When I think of Bruno Mattei, great horror films don't usually spring to mind; and The Other Hell does nothing to change that opinion of him. Much like his Video Nasty zombie flick, Hell of the Living Dead, The Other Hell is highly derivative of other, and better, genre films and came along some time after it's genre hit it's 'golden period'. Nunsploitation is most famous for sexually repressed nuns and tons of nudity, but this one adheres more closely to the Anita Ekberg vehicle 'The Killer Nun', as it features a Giallo style plot that puts most of its focus on murder and more or less completely ignores sex and nudity. This definitely does harm the film, and it's made no better by the fact that the mystery presented is hardly fascinating. The film follows a couple of murders in a convent. The Mother Superior believes that the nuns have become possessed by the devil, and a priest is dispatched to try and get to the bottom of the mystery (they'd have been better off with a detective...). Are the nuns really under the power of Satan, or is that what the Mother Superior wants everyone to believe?
Not only is Bruno Mattei one of the less talented Italian filmmakers, he also has a rather annoying penchant for ripping off the better ones. The film features a score from Goblin, which the director has ripped off from Joe D'Amato's masterpiece 'Beyond the Darkness' (he also ripped off Goblin scores for Hell of the Living Dead), and he took D'Amato's lead actress from Beyond the Darkness, Franca Stoppi. Some of the sequences in the film are very well shot, however, and although it's obvious that Mattei was taking influence from masters such as Dario Argento and Mario Bava, it's only fair to give credit where credit is due. The cinematography is crisp and clear, although the locations often leave a lot to be desired as unlike other films in the nunsploitation tradition; the convent is pretty bare. The plot gets lost sometimes, and it has to be said that a fair proportion of this movie is rather boring; but it just about comes together at the end, and while the reasons for the murders are obvious all the way through; the ending itself isn't bad. Overall, I would recommend this to die-hard nunsploitation fans, but everyone else can feel free to skip it.
