B-Movie Mayhem

The Church of St. Bernard de Clairvaux in North Miami Beach has banned most filming in the 12th century monastery and tightened its script approval restrictions after a Las Vegas-based director filmed a straight-to-DVD B-Movie entitled Dark Night of the Soul on the property. Featuring scenes featuring "opium-smoking zombies and bizarre sex scenes," the movie shares the story of four college students who come across a "freak skeleton philosopher and his zombie henchmen." The filmmakers rented the property for $1,000 to film for one night in 1998.

The monastery, which was constructed in 1141 in Sacramenia in the province of Segovia, Spain, was seized from the Cistercian Monks, sold, and converted into a grain storage facility and stable in the mid-1830s. William Randolph Hearst bought the building in 1925 and shipped it stone-by-stone to the United States. The stones sat in a New York warehouse until 1952 because Hearst couldn't afford to rebuild the monastery. After Hearst died, two entrepreneurs bought the stones and reconstructed the monastery as a tourist attraction.