{"id":4298,"date":"2024-10-05T16:12:56","date_gmt":"2024-10-05T16:12:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=4298"},"modified":"2024-10-12T22:19:26","modified_gmt":"2024-10-12T22:19:26","slug":"beyond-the-door","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/05\/beyond-the-door\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond the Door"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Beyond the Door <\/strong>(1974)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 FVI\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 109 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (scary scenes, frightening images, language, nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Ovidio G. Assonitis (as \u201cOliver Hellman\u201d)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Richard Barrett (as \u201cR. Barrett\u201d)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Franco Micalizzi\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Roberto Piazzoli\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: July 31, 1975 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Juliet Mills, Gabriele Lavia, Richard Johnson, Nino Segurini, Elizabeth Turner, Barbara Fiorini, David Colin Jr., Vittorio Fanfoni, Luigi Marturano.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $15M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: * \u00bd<\/p>\n

\u00a0The horror film Beyond the Door<\/strong> is an Exorcist rip-off from Italy, everybody knows that. It also borrows ideas from Rosemary\u2019s Baby but nobody talks about that, go figure. Either way, Warner Bros. sued the hell (pardon the expression) out of the makers of Beyond the Door<\/strong> in a case that was ultimately settled in \u201979 in favor of Warner. Now here\u2019s the funny thing. For all the similarities between the two movies, both of which deal with demonic possession, there is one BIG difference. The Exorcist is scary; Beyond the Door<\/strong> is too dopey to be scary. If anything, it\u2019s weird. I was more amused than scared.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Let me start by giving you the basic plot. Juliet Mills (Nanny and the Professor) plays Jessica, a young British housewife living in San Francisco with her music producer husband Robert (Lavia, Deep Red) and two children Gail (Fiorini) and Ken (Colin). The problems begin with her latest pregnancy. Something isn\u2019t quite right. For one thing, it\u2019s progressing at an alarmingly accelerated rate. It\u2019s been only weeks when her doctor (Segurini, The Last Snows of Spring) informs her she\u2019s already at three months. For another, she\u2019s exhibiting bizarre symptoms like vomiting (a lot!), violent mood swings, changing voice and sleeping above the covers, about four feet above the covers. Did I mention the spinning head and other paranormal activity? Then there\u2019s the creepy guy, Dimitri (Johnson, The Haunting), hanging around insisting that the child must be born. It can only be one thing, demonic possession. Yep, Jessica is carrying the Antichrist in her womb. Don\u2019t you hate it when that happens?<\/p>\n

\u00a0Before I go on about the movie, let\u2019s talk about the kids for a minute. They are very, VERY strange. The girl who looks to be about nine always has at least 15 paperback copies of Love Story on or near her person. She calls her parents by their first names. She talks like a stoner saying things like, \u201cYou gotta stop that or it\u2019s gonna blow my mind! Man, if you don\u2019t quit crying, you\u2019re gonna have a real bad trip.\u201d The little boy, he\u2019s four, drinks pea soup through a straw straight from the can. He does it non-stop. I guess it\u2019s better than spitting it up like Linda Blair in…. what\u2019s that movie, I can\u2019t think of it at the moment. Both kids swear openly in front of their parents. And if that isn\u2019t weird enough for you, their voices are dubbed in a way that brings to mind Bob, the kid from The House by the Cemetery. They\u2019re the creepiest thing in Beyond the Door<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0My first experience with Beyond the Door<\/strong> was when I bought a cheap VHS copy at K-Mart. It was one of those $4.99 deals recorded on EP. It was the shorter cut (97 minutes) that played in American theaters in \u201975. It was bashed by critics but did surprisingly good business earning about $15 million at the box office. I HATED that version. I thought it was boring and senseless. I never watched it again. Years later, I learned that the longer international version (called The Devil Within Her in the opening titles) was available on Code Red DVD. Naturally, I bought it on Amazon. It\u2019s the better version by far, but it\u2019s still ineffective as a horror movie.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I almost hate to say it but Beyond the Door<\/strong> is kind of a joke. It has to be. It has a convoluted plot that tries to compensate with scenes that are supposed to be scary. Take the scene in the kids\u2019 bedroom when everything suddenly goes haywire. Toys fly off the shelves, the whole room shakes and the door won\u2019t open. The kids cower in the corner while their mother sleeps peacefully in the next room. It\u2019s about as frightening as everything else that happens in the movie. Other things happen that are just plain weird. Robert decides to take a walk while his wife is with the doctor. As he does, a group of street musicians get up and walk next to him playing their instruments right in his face. It\u2019s the score for the movie. It goes on for a minute or two. It\u2019s one of many WTH moments in Beyond the Door<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Juliet Mills adds the only note of class, but one is left to wonder what she\u2019s doing here in the first place. She\u2019s better than the material deserves. The other performances are pretty much what you\u2019d expect. The actors recite dumb dialogue and react to the supposedly scary things happening around them. That\u2019s it. It\u2019s a no-brainer of a gig. Really, there\u2019s nothing to it. Not only is Beyond the Door<\/strong> not scary, there\u2019s no suspense either. The special effects are simply terrible. Director Ovidio G. Assonitis (Tentacles) piles the silliness so high, you can\u2019t take any of it seriously.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In the end, I find Beyond the Door<\/strong> more of a cinematic oddity than anything else. I don\u2019t hate it but I can\u2019t say I like it either. If pressed, I\u2019d say that I appreciate its boldness in how openly it rips off The Exorcist. It\u2019s one of those bad movies that entertain for all the wrong reasons. It made money, but how many viewers actually liked it? That\u2019s the real question.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beyond the Door (1974)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 FVI\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 109 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (scary scenes, frightening images, language, nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Ovidio G. Assonitis (as \u201cOliver Hellman\u201d)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Richard Barrett (as \u201cR. Barrett\u201d)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Franco Micalizzi\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Roberto Piazzoli\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: July 31, 1975 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Juliet Mills, Gabriele Lavia, Richard Johnson, Nino Segurini, Elizabeth Turner, Barbara Fiorini, David […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4516,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horror","category-weird-ones"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Beyond-the-Door-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4298"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4517,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4298\/revisions\/4517"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}