Beyond The Door (Who Are You?, Chi Sei?, Devil With Her), Directed By Ovidio G. Assonitus (1974).
I’ve attempted to watch
this Ovid Assonitus schlock fest repeatedly ever since I’ve seen the trailer on
Mad Ron’s Prevues. But I always scratch my head, take a migraine pill and lie
down. I never got what people saw in this movie that is until now.
According to Roger Ebert,
who like always was confused and a little disturbed that the T.V. ads drew in
the audiences who probably had their patented Howard K. Scott upchuck cups
handy for the ensuing barf-a-rama.
I was pretty stoked to even
see where they filmed certain scenes in San Francisco, having lived there
previously for 10 years. There’s gratuitous Golden Gate footage of course, Alcatraz (where I worked for a time) and also Safeway.
It begins in the same
candle lit dimension as the Police video for “Wrapped around your finger”. A
dark void with an altar that has a naked female who morphs into a Manson
looking dude who still has a pretty sweet rack.
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| I got moobs |
Satan’s voice tries to
clear up some plot development but I was totally confused. The details involve
Richard Johnson as Dimitri, who you may remember as “The Boat can leave now”
guy from Zombi 2. Johnson returns from hell after dying in a car wreck to deliver
what he promised to Satan. Or something, I mean the guy that wrote the fucking
Visitor is responsible for this shit, I’m sure he gulped an entire bag of
shrooms while chasing it down with an iced cappuccino!
The Media VHS version sucks
compared to the Code Red one, just skip it, you’ll thank me later.
They don’t even play the
extremely funky and catchy soundtrack by Franco Micalizzi and the big bubbling
band! I’d like to say that I have fond memories of finding the Chi Sei? Score on
vinyl at somewhere cool like Amoeba or Kim’s Video in its heyday, but no I just
downloaded the score in the early aughts on a blog that used megaupload, pretty
lame!
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| Kim Dotcom you suck! |
Gabriele Lavia, the actor
who plays the husband, looks like Dean Stockwell’s stunt double. He’s appeared
in some Dario Argento films. That’s a good coincidence because the mom, played
by Juliette Mills looks like Kirsten Dunst. Oh yeah and their son who
practically carried the sequel on his tiny shoulders drinks from a Campbell soup
can with a straw. None of this is in the Media VHS version by the way.
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| just packing my MAGA lunchbox. |
In Beyond The Door, there’s
no Ouiji board fooling around or incantations that bring on demonic possession
or explanation as to why the mom gets all pustule and levitates but if you’re
looking for coherence in an Ovidio helmed movie you need help!
Also not only is Jessica
inhabited by evil spirits and swiveling her head around Linda Blair style but
she’s pregnant—bonus!
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| TWINSEES |
There’s some gratuitous pea
soup in cans in various places around her two kids who are extremely obnoxious and dubbed. The way
Jessica throws her vomit around and talks like Shirley Temple reminds me more
of the Richard Pryor/ Laraine Newman Exorcist parody then the Friedkin
original.
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| Blade Runner cosplay. |
They must’ve gotten their
porcelain dolls from the same road side dump in Tourist Trap because they come
to life, start cackling and doing some scary ass telekinetic shit!
There’s one scene in the
longer cut where these black dudes surround Juliet’s husband and one plays a
flute with his nose!
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| street corner version of cross eyed mary played with a nostril. |
Greg Goodsell mentioned how there’s a Pink
Flamingos nod, so watch out for that. I’ve hated this film for years, so It’s
kind of inspiring to see that the Code Red version (which is pretty cheap
online) just randomly showed up on YT. It convinced me that even though this
movie still is pretty bad and a shameless rip off, I still enjoyed it for its ridiculous audacity. I can only recommend it for people in the states where Rutles Indian
tea is legal, if you know what I mean.
