PRAY YOU DON'T VISIT THIS GATE

THE GATE (1987)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Two boys dig through a hole in the lawn. It is a portal into a world of demons. They don't know that yet, however, one boy has the answers in the liner notes of a heavy metal band album. The band had died for revealing the secrets of the...Gate. Why didn't the album perish into oblivion so that nobody would ever know how to fight the demons? I can't say. "The Gate" is the brainchild of Canadian director Tibor Takacs, and it is a fairly rudimentary and nonsensical horror film for the teens. Only problem is that for 80's scare flicks aimed at a teen audience, there are a half dozen better than this one, starting with "The Lost Boys." "The Gate" never gels or gets its motor running.

The kids are not given much color or variety, save for the angry and scared looks of a very young Stephen Dorff. It would have made more sense for the kids to stay indoors or get sucked into the vortex of the gate. Instead, we get tedious scenes of the kids either tip-toeing outside the front door or lurking around the smoky vapors emitted from the hole in the ground. They also hide in closets and stare at a mothlight that buzzes uncontrollably (all Dorff has to do in one scene is unplug it). Eventually, we get a climactic showdown of several pint-sized, black-eyed demons running around along with a giant, snake-like demon who can be vaporized with a burst of light, though I won't reveal what is used. Oh, and an eye appears on Dorff's hand. Lest I forget the most unholy use of the Holy Bible I've seen until Leo DiCaprio threw it into a river in "Gangs of New York" - instead of reading incantations to rid the evil forces, Dorff's best friend (the expert on demonology) simply throws the holy book into the hole! (And to think that a year later, crowds protested at the showings of "Last Temptation of Christ") Somehow, all this was handled with more imagination in Sam Raimi's early "Evil Dead" pictures than here, especially 1987's "Evil Dead II" (pretty much the textbook example on geeky, goofy, frightful horror). An appearance by Bruce Campbell might have redeemed this garbage.

Even by 1987 standards, "The Gate" is fairly substandard horror and runs an interminable 85 minutes. I like these type of chill-to-the-bone horror stories but no real atmosphere is generated, no real thrills and there are the barest minimum of scares (the stop-motion demons, also accomplished with actors through forced perspective, are fun to watch though). "This "Gate" is a stone best left unturned.