Beyond the Door
Directed by Ovidio G. Assoni
Set against the backdrop of San Francisco, Beyond the Door stars Juliet Mills as Jessica Barrett, a young mother who starts to develop strange behaviors whilst pregnant with her third child. Before you can say “split pea soup”, Jessica is displaying signs of full-blown demonic possession – complete with projectile vomiting and fully-rotating head! Could it be that she’s carrying the child of the Antichrist himself? Legendary Italian filmmaker Ovidio G. Assontis helms a gloriously and notoriously bonkers riff on The Exorcist.
A pregnant woman's devil child can move furniture, open doors and make its mother's head spin.
Cast: Juliet Mills, Richard Johnson, David Colin Jr., Elizabeth Turner
Member Reviews
A masterclass in poor pacing. There is some truly great horrific imagery and some cool narrative elements but you have to schlep through sooo many comically dragged out, boring and unnecessary scenes to get to them. The children’s dialogue is not only horrifically dubbed but absolutely non-sensical as they try to make it as “benignly demonic” as possible. I’m convinced someone could cut this into an extremely compelling short. Maybe 15 minutes of interesting footage/narrative.
I couldn't even finish it. The words didn't match the mouths of the children, almost like they were speaking a different language but the sound was dubbed to english. That in an of itself made it unbearable to watch.
Not Bad i have been wanting to watch this movie for awhile.It was creepy and had a good story.
Snooze fest
There aren't many cash-in's taking advantage of a blockbuster films success that justify their own existence beyond the potential financial reward of riding another's coattails, but "Beyond the Door" manages to distinguish itself from "The Exorcist". It has the advantage of that special kind of alchemy that horror from Italy can have with an almost dream-like creepiness, (even though it's a US co-production). Juliet Mills does a good job shifting between a frightened and bewildered mother and someone possessed by a satanic entity. Richard Johnson does a decent job of recreating an angry Richard Burton performance. When Mills really begins to manifest evil the lighting, sound design, and makeup work hard to disturb you and generally succeeds. When Dimitri (Johnson) reveals the demonic bargain that he made, and his eventual fate plays out it has enough originality to earn its existence. It makes the unfortunate mistake at the very end of trying to grab one last twist that falls flat. This movie had an infamous trailer that had eight-year-old me running from the living room in terror for about two weeks every time it aired on television, and one of my uncles got a lot of milage teasing the hell out of me by lurking outside rooms and letting lose a guttural, "WHO ARE YOU??" It doesn't achieve classic status, but it's worth a look. Half-skull ratings aren't possible here, but this would be two-and-a-half noggins from me.