On VHS:
Name of the Rose. 1986. Italian\German\French.A medieval Franciscan monk with the Holmesian name William of Baskerville (Connery) journeys to a monastery in northern Italy to attend an ecclesiastical conference there. Because of his reputation as a great thinker, he is inveigled into solving the mystery of the deaths of several monks who have been murdered at the abbey. Not far into his investigation, he discovers that the murders are all related to a mysterious book stolen from the labyrinthine library of the sinister abbey.
If the Necronomicon had ever existed, it would have lurked within the walls of a library like the one in this film. But the rare book for which these monks are being murdered is not Abdul Alhazred's Kitab Al Azif, but rather Aristotle's Second Book of Poetics. Yet the book is not a mere McGuffin, but a lethal weapon by which the genius loci of the abbey slays those who seek it.
Annaud's vision of Umberto Eco's novel is of a medieval monastery destroyed by the misuse and misinterpretation of a book even more dangerous and terrifying than the Necronomicon - the Holy Bible.
On VHS:
1998 © John Wisdom Gonce III. All rights reserved.