Beyond the Door (1974)/Old Negative Review

 This has been on rotation on the Shudder Slashics channel. While I admittedly get a kick out of it now, at the time of these IMDb user comments I was definitely not a fan. From October 2010, when Halloween month yielded quite a bit of odd in my viewing lineups:

Juliet Mills is "the one that got away". Beelzebub, angered at Richard Johnson(THE HAUNTING; ZOMBIE II)for allowing her to flee during a sacrificial ceremony to the Lord of Darkness, gives him ten days to find her. Having domesticated herself, two children, the music producer husband, convertible, the whole nine yards, Mills is in for a rude awakening. Despite taking the pill efficiently, and her period coming regular until about three weeks prior to her pregnancy, Mills' Jessica finds out that somehow she's more than three months so it's obvious something wicked this way comes.

Director Ovidio G Assonitis and Antonio Troiso are responsible for the vulgar, unintentionally hilarious screenplay(some of the garbage Robert(Gabriele Lavia) spews during the movie, how he insults the musicians in his studio, and how he talks to Mills must be heard to be believed)good for a lot of shock, awe, and giggles. The daughter, Gayle, is a piece of work..swearing, reading the same book(Love Story; she has many copies of the same book she carries around with her!), sipping soup from a can with a straw(!), she will surely cause the eyebrows to raise and mouths to open agape. The son, Ken, actually tells his nasty sister to go stuff herself. Gayle calls a motorist who nearly hits her an a-hole. There are times where Gayle even speaks like a hippie("Ken, you've got to stop that or it's gonna blow my mind." or "Man, if you don't quit crying you're gonna have a real bad trip.").

Weird shenanigans abound. You get to see the slow motion destruction of a fish aquarium. Jessica levitates in her bedroom, floating while standing straight up. Jessica speaks in a man's voice. She's often in a trance one minute, hostile the next. She picks up the peel of a half-eaten banana off of a sidewalk, finishing it! Unpredictable always.

Everyone seems to copy the Exorcist scene where objects start moving about by themselves, drawers shuffling open and shut, lights going on and off, shirts flying off their hangings from the closet, etc. Dolls even go about by themselves, their eyes glowing. Even the damned bed lifts in the air! The most shameless rip direct from The Exorcist is when Jessica's head turns around. Jessica also has a case of "crazy eye"(the right eye moves around in circles while the left stares forward)which is more than a bit surreal. Oh, and her unborn fetus growls like a beast. Soon, like Linda Blair in The Exorcist, Jessica has yellow teeth and contact lenses, begging for help as the evil presence has control of her body. Pea soup(although, it kind of resembled spinach to me) and profanity also emerge. But, these incidents are in between lots of tedium(walks on sidewalks and streets, Johnson shadowing Robert waiting to approach him). Poor Johnson goes from a classy Robert Wise haunted house classic to this travesty, a stream of vomit showering his face. Appreciate Mills' loveliness while you can because her beauty fades as a distant memory once the filmmakers ugly her up.