Beyond The Gates

Christine and I are back, having a cyber-slumber party in our internet pajamas. We may be 500 miles apart, but the smell of popcorn and nail polish is palpable. A recent and mutual appreciation for 2016's homage to John Carpenter's The Thing (and several thousand other horror movies, but mostly The Thing) made us nostalgic for the gritty, grainy horror movies of the 80s, with their garish covers tucked inside of sticky clamshell cases. We had so much fun, we decided to do it again. Christine suggested Beyond The Gates, a totally retro 80s groovin' horror flick if ever there was one. Starring the color scheme from Stuart Gordon's From Beyond, a Casio keyboard with the demo button stuck in the ON position, Barbara Fucking Crampton and a sweet, old school video rental shop stuffed to bursting with dusty, dogeared VHS tapes.

The Beyond, 1986

Me: I miss old school video stores.
Christine: Me too, so much! Just the smell of them! 
Me: And the sticky wire racks.
Christine: I can still smell it if I think about it!

Indeed, video stores did have a signature scent. Old bookstores smell like vanilla dust, dead talcum powder and gently mildewed paper. Video stores smelled like plaster dust, industrial grade cleaning fluids and tiny pools of Coca Cola that have hardened into jellied lumps of amber. Sigh ~ If only Jurassic Park scientists could extract the DNA from such a specimen.

John & Gordon, Beyond the Gates - 2017

Anyway, the movie...
Long ago, in the land of 1992, geeky dad opens up a video rental store and stands admiring it with his wife and two boys and everything is slo-mo Kodachrome perfection. We get a GREAT opening credit sequence with the absolute cheesiest synthesizer music which, if played long and loudly enough is guaranteed to open a wormhole in the time/space continuum and transport you straight back to 1982, with full on legwarmers, feathered hair and the smell of copious amounts of Aqua Net hairspray.

With the credits out of the way, we are shoved ahead 20+ years into the mumblecore milennial present day, where John and Gordon - the aforementioned sons of geeky dad - have arrived at Ye Olde Video Store to close up shop, pack up the tapes and move on with their lives. Their dad has disappeared. Again. Geeky dad was also apparently Drunk Dad and has a history of wandering off and abandoning his family.

Glen & Terry, the original John & Gordon.  The Gate, 1987.

Son John is the scruffy slacker, Gordon is the drywall offspring of Elijah Wood and Harry Potter who Used to Drink but Has Gotten His Shit Together. Despite the fact that he has the personality of a sheet of styrofoam, Gordon has a reasonably hot girlfriend named Margot, who loves him so much that she has stuck with him through his alcoholism and his abusiveness.

Me: He's got the personality of a piece of burned toast.
Chrsitine: I know, SO DULL.

Anyway, the sons slog through some limp, stale dialog, looking for all the world like they both just slammed a six pack of Nyquil. They halfheartedly pack up some video tapes.

Why is there a caricature of H.P. Lovecraft hanging on the wall?

Me: There's an awful lot of bootleg tapes in there. Was he renting shit he taped off of HBO?
Christine: I know - who would rent them?
Me: Besides a Japanese reporter looking for The Ring?
Christine: this is like The Innkeepers - SO slow in the beginning!
Me: That movie sucked. Hard.
Christine: Thank you, why do people like that one? I don't get it, nothing happens.
Me: Because mumblecore is cool, apparently.
Christine: bah

After a lot of long scenes of them being stiff and awkward around each other and having very forced, clipped conversations, John trots the Obvious First Victim into view. A guy named Hank who has a weird and very lazy mohawk.

Christine: Hank's hair, what is up with dat?
Me: If Vyvyan Basterd and Dicko Baker had a baby.

After wondering aloud why the hell Jeffrey Combs isn't in this, we move onto the main plot: the discovery of a board game called Beyond The Gates (Yes, we have a title!) with a videocassette guide hosted by Barbara Crampton as Ingrid Pitt in the Siouxsie Sioux story.

We get a couple of other characters thrown in superfluously: Dahlia (as in Black) the slightly whorey waitress, the cop who looks like young Ray Dennis Steckler and David Duchovny's illegitimate offspring, and an 18th century mortician who looks like - and is every bit as intimidating as - the Emcee at Club Scum in 1988's Hobgoblins.

John, Gordon and Margot decide to sit down and play the game, because they have absolute fuck-all to say to one another and no cable. Half an hour drags by. Gordie Potter finds a Marauders Map, a voodoo doll is dug up, Bad Mohawk Boy bites the dust Captain Rhodes style and a very unimpressive gate appears in the basement, surrounded by fog.

Midian, this ain't.

Christine: That would make a great bed headboard.
Me: Or a Spinal Tap prop.

Stuff kinda sorta happens. There's sleepwalking and goofy nightmares and badly choreographed fight scenes. At one point, Mortiis shows up to scream in Gordon's face. I've never been so confused in my life. The film quickly becomes a metaphor for Gordon's alcoholism. Cellar Dweller, Witch Board, Videodrome, Evil Dead 2 and Fulci's Gates Of Hell leak out of the frames. Everyone has red on them. And I totally spotted that copy of House Of Leaves on Gordon's bookshelf. Finally it ends with everyone happy and ready to face the bright, brave future, and waxy mortician guy greets another prospective buyer of Beyond The Gates in the form of yet another Indie Hipster douchebag. The end.

Christine: I don't always pick bad movies, but when I do, they have voodoo dolls and gates from hell! 
Me: It's not UTTER garbage. It' still better than Insidious.
Christine: I almost can't wait to see how badly you trash it! Sorry I made you sit through that. Please remember I didn't say it was "good." 

I totally forgive you, Christine.

Summation?