BEYOND THE DOOR (1974) / CERT: 18 / DIRECTORS: OVIDIO G. ASSONITIS, ROBERT BARRETT / SCREENPLAY: OVIDIO G. ASSONITIS, ANTONIO TROISO, ROBERT BARRETT / STARRING: JULIET MILLS, GABRIELE LAVIA, RICHARD JOHNSON / RELEASE DATE: APRIL 6TH
The Italian Exorcist rip-off subgenre was a brief but bilious period when exploitation producers piled in on demonic possession scripts like gannets on dead fish. Never mind that not one of these tailgaters came close to William Friedkin’s brilliant original, Linda Blair’s gurgling possession routine had created pop culture’s most bizarre copycat recipe: book yourself a soundstage in Madrid, add in a bed, some dry ice, a woman in a nighty and few crucifixes and off you go, Lucio!
Most of these movies were diabolically bad, of course, but this lesser-known effort from Ovidio G. Assonitis (Tentacles, Piranha II) is worth your attention for being at least half of stylishly strange horror that weaves San Francisco evocatively into its fabric, Hitchcock-style. And just for once, the fact it was made half in an Italian studio and half on location the US doesn’t distract. And if you like shameless rip-offs, the other half is a right laugh, too.
English rose Juliet Mills (Hayley’s sister) stars as Jessica, pregnant with her third child and starting to wonder if it isn’t old Satan that’s got her up the duff this time. Her black moods are not helped by not one, but two strange blokes: her spaced-out husband (Italian Gabriele Lavia, rocking the 1970s Donald Sutherland look and afflicted by some atrocious Italian/English post-synching) and the UK’s very own man-about exploitation Richard Johnson as the mysterious Dimitri, who keeps popping up to proclaim “The child must be born!”. This all feels more The Omen than The Exorcist, but once Jessica is ensconced in her boudoir, swearing her head off and vomiting up the green stuff, she’s right on the money.
It’s a shame, really, that the second half of the film is such a blatant Exorcist clone (Warner Bros actually sued), because Assonitis and his cinematographer Roberto D’Ettorre Piazzoli seem more interested in developing the genuinely strange POV of Jessica’s two odd kids, such as a terrifying psychic attack on their bedroom with a full-on lightshow through the floorboards and walls that wouldn’t have shamed Poltergeist.
This 2-disc set from Arrow presents the original cut and a longer ‘export’ version titled The Devil Within Her, which adds more green bile and creative blasphemy. The short contemporary interviews with Mills and Lavia are fun (“she was cute, but a little old to be playing my wife…”) but the real jewel here is a mammoth dissection of the Italian ‘possession’ movie era, featuring interviews with most of its above-grass progenitors.
