Supelice Dreadfully Boring

Ogosmith Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Sienna-Rose Mclaughlin The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Cody One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

kanadianboy-ali10 I watched this growing up in the late 80's, my uncle was a huge horror buff and I watched this one shortly after Exorcist when I was around 12 or 13, its really a mash-up of all the classics (Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby and some Omen) all my favorites, YES its a bit cheesy the dubbed English is hilarious at times especially the kids and their potty mouths. I loved the premise of the film, it had some haunting scores and just something mysterious about it, very nostalgic old school Italian horror, one of my personal faves... if you are willing to sacrifice a bit on the cheesy dialogues and story line, fans of Italian horror and films like Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby will enjoy this one, give it a shot...

headnotfound This movie came out in 1974, a year after The Exorcist exploded in theatres. The resounding effects of The Exorcist's success are very apparent in this movie. I was shocked to see the blatant similarities! I thought ripping off movies was a 90s disease, but no...The plot is very simple - Jessica Barrett (Juliet Mills) is a San Francisco housewife to a record dealer husband Robert (Gabriele Lavia). They have two foul-mouthed children who call their parents by their first names. The daughter is especially interesting to watch, especially if you get a bad-dubbed copy like I did, and you hear her throw out curse words like a sailor.Beautiful Jessica finds out she has a bun in the oven, despite not missing a day of her birth control pills. The happy couple's excitement for the new baby are short-lived, as Jessica begins vomiting blood and her health quickly declines *(much like Mrs. Woodhouses in Rosemary's Baby). Jessica begins to turn into someone else, hardly recognizable by her loved ones. She starts murdering fish for pleasure, slaps her potty-mouthed daughter, and gives a long and awkward kiss to her young son (I believe this was meant to be a foreshadowing for the 'surprise' ending, but instead the kiss came off as really creepy and icky). Soon, she is in full possessed-Reagan make-up, and her head starts turning around.One of Jessica's past lover Dimitiri (played by a coolly evil-looking Richard Johnson, no relation to the blues guitar player who sold his soul) shows up out of nowhere. We first hear of him in the very beginning of the movie, where it is made clear that he has died in a car accident, and is bargaining with the devil for a couple of more years of life. The devil says that he might give him a couple of years, but will only consider it if he does one thing - "rip the baby out of that woman." So later on, Dimitri shows up and proclaims to be the only one that can help Jessica from her dilemma. He insists that 'she must have that baby!' even in the beginning of the movie, the devil tells him to rip it out of her (which I guess means 'to deliver it'). Dimitri finds out that the devil was just using him with no intention of letting him live, so he starts pounding away at Jessica's stomach in an effort kill the unborn demon. And when Jessica finally does have the baby, it turns out to have no mouth. Low and behold, her young son is now possessed. What was the point of the devil impregnating Jessica if it was just going to die? Besides the fact that this movie is a definite Exorcist clone (with some Rosemary's Baby overtones), and besides the fact that Juliet Mills looks like an aged Kirsten Dunst at times, I dug this movie.

