her own rosary beads! Lucky for him that she suddenly has a random orgasm and passes out on top of him before she can actually finish killing him... Elsewhere, Boris sicks his dogs on a stray cat that apparently belongs to the girl in the room full of hung mannequins. Wearing her finest surgical mask, the girl shares some kind of Shining link with her pet and isn't happy with the brute for killing Mr. Fuzzems. As retaliation for her pussy being eaten (insert your best Andrew Dice Clay "Ohhhhhhhhhh!" here), the masked bandit chick uses her crazy Damien-like powers to drive the dogs into a blood frenzy, ripping out ol' Boris's throat. Well, so much for the mandatory lunkhead servant of our movie. Meh. It’s not like he was Joe Dallesandro or anything.

Back to Valerio, one of the items he uncovers in his search is a reel-to-reel mixtape of the latest, freshest dancehall beats, interspersed with a recording of the convent’s original Mother Superior and then non-Superior Sister Vincenza... arguing over the euthanizing of Vinny's bastard Devil baby via pot of boiling water! Hey, if you're going to euthanize your unwanted, why not feed a family of 8 while you're at it? Before Big Bad Mama Superior can add baby stew to the menu though, Vincenza leapt forth in dramatic fashion and snatched the baby girl from the slow boiling doom that had claimed many an egg before her. Shown to be an early starter in the realm of evil magic powers, the baby (or at least a doll's eye peaking through Vincenza's fingers) forced the old hag to strangle herself and die a 70 year old virgin. Well, that explains who the masked girl with the Scanners power is. Hmmmm, a telekinetic with an affinity for mannequins. Think Mattei ever saw Tourist Trap?

Sister Vincenza now makes her entrance, confirming that her kid Elisa is indeed the Devil's little girl. Seems Elisa's also getting to that age where her lady parts get tingly and thinking about boys makes her stomach do somersaults. I'll give you three guesses as to whom she wants to be her special naughty fill-in for all those years of Big Red's absentee parenting, and the first two don't count. The blushing teen bride-to-be makes her grand entrance (yes, she was the one in the Confessional), complete with fog machine and glaring back lighting, drops her veil to reveal her scarred and burned mouth, then proceeds to condemn Father Valerio to an eternity of white hot fire pokers up his nostrils in Hell by making out with him! Mommy Vincenza's not keen on the idea of losing her daughter to a man though, so she picks up her stabbing knife (affectionately known as “Ol’ Stabby”) and lets loose on her little girl's back! If she survives this, she’ll be spending the rest of her life on a leather couch doing Rorschach tests and relating sob stories about being molested by clowns to an entirely disinterested man (or woman) who’s just going to prescribe pills to her afterwards.

Eliza brings on the supernatural teen angst and rebellion though, fighting off her fatal stab wounds long enough to stalk mommy dearest down into the convent's catacombs, where she resurrects the old lady's victims Lazarus style so they can do the zombie stomp and strangle the bitch to death, pseudo-avenging themselves before little Elisa finally gives up the ghost and shuffles off her mortal coil. For an epilogue, yet another priest is sent to the convent to make preparations for the Bishop himself to come and clean all the residual evil out of the place. This priest also updates us on Father Valerio (who's since gone completely out of his skull and spends his time licking the walls of his padded cell in between beatings from disgruntled orderlies and meals of shredded cardboard and powdered potatoes) before he gets a visit from a familiar pair of flashing red emergency lights... who just kinda disappeared after the first 30 minutes or so to randomly appear again here...

