Though he may not be the most prolific genre director around, L.A. native Mike Mendez has built up a highly enjoyable body of genre work since he directed his first film at the age of 23. Known for Big Ass Spider!, Don't Kill It, the After Dark staple The Gravedancers, and his contributions to the anthologies Tales of Halloween and Satanic Hispanics, he got the Synapse treatment in 2024 with deluxe editions of his first two films including the first uncut stateside release of festival favorite, The Convent. This wild, trashy, and often uproarious splatterfest was picked up by A-Pix for American distribution but was left homeless when that company folded at the end of 2000, with Lionsgate picking it up for the most marginal release imaginable.

After an outrageous prologue set to Lesley Gore’s "You Don’t Own Me" which will remain undescribed here to avoid spoiling any surprises, The Convent begins in fairly standard fashion as a gang of sorority and fraternity members decides to spend the evening painting their letters on an old convent supposedly haunted for the past forty years by the ghosts of massacred nuns. The sorority’s "good" member, Clarissa (Canton), brings along her former best friend, Goth punker Mo (Perry), along for the ride. After stopping for a moment at the house of the town recluse, Christine (Barbeau), who supposedly spent time in an asylum following the convent tragedy, the college students arrive at the convent and pass the time by making out, smoking dope, and chasing after a dog named Boozer. Unfortunately their playtime is interrupted by the arrival of two campus cops (including rapper Coolio in a glorified cameo), leaving Mo alone to fight against an incompetent quartet of wannabe Satanists. When the others return to fetch Mo at the convent, all hell begins to break loose as the demonic nuns invade the bodies of their victims, painting the walls with blood and preparing for the ultimate sacrifice. Clarissa flees to seek help from Christine, who reveals the truth behind the convent in an extended flashback (easily the film’s most hysterical sequence) and agrees to return for another round of devil-bashing.

Though it certainly has its share of goofy moments, The Convent speeds on like a rollercoaster during its compact running time with plenty of profane quips from Ms. Barbeau, spirited performances from everyone else, and bucket-loads of multi-colored splatter. From the gaudy electronic score to the goofy shock ending, this would fit perfectly with any Evil Dead festival, provided that expectations are kept reasonable.

The first DVD from Metrodome in the U.K. looked fine at the time, with the open matte transfer exposing huge amounts of open space at the top and bottom of the frame. The Trimark edition in the U.S. mattes it off at 1.85:1 (non-anamorphic) for more balanced compositions. Colors are vivid throughout and often tread into day-glo territory, while the thunderous soundtrack makes excellent use of split channel effects, particularly in the U.S. 5.1 version. The Metrodome disc also includes a spoiler-filled UK trailer (promoting it as "Nuns, Guns, and Gasoline"), matted off at 1.85:1 and looking much worse than the film itself, as well as a few cast bios, while the Trimark disc contains a smattering of deleted scenes, two audio commentary tracks, and cast and crew interviews. Initial theatrical screenings of the film (at festivals and midnight appearances) contained a longer and gorier cut of the film, but that wasn't represented on either DVD.

The 4K UHD and Blu-ray combo from Synapse is a major upgrade across the board, sporting a gorgeous remaster of the complete version supervised by Mendez with the UHD nearly searing your retinas when the crazy colors start bursting out. Mastered in HDR10-compatible Dolby Vision, it's a real treat that belies the very low budget. The newly mastered DTS-HD 5.1 English mix (with optional SDH subtitles) is killer as well with lots of aggressive channel separation that makes the last half hour in particular a wild experience. Two commentaries are also included, the first primarily with Mendez sprinkled with separate soundbites from the cast and crew, and the second with in-character Saul (David Gunn) and Dickie-Boy (Kelly Mantle), both of which are obviously fun in very different ways. Anything you wanted to know about the film gets addressed here one way or another! "Houses of the Unholy" (14m33s) is a video tour of film locations from Mendez's first two films with the director himself as your guide, followed by a vintage making-of featurette (8m33s), the original electronic press kit (11m33s), a very politically incorrect deleted scene (31s), gore outtakes (5m54s) that are both very silly and enough to make the MPAA circle '00 have a coronary, a still gallery (6m26s), and two promotional trailers. The package also comes with a liner notes booklet featuring "It’s Always Something with a Virgin" by Corey Danna.

Available separately on Blu-ray only is Mendez's debut feature, Killers, weirdly timed at the height of the miniseries Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. Here we follow the twisty story of two brothers, Odessa (Larsen) and Kyle James (Gunn), who manage to escape from San Quentin where they're going to be executed for murdering their parents in their sleep. They end up on the right at night during a storm with the cops in hot pursuit, so they decide to invade the home of a seemingly normal suburban family... at which point it's best to not go further without spoiling things.

The aggressive style and arch banter of the dialogue led to this frequently being promoted to the Tarantino crowd when it came out in the wake of Pulp Fiction and Natural Born Killers, and while that isn't entirely inaccurate, it's a lot closer another Tarantino-penned film from that same year, From Dusk Till Dawn. The makeup effects and plot twists are rough around the edges but entertaining, and while this is obviously a first feature, there's enough madness here and some stabs at social commentary about serial killer worship to make it both a fun time capsule and a stylish little indie worth seeing for its similarities to some later films.

Very seldom seen in the U.S. but given a handful of releases in Europe and eventually issued for streaming stateside, Killers is presented on Blu-ray in its uncensored director's cut with some material in the climax reportedly censored from prior editions. The transfer here looks excellent for a super cheap mid-'90s film, complete with credit fonts that will elicit a smile from anyone who remembers the pre-DVD days. The LPCM English 2.0 stereo track is surprisingly well mixed and active (lots of ambient storm and music effects), with optional English SDH subtitles. This time Mendez does commentary duties with Michael Gingold, and it's a solid track right from the outset covering how the striking opening sequence set to Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da Vida" (shades of Manhunter) was originally edited to and intended to feature The Doors' "The End." Also included are an alternate ending (3m48s) and two promotional trailers, plus an insert booklet with a new essay by Heather Drain.

Reviewed on October 6, 2024