MARIO GAUCI THE EXORCIST (1973) lent a sensationalistic aspect to the theme of diabolism, which was enough to guarantee box-office receipts; consequently, it proved the most imitated among the three most notable Hollywood excursions into the subgenre from that era (the others being, of course, ROSEMARY'S BABY [1968] and THE OMEN [1976]). Being the most notorious – and commercially lucrative – rip-off of the film (though it included elements from the first for good measure), obviously I have been interested in checking this one out for a long time. Given the extremely divided critical and audience reaction to the picture, I was not sure what to expect…though I guess I should have, having recently re-acquainted myself with the same director's TENTACLES (1978) – in its own right, a dire JAWS (1975) cash-in (but, then, his reworking of THE OMEN i.e. THE VISITOR [1979] resulted in a much more worthwhile venture: see my review elsewhere)! To be fair, the first 45 minutes or so of BEYOND THE DOOR (or, as the on-screen title denoting the longer U.K. version would have it, THE DEVIL WITHIN HER) are not that bad; even so, the slow build-up to the possession is nowhere near as effective as in Friedkin's picture. Where in the latter we had character development and a palpable sense of dread, here we get ceaseless (and very tedious) chatter and a plethora of absurd situations: campy devilish intro (by which the film immediately shoots itself in the foot!), foul-mouthed kids (as if one expected them to be similarly afflicted – and the finale gives us just that!) and idiotic gestures to demonstrate the personality change Mills is undergoing (crossing her eyes, destroying hubby's cherished aquarium and eating a banana peel picked up off the pavement)! Thankfully, some care seems to have been applied to the film's look (from the San Francisco exteriors to the predominance of the color red) – so much so that the cinematographer was eventually given co-director status! – and sound design (though it actually skimps on devising a truly scary demon voice, only really effective when she suddenly slips into it at the doctor's office!) – and Franco Micalizzi's surprisingly upbeat score easily proves to be its mainstay. Juliet Mills' performance has garnered a good deal of praise, but I do not feel she was up to the demands of the role – her possessed antics recall more a dotty old crone (particularly when given to raspy laughter) than a malevolent spirit (the head-spinning is creepy but obviously an effect and the repellent vomiting a mere genre contrivance)!; besides, it seems unlikely that the Devil would allow its 'vessel' to be scientifically scrutinized, not to mention get back into a strait-jacket after having tricked her husband into getting her out of it! Richard Johnson's authoritative presence lends credence to the often banal dialogue (especially his repeated cry that "The Child Must Be Born!") but is defeated by a vaguely defined role. In fact, it is in his relationship with Mills that the film falls apart: to be sure, the latter stages become so hopelessly muddled that I gave up trying to follow the plot (this confusion is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that the question "Who Are You?", the literal English translation of the original Italian title, is directed by the Devil at the meek, bewildered doctor rather than the other way around – WTF?!). Incidentally, without the presence of an exorcist (apparently nobody thought of calling one in!), the struggle between good and evil so central to THE EXORCIST is lost; the only reference to religion we ever get is in the prologue where the nude sacrifice victim's face unaccountably turns to that of Christ – an unexpected but lame attempt to equate the crucifix masturbation scene from the earlier film! We do, however, get an inkling that the power at work is so complete that the Devil and his minions (Johnson is actually a ghost who wants to re-incarnate himself in the protagonist's baby) are even prepared to double-cross one another! Gabriele Lavia, then, is the ineffectual spouse – a recording producer whose latest tune is called "Bargain With The Devil" (as the saying goes: Play With Matches And You're Liable To Get Burnt), is accosted on the street by a bunch of hippie musicians(!) in a period of respite from the diabolic onslaught, not to mention thrown about (and literally ejected from) the room by unseen forces. What to make of that head-scratching twist ending I mentioned earlier, where Mills' son (David Colin Jr. who would go on to play the possessed child in Mario Bava's SHOCK [1977], which actually got retitled BEYOND THE DOOR II!) is revealed to be the Devil himself? So why have him be the victim of a poltergeist (another highlight of the film, by the way) and, more importantly, what was the point of possessing and impregnating Mills in the first place?! Unfortunately, the DVD supplements I went through shed little to no light on what the script's intentions (four writers were credited for it!) really were, no concession was made to the picture being a deliberate copycat (in fact, this accusation was vehemently denied!) and, frankly, I still have no idea why this became the smash hit and cult item that it did. For the record, the other possession titles I am familiar with (not taking into account various "Nunsploitationers" which dealt with the subject) are IL DEMONIO (1963), THE ANTICHRIST (1974), THE HOUSE OF EXORCISM (1975; the bastardized version of Mario Bava's LISA AND THE DEVIL [1972]), RUBY (1977), OBSCENE DESIRE (1978; viewed recently), MALABIMBA – THE MALICIOUS WHORE (1979), SATAN'S BABY DOLL (1982) and THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE (2005); I also own ABBY (1974) and THE MANITOU (1978) but these got somehow left out of the challenge, and three more I am interested in would be L'OSSESSA aka THE SEXORCIST (1974), EXORCISMO (1975; starring Paul Naschy) and NAKED EXORCISM (1975; with Richard Conte)!

Jonny_Numb Though director Ovidio Assontis unconvincingly argues otherwise, "Beyond the Door" is a blatant rip-off of "The Exorcist" that actually has more in common with the incoherence and dullness of Lucio Fulci's "Manhattan Baby" (still a vastly superior film by comparison). Beautiful San Franciscan housewife Juliet Mills (TV's "Passions"), in between juggling dinner dates with her record-producer husband (Dario Argento regular Gabriele Lavia) and ignoring the freakish behavior of her obnoxious children (one likes to drink pea soup through a straw--har har), finds time to get impregnated by the Devil himself. What follows is a largely unexciting, vastly confusing exercise in futility and cheap, avant-garde camera tricks to convince the viewer that, yes, something IS actually going on. Turns out Mills' Satanist ex ("Zombie"'s Richard Johnson) spurned Old Scratch, who now wants to claim the poor bastard's soul for all eternity (or something); his only option (as it's repeated several times) is to see that Rosemary has her baby! Meanwhile, random scenes set to soul music exist only to pad out the needlessly distended run time (109 minutes under the "Devil Within Her" cut), but my patience with "Beyond the Door" has run out. Avoid it.