Beyond The Door/Review 2

From The Grindhouse Cinema Database

< Beyond The Door

POP QUIZ: How many Italian writers does it take to write an EXORCIST ripoff so blatant that it had a lawsuit filed against it by Warner Brothers for copyright infringement?

ANSWER: According its IMDB credits, its seven...Seven!

After ABBY (which was also sued by Warner Brothers), BEYOND THE DOOR was possibly the most-well known of the clones. It also made 15 million dollars at the box office; an impressive amount for an independent feature at the time.

The film gets off to an amusing start with Beezlebub himself offering up a narrative introduction while we explore what appears to be the old set from The Police's KING OF PAIN video.

Shortly thereafter, we are introduced to the Barretts, a 70's nuclear family living in San Francisco. Jessica (Juliet Mills) is mother to annoying little shits, tweener Gail (Barbara Fiorini) and younger Ken (David Colin Jr.), who "cutely" curse like a couple of sailors with Tourette's Syndrome.

Jessica soon learns there's going to be a new edition to the family. She, however, is fully unaware that she is actually experiencing the demonic version of Immaculate Conception. (Demaculate Conception?) The person responsible for this is her ex-beau Dmitri (ZOMBIE's Richard Johnson) who has made a pact with Satan to extend his lease on life in exchange for the child upon being born. (Its actually surprising that Dmitri would want to carry on living seeing as he is continuously getting his balls busted by the Devil's snide, mocking disembodied voice). The next thing you know Jessica is eating banana peels off the street and succumbing to the all-too- familiar symptoms of demonic possession.

Two sequels follows. The first is actually Mario Bava's SHOCK, the only connection being creepy child actor David Colin Jr. The second is an in- name-only sequel involving a group of students traveling through Europe who are being stalked by a Satanist college professor.

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