The Gate

I remembered this as a family horror but watching again this is definitely too scary and gory for family viewing. The effects are excellent, even today they look great and arguably look better than Alien 3 (1992) which used similar techniques. The Gate is one of those films that is ruined if you watch the trailer. So don't. The cast are entertaining although some aspects have dated badly. It feels very cheap eighties and overall I don't mind that. It reminds me a lot of Young Sherlock Holmes (1985). It's a fun cute horror movie with some amazingly tense moments of monsters running around biting ankles. Entertaining but not the classic I remembered.

The so-called Satanic Panic, a mainstream fear-mongering campaign staged by out-of-touch parents against disagreeable board games and music, was going pretty strong back in 1987. I’m not sure if The Gate was an effort to reinforce those points or just to have some fun with the hysteria, but there’s no denying the influence. This represents everything a clean, god-fearing, white suburban family could imagine going wrong when they leave their teens unattended for a long weekend. The kids throw a party(!) with smoking(!!) and members of the opposite sex(!!!), and after that blows over, they also kill the dog and open a portal to hell in the backyard. Unrestrained chaos immediately ensues - melting, flame-spewing telephones, disembodied arms under the bed, corpses in the walls and more (much, much more) - but the youngsters aren’t totally defenseless. By leafing through the liner notes of a heavy metal album and playing the record backwards, they learn how to seal the fissure and expel the monsters. Okay, I’m ready to make a decision now. The Gate was definitely on team rock’n’roll. It takes a while to get to the good stuff, no thanks to the excruciatingly sluggish first act, but once the pit in the yard starts spewing dry ice and emanating a low howl, it’s on. The fireworks are worth the wait; a boundless font of creative nastiness that lays everything on the table. The tribes of squat little hog demons, roughly the size and color of a plucked chicken, are probably the film’s most memorable, lasting image. Scampering around the house, biting hands, clambering over stairs and glaring with malevolence, they’re both unnerving and hilarious. Other intruders, like the aforementioned drywall-dwelling zombie or the towering, penultimate boss fiend, are no less effective. If you’ve come for a proficient plot, I’ve got bad news, but if you’re here for off-color ideas and balls-out special effects, it’s going to hit the mark. No two ways about it. The Gate is decidedly not a good movie, but it makes for spectacular entertainment and the show’s most heralded star - its convincing creature effects - have weathered the years admirably. Though I was petrified by several scenes during the late-night HBO airings of my youth, nightmare fuel for an eight-year-old me, my slightly older kids cheered and howled right alongside me during yesterday’s screening. It works in each context, sufficiently valid as both a frightful jolt of childish terror and a raucous example of see-through movie absurdity. I got what I was looking for, and then some.