There doesn't seem to be much written about Soavi's inspirations and visual references in LA CHIESA other Umberto Eco and M.R. James' story "The Treasure of Abbot Thomas."

The slimy tear from the nun's portrait running down the mirror in front of Antonella Vitale's face looks like a similar shot in DEMONS (the resulting rack focus seems more old fashioned than cheap). Imdb's trivia page mentions that the winged demon with the snake curling around its feet embracing the naked woman comes from a Boris Vallejo painting and the rather immobile fish monster from a seventeenth century woodcut.

What about the demons on the frescoes vanishing from the walls? Or the hands covering victims with dark fabric (Radice's death, Cupisti in the reverse angle of her POV of the demon)? How about all of the intricate mechanisms that close the doors of the church and eventually destroy it? And how about the "stone with seven eyes"?

Can anyone explain the connection between Father Gus' hallucination of shooting an arrow at a knight racing towards him on horseback and the architect's mouth? Or the phantom galloping (why would the knights be haunting the church)?

By the way, does Tomas Arana also play the winged demon embracing the biker chick in her boyfriend's hallucination (its a weird image because of the way it conflates the demonic imagery of the church frescoes with the crash helmet bearing the name of the guy he's jealous of his girlfriend flirting with).