An Italian production that
borrows liberally from The Exorcist
(1973) while also anticipating some tropes that later appeared in The Omen (1976), narratively clumsy but visually
sleek thriller Beyond the Door features the wholesome British actress Juliet Mills as an
everywoman who becomes possessed by a demon while pregnant. In shameless
sequences that provoked Exorcist studio Warner Bros. to sue over copyright infringement,
the makers of Beyond the Door depict Mills strapped to a bed with gruesome makeup, hissing vulgarities in a guttural
voice, levitating, and spewing
green vomit. For a good 20 minutes or so, one gets the impression that the
filmmakers simply ran a print of The
Exorcist and then tried to re-create shots as faithfully as possible. What
the filmmakers failed to emulate, of course, is the soul of The Exorcist—although Beyond the Door contains a couple of
decent creep-out scenes and unquestionably delivers many appalling images, it’s
utterly vacuous on the levels of characterization, motivation, and theme.
Set
and shot in San Francisco, the movie concerns Jessica (Mills), who lives with
her husband, Robert (Gabriele Lavia), and their two children. The couple’s teen
daughter, Gail (Barbara Fiorini), is an oddball who carries multiple
copies of the novel Love Story
wherever she goes, and the couple’s preteen son, Ken (David Colin Jr.), enjoys
saying four-letter words. Whatever. Upon discovering she’s pregnant, Jessica
begins exhibiting strange behavior—she destroys an aquarium, eats a banana peel
she finds on the street, and snaps at her kids. Eventually, a physician tells
her the pregnancy is advancing at an inexplicably rapid pace, so Jessica
becomes convinced that her impending bundle of joy is in fact a bundle of evil.
Enter the mysterious Dimitri (Richard Johnson), with whom Jessica has some sort
of past history. He’s an exorcist in all but name, so the movie naturally
concludes with a sequence during which Dimitri tries to expel the unclean
spirit. Thanks to iffy dubbing of Americanized voices over the lip movements of
Italian supporting actors, Beyond the
Door feels cheaper than it should, since the production values are strong.
But then again, seeing as how the material is so shamelessly derivative, who
cares?
Despite outward appearances to the contrary, the subsequent film
titled Beyond the Door II is not, in
fact, a sequel to the Juliet Mills-starring shocker. Rather, the subsequent
film is a wholly separate Mario Bava-directed horror show that was originally
titled Shock. Unscrupulous
distributors slapped the title Beyond the
Door II onto Bava’s flick for its American release in order to lure gullible
moviegoers. In any event, Shock
a.k.a. Beyond the Door II features an
all-Italian cast, dubbed questionably into English. The story follows Dora
(Daria Nicolodi), a haunted young woman who moves into a new house with her
young son, Marco (played by Beyond the
Door kid David Colin Jr.), and her second husband, Bruno (John Steiner). It
seems Dora’s first husband died violently at the conclusion of an abusive
marriage. Accordingly, Dora becomes delusional and terrified once clues suggest
that her first husband has returned from beyond the grave to haunt her.
Although Beyond the Door II a.k.a. Shock lacks the imaginative visual style
of prior Bava films, the director knows his way around a suspense sequence, so
the picture does an okay job of conveying Dora’s paranoia. There’s
also a fun twist at the end, somewhat in the vein of Edgar Allan Poe. That said, the movie is rushed and superficial. Shock a.k.a Beyond the Door
II even contains at least one unintentionally hilarious dialogue exchange. After
Bruno says to Dora, “You’re not relaxed,” she replies, “I’m trying really hard
to, but after hearing Marco say, ‘Mama, I must kill you,’ that really upset
me.” Continuing the abuse of the title from the Juliet Mills picture, the 1988
Italian movie Beyond the Door III has
nothing to do with either of the previous Beyond
the Door pictures.
Beyond the Door: FUNKY
Beyond the Door II: FUNKY