Okay, I'm going to break this movie down based on the five senses of the human body. Taste wise, in the literal sense, I've never been a fan of plastic casings and magnetic tape. I always have trouble digesting them and their generally unsatisfying flavor just makes them not worth the effort. In the figurative sense, this flick's got "bad taste" stamped all over it. Granted, The Other Hell isn't nearly as offensive as much of the other Nunsploitation flicks to come out of the boot shaped land of Spaghetti and body hair (a nauseating combination to be sure), but you get murderous nuns consorting with Satan to make devilets and stabbing people to death, so there's enough bad taste here to keep at least the softcore deviants interested till the end credits. In regards to scent, well, the VHS tape smelled of cheap and possibly toxic plastic and was probably manufactured with the lowest possible standards... and give me second thoughts about whether or not I should've tasted it... In the figurative sense, the movie wreaks of attempting to be more offensive than the actual end product wound up. It's actually quite tame considering it's a movie about penguins making babies with Mephistopheles and violently killing each other. This is the same perverse creature who brought us such trash sorta-epics as SS Girls and Porno Holocaust?! Why do I get the feeling that was some nastier stuff left on the cutting room floor?

As far as touch, well, I never touched myself once while watching the movie, as nothing particularly sexy happened in its 90 minute running time. Speaking in an emotional sense though, I have to admit that I was touched by poor half-demon teen telekinetic Elisa... in the heart, not in the pants. Her scalded face looks like someone got a little overzealous with their Dirty Sanchez action, and her eager young heart just wanted some priestly lovin' like we all do at that age. And just when it looks like she's found the love she so deeply needs, she's stabbed to death by her own mother. Ladies, if you thought your mom was harsh on you when you started dating, at least she didn't stab you in the torso repeatedly with a fucking knife! Sister Vincenza: single-handedly setting parent-child relations back 2000 years.

This brings us to sight. How did the movie look? Nothing special. If you've seen a Bruno Mattei movie before (no matter under which pseudonym it might've been), you know what to expect. Everything's very deliberate, nothing's what you'd call "fancy" and, with the exception of a few shots that look like Mattei was "inspired by" *cough*ripped-off*cough* guys like Argento and Bava, it's pretty much your standard "point and shoot" walk through the park... whether it's a walk through the park in the safety of high noon or at two in the morning with guys in ski masks wielding barbecue forks and lurking in the bushes depends on how much importance you put on the direction of what you're watching. Anyway, this brings us to our final sense: sound. Oh the sound... Okay, good news first: the voice actors doing the English dub are fine. It's not ridiculously overdramatic and Vincenza may just straighten out your short and curlies when she goes crazy and gets stabby with her sisters as she shrieks and screams bloody murder. And now for the bad news: remember the wacky synth music used in Zombi 3? If you've seen it, you'll probably never forget it. Well, I hope you liked it, cuz the folks behind that self safe hilarity, being the obvious conservationists they are, fully embrace their "reduce, reuse, recycle" philosophy and applied it to turning the Other Hell soundtrack into the Zombi 3 soundtrack... and it soooo does not fit with the mood of the movie it originally belonged to. How important is something like that? Try to imagine Suspiria, but replacing the Goblin soundtrack with a cheerier John Carpenter synch score. Get the point?

So, overall, I was actually surprised by how good The Other Hell turned out! Okay, let me rephrase that: I was actually surprised that The Other Hell wasn't as bad as I expected it to be. Whether it's because we never see the beast behind those blinking red “eyes”, or because there were no alpha male stereotypes to drag down the cast, or simply because this was one of the few Mattei movies that isn't based solely around the concept of ripping off someone else's movie, it's really not bad. The pacing was surprisingly smooth and I didn't have a single "look at your watch" moment, begging for it to come to an end. My big problem with the movie though is that there's so much left unanswered. If Elisa was the one responsible for driving some of the characters to death and madness, then what the fuck was the deal with those flashing eyes!? Is that the demon abortion creature mentioned in the beginning tirade, or something else? Did Elisa have a sibling or was Satan planting his crops in more than one plowed field in those convent walls? Damn it Mattei, how can you leave me hanging like that!? It's almost as if our story was originally intended to go one way, then completely switched gears into something kinda similar but still different, only to remember at the last minute that there was something else happening in the first place and try to tie it up before the end credits. And what the fuck is in that attic!? I'm left a little jarred, but actually interested in a sequel... that will never come. Oh well, thanks anyway Bruno. Way to give me faith that July 30th for the next 40+ years won't necessarily become a living hell for me... at least not every July 30th...