Exorcist and Omen-inspired religious fare weren’t uncommon in the horror genre in the 70s and 80s. Hell, they still aren’t. But not many of them were derived of scripts written before either film ever saw the light of day. Nor do they carry the sexual deviance and shower immediately after watching feeling of a Clive Barker’s Hellraiser. Today’s film just might. Perhaps that’s why it’s so rarely spoken of. Or why it is, to this very day, difficult to acquire or even view online. This is the story of what happened to The Unholy. (The 1988 version. Not to be confused with the 2021 Jeffrey Dean Morgan film which has no affiliation.)

The story of The Unholy begins with writer Philip Yordan. Yordan, born in 1914, had been writing for so long, he once housed blacklisted writers in his basement during the McCarthy era. The script sat...