Richard Griffin is an indie filmmaker that certainly has a style. I’ve seen and reviewed a number of his films over the years. The last of his I reviewed was Future Justice back in July and I thought it was decent. One of his newer movies out now on DVD is Flesh for the Inferno.
Flesh for the Inferno opens with a group of nuns confronting the priest and a New England Catholic school. The nuns have discovered that the priest has been sexually abusing young boys and they won’t stand for it. The priest doesn’t care one bit, however, and swiftly kills one of the nuns. He takes the remaining nuns down to what I guess is the school’s basement. In the basement there is an unfinished wall. The priest forces the nuns into the opening of the wall and begins laying brick and mortar, entombing the nuns Cask of Amontillado-style. Right before the wall is completely sealed off, one of the nuns places a curse on the school and the priest.
Jump forward years later and the school is a rundown mess. It’s clearly been abandoned for years. A local church community group plans a day to fix up the school. The group is comprised of “teens” who have no desire to be there and then one goody two-shoes eager to help the church in anyway. Eventually the tomb is uncovered which releasing the nuns and brings Hell to Earth.
The plot is…weird. I get the nuns are angry, but I’m not sure why they would take their anger out on the church? I get the assumption would be the church knows what this priest and others have been up to but has protected them, so then it would make sense for the nuns to attack the church. But then why attack the church kids? I mean the nuns got in this whole mess by defending kids in the first place.
Then there’s the kids, who I think are supposed to be high school kids but they’re clearly way too old to be such. Griffin uses the same cast of actors most of the time. None are really good, but each one offers up some charm from time to time. Unfortunately this is not one of those times. In this movie everyone just comes off as annoying and it’s hard to get past the fact that they looked older than the parts they are playing.
Griffin films always have a very particular type of humor. It’s sort of Troma-esque, which is to mean it’s all very low brow. I can get down with that from time to time, but the success rate of these types of jokes is usually quite low. In Flesh for the Inferno I can’t really recall any jokes or moments that landed and made me laugh. Every other film I’ve seen from Griffin has at least made me chuckle a bit, so not getting any of that here was a bummer.
The film is now out on DVD from Scorpio Film Releasing via MVD Entertainment. For a small indie title, the DVD is actually quite good as it comes with two commentary tracks and a trailer. I don’t think many indie releases give you commentaries, but the Scorpio Releasing titles seem to try and do that frequently which is nice.
I just couldn’t get into Flesh for the Inferno at all. There’s some decent gore, but not much else going for it. A lot of unfunny forced dialogue by less than stellar actors. Perhaps had I seen this before seeing some of Griffin’s other work I may have liked it more, but that wasn’t the case. He’s done better work in the past and I’d like to see him do better work going forward.
Flesh for the Inferno is out now on DVD from Scorpio Film Releasing.
