Dark Waters

Dark Waters (Temnye vody) Directed Mariano Baino, starring Louise Salter (1993).

I decided to pick this Lovecraftian Nunsploit shot in the Ukraine from the catalog. No, it’s not the Japanese Dark Water by Ringu director Hideo Nakata, which was remade with Jennifer Connolly. In fact, I actually liked this one more. The Baino film, which is his debut, starts off on a blasphemous note as a priest is drowned and then impaled by a cross, while a nun is mysteriously pushed over a sea side cliff. I'm stoked to see what heavy metal wackiness will erupt forth next like the spirit of Nyarlathotep. No that’s not a typo because this one takes place in the briny terrain of an Innsmouth-like cult, minus the inbreeding and the fishy lips. This is all deliberate and Mariano was very much influenced by Lovecraft. He was also a big fan of Graham Masterton, the genius behind one of my all time favorite schlocky Indian backne midget demons The Manitou!   

A cracked Flavor Flav style Pazuzu-ish medallion is placed in a keep sake box by the nuns,

left there for some predictable foreshadowing later.

What time is it? Time to drop a shit ton of LSD

The last mainstream disparagement toward those punishment craving nuns I can think of was the “Shame” dungeon sister featured on the Game of Thrones religious cult.
The score is very Boswell sounding, which works out pretty good.

Down in the depths of a cave there’s flaming crosses and flagellant nuns, (meaning cloistered bippies whipping themselves for sexual kicks not those with bad gas)!

I'd be cautious around that open flame during pork and beans night at the convent

Louise Salter, a British actress all decked out in sexy red leather is eager to reach the island of the eyeless creepy nuns, she's there to lower the boom and cut their funding after the death of her father, who was a big supporter of their satanic shenanigans. Little does she know they have some wicked plans for her and it gets worse, considering there's devious connections between her parents and these horrid bitches.

This film is extremely wet and European, it's always raining and the characters all speak in a gruff Eastern block-ish dialect, the kind that warms the frigid cockles of the alt-right Putin lovin suck ups. One loony aboard the vessel feasts of entrails and looks as if he sorely regretted taking the 20$ for this shitty bit part acting gig!

In the catalog, Chas mentions the shopping cart Sam Raimi “shakey cam” and the atmospheric set design, I think this director is pretty talented and besides DW, he’s only put out short films.

These eerie nuns seem to never catch any ZZZZ's, they stay up all night with torches walking around from dusk till dawn. Some of them act like the blind dead, wearing robes and lunging forward to strangling the shit outta anyone within reach. Elizabeth has one tripped out freaky nightmare showing a crucified nun with a withered face and candy corn teeth who levitates forward behind two cackling bug eyed kids.

OK kids smile for school picture day!

It must be a bitch to charter a boat, (Fuck that shit, I would've fashioned a Gillian's Island one out of bamboo to escape this claustrophobic dump)! That aspect sort of reminded me of The Wickerman.

It gets worse after it turns out this little pirozhki has family connections to these island hags and her chickens all come home to roost or something, I was slightly confused there's an "unbearable lightness of being" amount of metaphorical subtext. I guess I shouldn’t keep bringing up Russian references, (that last one was Czech by the way), because this director only filmed in that location because it was the financier’s idea--Mariano is Italian. He mentions this in an interview with comingsoon.net.

FLOYYYDDDD!!!

Nuns still have no fun like the Mercyful Fate tune goes and what's worse they are pyromaniacs!

Definitely stick around for the bat shit crazy ending where the main character’s mutant naked twin makes an appearance and the Pazuzu puzzle piece grants her the fortitude to yank out nun guts and chew them up like snausages! I think I need intense therapy now! Even though this one is like a Catholic Innsmouth with a Sentinel (1977) type element, it’s more original, super weird and worth seeking out. There's a new special edition DVD with commentary and a featurette which seems cool, because I heard that they apparently filmed near radiation infected landscapes and the flaming crosses almost demolished the set. Worth a shot, check it out!

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