Color, 1996, 96 mins. 27 secs.
Directed by Pupi Avati
Starring Carlo Cecchi, Stefano Dionisi, Arnaldo Ninchi, Andrea Scorzoni, Consuelo Ferrara, Vittorio Duse, Mario Erpichini
Vinegar Syndrome (UHD & Blu-ray) (US R0/RA 4K/HD), Filmaruo (DVD) (Italy R2 PAL) / WS (1.85:1) (16:9)

After thirteen years of delivering a slew of prestige dramas, clever thrillers, and comedies, filmmaker Pupi Avati (The House with Laughing Windows, Zeder) made a return to the horror genre in 1996 with one of his most visually stunning features, L'arcano incantatore -- initially shown at specialty screenings in the U.S. as The Arcane Enchanter, sometimes referred to as The Mysterious Enchanter, and now more or less switched in English to Arcance Sorcerer. By any name it's an eerie and lush occult gem that seemed wildly out of step at the time with the rapidly declining state of mostly TV-based horror coming out of Italy; in fact, this had no luck nabbing any English-language official distribution and was extremely difficult to see in watchable quality for decades.

In the mid-18th century, disgraced Bologna seminary student Giacomo (Sleepless' Dionisi) relates his sorry tale to a priest of how he was lured by "the Evil One" into the realm of the dead. Desperate to find a safe haven after compelling a young woman to get an abortion, he's led to a house where one can reportedly make bargains with the devil, in this case with a hidden woman who offers him the chance to spirit away to tend to a parish monsignor whose esoteric work have led to him living in a state of degraded health in the countryside. Vowing secrecy if he works as a secretary, Giacomo binds himself to the deal with the mystery woman taking from him the object he holds dearest, the bloodstained thorn and silk cord his mother used for penance during prayer. After being offered a protective flower on the coach ride, he arrives at the dusty, eerie home and library of the monsignor (Cecchi), referred to as the "arcane sorcerer," and learns that the previous secretary, Nerio, died mysteriously after engaging in dark rituals possibly connected to the disappearance of two local girls. As rumors circulate that Nerio may be trying to claw his way back from the land of the dead, Giacomo is initiated into escalating magic rituals and comes to dread connections to a supposedly destroyed powerful book called The Pseudomonarchy of Demons.

Beautifully shot by frequent Avati collaborator Cesare Bastelli and featuring a rich score by Pino Donaggio (which has still never had an official soundtrack release for some reason), Arcane Sorcerer is a rare gem from the tail end of Italy's theatrical horror boom and a lovely coda of sorts along with Dellamorte Dellamore. This would be Avati and his producer brother Antonio's last pure horror film until 2019's effective and underseen Il signor Diavolo, and you can definitely tell who was behind the camera here thanks to the slow burn creepiness, the foreboding daylight landscapes, and the fatalistic twist ending (or endings in this case). A marvelous presence in films like The Red Violin and Stealing Beauty, Cecchi steals the show here with a powerhouse performance that gains in intensity as the film progresses. A hot name at the time thanks to the international success of Farinelli, Dionisi is fine here as our hapless protagonist while the supporting cast members are convincing as locals who all seem to have something to hide thanks to frequent secret messages and buried secrets involving the dead. Plus if you're a fan of the BBC Ghost Story for Christmas series, this will be right up your alley.

Apart from an Italian-only DVD, finding this film outside of blurry gray market copies from a screener VHS was an impossible task with this one frequently popping up on Euro-cult holy grail wish lists. Eventually the seemingly impossible came to pass in 2026 with a UHD and Blu-ray set from Vinegar Syndrome, featuring a beautiful new 4K scan from the negative with HDR-compatible Dolby Vision on the UHD making the most of those rich blacks, crazy detail in the library production design, and many shades of gold and brown. DTS-HD MA 2.0 and 5.1 Italian tracks are offered, both fairly restrained but effective when they need to be (especially near the end), with optional English subtitles. A commentary track features this writer with Eugenio Ercolani and Troy Howarth so that obviously can't be assessed here.

A whopping ten new video interviews, all very substantial, are here with pretty much every surviving major contributor to the film starting with "Pupi's Pride and Joy" (12m25s) in which the director talks about a real semi-supernatural encounter near the start of shooting, the admiration Guillermo Del Toro holds for this film, the history of esoteric practices in Italian culture, and the rationale behind casting the two leads. In "The Sorcerer Awakened" (9m44s), Antonio Avati covers the unique aspect of Pupi writing this alone, the influence of horror literature, the roping in of Aurelio De Laurentiis as distributor, the casting process, Del Toro's fandom again, and the high esteem in which he still holds this project. In "Two Restless Souls" (12m43s), Dionisi looks back at his early acting days and desire to work with Avati again after a TV series, his memories of the late Cecchi, his take on the spiritual aspects of the story, and his aversion to appearing in violent horror films that kept him from working with Dario Argento until a film where he didn't have to die. In "Sinful Yet Ethereal" (14m48s), actress Eliana Miglio explains how she got into acting (including a memorable bit inside the tent in Demons), the lessons she learned from Jon Jost early on, the turbulent state of her life when she made this film, and her impressions of working with the Avatis on this and subsequent features. Then Bastelli appears in "Under Pupi’s Spell" (22m36s) to explain the possible impact on the 1968 student upheaval on Avati's work, the numerous collaborators who have stuck around through many of their films together, the financing and casting process, the shooting in Umbria, and two key actors who had great difficulty remembering their lines. Then in "The Tailor of Suspense" (21m17s), Donaggio chats about the "Emililan countryside" atmosphere requested from his music score, the two films he made with Avati (also including the unsuccessful Festival), the likely reason a soundtrack was never issued, and his general musical background and experiences doing horror movies for directors like Brian De Palma and Argento. In "Pupi’s Pen Friend" (16m27s), novelist Alda Teodorani talks about her years-long correspondence with Avati, the bit part she had in this film (ultimately cut out almost entirely), and her thoughts on the magic of his filmography. In "Hush... Hush, Sweet Pupi" (21m19s), Mark Thompson Ashworth talks about his own experiences with Avati starting in 1996, his admiration for this film, the stylistic aspects to horror here compared to others like Fulci, and his memories of being on the sets of Avati's films including a "disturbing" shirt incident. Film music historian Pierpaolo De Sanctis appears in "A Sorcerer Named Pino" (22m11s) for an in-depth analysis of Donaggio's musical career starting as a child musician from a like-minded family through his career writing hit songs and his pivotal shift to writing film scores with Don't Look Now and Carrie. Finally in "Of Pupi and Politics" (41m47s), Ercolani goes in front of the camera to analyze the political shifts in the Italy in the '90s including Silvio Berlusconi, the ongoing effects of blockbuster filmmaking, the recent church and state scandals fresh in the public's mind, and Avati's place within the industry maintaining his local identity through ups and downs of government funding, public tastes, and directors trying to create horror cinema for evolving audiences and commercial opportunities. Also included is a 40-page book featuring essays by Zach Fleming ("Institutional Rot and the Italian Countryside"), Z.W. Lewis ("The Magic Christian"), and Stephen Thrower ("A Sorcerer Full of Secrets") all ably tackling the "Po Valley Gothic" strain of Avati's films, the political and religious ramifications in the story, the role of magical practices in Christianity and their aggressive persecution, and several readings of plot elements that will have you going back for a second viewing.

Reviewed on November 7, 2026