Big fan of '70s horror and/or B-movies, and I really like Lucio Fulci (The Beyond, House by the Cemetery) and anything by Argento, so I figured this purported "Italian Exorcist rip-off" was right up my alley. Found the 2-disc Code Red edition on Amazon, totally stoked for it. The trailers for the film actually look kind of scary. Any opinions? I'm waiting for it in the mail right now.
shareI imagine you've probably watched the film by now. What did you think of it? It happens to be one of my all time favorite horror movies. For being a "rip-off," it is just as good as The Exorcist in my opinion.
Come, fly the teeth of the wind. Share my wings.
This was my first "gateway" introduction to the Italian Horror tradition. A review I read when I was really young in the 1970's described it as a "typical Italian horror movie" with a nonsense plot. After that, a TV ad for a movie called "Suspiria" showed up. A while after that, my cousin saw a dubbed movie called "The Gates of Hell", which movie she said was too bloody-awful to describe. It was apparent to me, through these TV ads for drive-in movies and second-hand descriptions, that there was something interesting going on in Italy.
My suspicions were confirmed during the DVD era. After hours of viewing, I can say that Assonitis is a 4th master of Italian horror, and that this film is among the very best and scariest.
"Beyond the Door" is as essential to the Italian horror canon as "Black Sunday", the aforementioned "Suspiria", or "The Beyond".
You should give The Antichrist a shot. Another great Exprcist ripoff from the 70s.
shareJust curious, what did you think of the film when you finally got a chance to watch it?
I've been waiting for you, Ben.
Oh man, sorry I never came back to this to respond. It's been over a year(??!) but yeah, I really enjoyed the movie. The photography of San Francisco was great and I loved the funky soundtrack. It's got a great '70s Italian horror vibe and Juliet Mills was surprisingly really scary. I need to watch it again here soon, I found Cannibal Holocaust at a used DVD shop yesterday and watched it for the first time tonight, so I'm kind of on an Italian horror wave at the moment.
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