31 Days of Horror: Day 2- The Arcane Sorcerer (1996)

Despite the gruesome creatures, flying limbs and buckets of blood, horror as a genre can feel pretty stale. For every excellent film there is a dozen forgettable or terrible ones. And there are so many that it takes a lot of wading through the rubbish to get to the interesting stuff. For each day in October I’m going to recommend a different horror film or film about horror. For the most part they won’t be the accepted classics. My selections range from the genuinely excellent to the delightfully strange with a few that are more fascinating than they are great. Hopefully there will be something for everyone and you’ll find something new to give you a scare or maybe a laugh. This is my 31 Days of Horror and today I’m talking about: The Arcane Sorcerer.

Yesterday’s choice was a bit more of a well-known horror film but today’s is almost obnoxiously obscure. Italian horror films are known for being poorly dubbed, a little sleazy and sometimes lacking in logic but Pupi Avati’s 1996 film curbs this trend quite amazingly.

Set in the 16^th century it follows a young seminary student who is forced to get out of town due to a sex scandal. A mysterious woman offers him a place where he would be hidden, a job as the aid of an excommunicated priest who was caught meddling with the black arts. As the student learns more about the priest’s work and becomes entrenched in his dealings with the occult it becomes clear that there is some sort of evil at work, and he is directly helping it.

Director Edgar Wright described the film as “the Barry Lyndon of horror” and for the most part that’s pretty apt. The film is incredibly authentic from the costumes and the atmosphere to the intense seriousness with which the occult is treated. That seriousness is what lends the film a lot of its power. It’s set in a time where no one questions the reality of black arts instead it is a dark truth they shy away from. Avati conjures an atmosphere that allows us to accept this world of spirits and magic. This allows the core struggle to not be a question of the reality of the situation but the consequences of it. The student knows he cannot leave his post for fear of being caught but he also cannot bring himself to fully defy the priest. Despite being kicked out himself he still retains the knowledge of his time at the seminary and knows that he is aiding in the deterioration of a once godly mans soul. Both of the men are guilty of sinning but while the student’s was a regretted mistake the priest’s is something he is actively working towards. As this dawns on the student he is challenged with the choice of facing his own pursuers or damning a man’s soul.

Other than the main character’s internal struggle there is a mystery at the centre of the film that gets the focus of the plot. The last man to be the priest’s helper died in mysterious circumstances and the women of the local brothel only speak of the man in hushed tones. Running alongside this are the various tasks the student undertakes for the priest, tasks that become increasingly creepy and overtly wrong. Other than one shot of poor cg the film maintains authenticity allowing for some incredibly tense and scary moments. The world is so cemented as real that the scares are not born from monsters or excessive gore but from the moving of a shadow and a sound in the darkness. Mood exudes from the priest’s home; the place feels like it has been lived in for years. Where the outside is made up of the mix of muted yellows and greens of the Italian countryside the interiors are cloaked in shades of black and brown. Candlelight offers a reprieve from the darkness but like the student’s will it waver’s in the night.

The occult is something that shows up in many horror films, usually as a last minute twist to explain creepiness or as a set-up for a creature’s bloody shenanigans. Here it is a force that is controlled by knowledge. Ancient amulets or special weapons will not save the day but knowledge can. This makes the priest’s immense library even more daunting as it becomes clear that he is withholding information. Horror films often feature a character lost in a situation they don’t understand and in this case we have a character lost in a situation where the ability to understand is there but is so dishearteningly vast that it seems insurmountable. To add to the scary goings-on the prospect of understanding is always an inch away from the protagonist but too obscured to see.

The Arcane Sorcerer is not just an interesting deviation in regards to Italian horror but it’s also an endlessly intriguing and chilling film in its own right. Few horror films are genuinely beautiful like The Arcane Sorcerer is. While the exteriors show the rolling hills and vast wonder of the Italian countryside the interiors offer a much darker and bleaker side of the same coin. And in the end that’s what the film is about, the duality of us all, which these religious men are not exempt from. It’s one of the slower and more sombre films I’ve chosen to highlight this month but it’s also one of the best