The Gate
The Gate is an 80’s younger audience targeted horror film, which marked the film debut of one Stephen Dorff who is now probably best known as playing vampire Deacon in Blade. As a young girl I remember visiting the video store, and I always went to the horror section and I remember seeing The Gate sitting there and I was always too scared to rent it. It had this awesome cover and it looked freaky. I have visited this film now, and does it actually hold up? Well for me it does, and I will tell you why!
The Gate is about a young boy Glen (Stephen Dorff), who notices with his best friend Terry (Louis Tripp) there seems to be a growing hole in the backyard. Glen’s sister Al (Christa Denton) convinces their parents who are going away for the weekend she can babysit Glen with no problems. So while the parents are away, Glen and Terry learn what the hole might be and accidentally release demons! Of course it is up to the trio to get rid of the demons and send them back where they came from.
The Gate does not mess around, it starts off rather freaky with a lightening incident and it goes from there. It establishes Glen and Terry as characters, they are typical young boys, they have these wild imaginations. Al wants to hang out with her friends rather then actually look after the boys. But things soon change as the weird things start to happen and they learn about what the hole is, funnily enough through a band by reading what it says on their album and playing the record backwards. Much like Monster Squad, the young ones here are vulgar and rude and they swear, nothing ‘PC’ here and again I was thankful for that. The ideas behind the film are actually pretty cool, I liked the stuff with playing the album backwards and how they find out about what the hole is and how the demons can come out and be put back in.
The actual affects are still pretty good, when you keep in mind this is a 1987 film. There are some very creepy scenes and I can bet some kids would find this stuff scary. The actual little demons are really well done, while they do look a bit cute now the way they actually filmed them and made them seem real. The really big monster at the end looks very cool, again it is really well done and it holds up well. There are some creepy scenes which were done in such a good way but if you haven’t seen this I wont reveal it. Performance wise this is hit and miss, Stephen Dorff is mostly good but he has some moments, but for his first role he does well. Christa Denton as Al is really good, she plays all the right notes for the character and I liked her. Louis Tripp was probably the weakest of the trio but he does alright, he has some silly dialogue and that didn’t really help. He gets better as the film goes on though, but it is really hard to dislike any of them despite their flaws.
The Gate I found was worth visiting, it is a good entry into the 80’s horror demon genre for a younger audience. They do not make them like they used to, this really reminds you of that. They could get away with a lot more back then, which is why it is always fun to go back and visit these films. Another 80’s gem which I would highly recommend. I was really surprised by how enjoyable I found this and how much fun I had with this film.
The Super Network 