Forget Michael Myers, Jamie Lee's sister Kelly Curtis faces off against "The Faceless Ones" in the Dario Argento-produced 1990s occult thriller THE SECT on Blu-ray from Scorpion Releasing.

The rootless life of German schoolteacher Miriam (Kelly Curtis) seems to find meaning when she nearly runs over eccentric Moebius Kelly (Herbert Lom, PHANTOM OF THE OPERA) on her way home. Taking the man into her home to rest, she starts to experience strange nightmares and her house's plumbing starts acting up after the dying occultist introduces a scarab beetle into her body and then himself expires in her previously unexplored basement that houses a deep well with occult symbols. After the mysterious disappearance of a pupil's mother who was studying an fossilized arctic beetle used in pagan fertility rites and the inexplicable murder of one of her colleagues (Mariangela Giordano, BURIAL GROUND) by a random trucker, Miriam turns to Frank (Michael Adatte), nephew of neighboring Dr. Perna (Carla Cassola, HOUSE OF CLOCKS), to help her discover what is happening to her. Unbeknownst to them, a Satanic sect with branches around the world – including a particularly aggressive gang of bikers lead by the Mansonesque Damon (Tomas Arana, THE CHURCH) – have special plans to welcome Miriam into their "family."

The third film of Italian horror's last hope Michele Soavi, and his second for producer Dario Argento, THE SECT owes even more to ROSEMARY'S BABY and THE WICKER MAN than his bigger-budgeted previous film THE CHURCH in which he was trying to slough off the legacy of the DEMONS franchise with something more esoteric. That production was more compromised by the commercial sense of Argento, and THE SECT sees Soavi reworking some imagery, motifs, and themes within less gothic, more pagan iconography. While this approach may not seem novel to the viewers more familiar with the resurgence of British folk horror, it offered a refreshing visual experience and some unpredictable turns that hold interest until the climax with an attempted stalk-and-slash that seems as much obligatory nod to Curtis' sister's star-making genre role as the first act murder of one "Mary Crane" (by Giovanni Lombardo Radice's "Martin Romero") before the Miriam meets the cult and learns of their actions behind the scenes of her life. Performances are mostly bland and not at all helped by the dubbing, although Lom and Arana (voicing themselves) invest their roles respectively with gravity and menace. The photography of Raffaele Mertes (TRAUMA) is mobile and adventurous as it turns Miriam's little country cottage into a labyrinth as it rushes alongside the byzantine plumbing while also creating sensuous images through the pervasive use of shades of blue from pale moonlight to accents in the production and costume design. Pino Donaggio (DON'T LOOK NOW) provides an atmospheric score that relies more so on synthesizer than his more symphonic work elsewhere, evoking not so much Goblin or Claudio Simonetti as Tangerine Dream (enough to make one wonder if their album tracks were used to temp score the film). Donald O'Brien (DR. BUTCHER M.D./ZOMBI HOLOCAUST) cameos as a prosecutor investigating satanic cult activity.

Released direct to video and laserdisc in the United States as THE DEVIL'S DAUGHTER in 1991 in an uncut and okay fullscreen transfer (the Japanese import VHS looked sharper but was also fullscreen), THE SECT was not picked up for DVD when Anchor Bay issued Soavi's THE CHURCH, STAGEFRIGHT, and Dario Argento's OPERA, nor was it picked up when Blue Underground reissued the other titles five years later. The master used for Cecchi Gori's Italian DVD was anamorphic but rather poor-looking but it had an English Dolby Digital 2.0 track in addition to DTS and 5.1 Italian tracks, and the possibility of improvement was impeded for years due to Cecchi Gori's bankruptcy. The first Blu-ray release appeared in Japan with standard definition credits and a reportedly good HD transfer for the body of the film followed by almost simultaneous editions from the UK from Shameless and Koch in Germany. While the Shameless had English subtitles for the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Italian track (the English track was in mono), the image was slightly distorted and paler than the German transfer which had Italian, German, and English mono tracks but no English subtitles for the feature or the host of extras.

Scorpion's standard edition sold through Music Box Films features a strong, high bitrate 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.78:1 widescreen transfer that is a major improvement on what has been available stateside along with the Italian DVD. While Soavi's preference for natural lighting and less baroque environs in the film lead to a rather warm but bland-looking image before, the new transfer wrings vivid colors out of everything from the variegations of color reflected in the water of the opening credits, and the sunbaked sands and hills of "South California" to the blue overcast of Frankfurt and the cool blues and forest greens of the German countryside before the blues finally pop in the surgical garb of Dr. Perna and her nurses. The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track has some pops at the opening and reel changes as well as some low hiss apparent in the few moments of silence, but it gets the job done (although it is a pity the 5.1 remix could not have been included as an extra).