The Pale Door

There is nothing very original here. A gang high jack a train and find something unexpected. The cast is a joy and there are some neat ideas here and there. But sadly, it is a slow and slightly boring movie, that never lives up to the premise of cowboys vs witches. You could do worse, but if you want good Wild West horror, watch Bone Tomahawk instead.

Could of been a decent film if it had a higher budget. The story isn't bad, it was just hard to watch. The camera work and sets looked too low budget. I turned the movie off about half way in. Pass on this one unless you like low budget horror films.

A bunch of cowboy tough guys on a heist job, now on the run, encounter a brothel with sexy ladies that are more then what they appear...sound familiar? In my opinion, the cast was great. Several B-Listers you may recognize from other films. Its weakest link is the direction, it is amateur at best! I understand this is low budget, so no CGI, and the makeup is not bad, it is just shown WAY too much, and WAY too close...making it laughable and not scary. The very first reveal of the "witches"...why did the witch have to "talk" if the actress can barely move her mouth in the makeup? Come ooon! The old adage "less is more" is prevalent here...keeping the witches in the shadows, barely shown, would've worked better. The pacing is not the best either, a lot of panning "fluff" shots to pad the runtime. At best this film is "average" due to the capable cast, music, SFX, sets, and production value. Where it fails is with the filmmaker. Given the resources seen on-screen, a capable filmmaker would've knocked it out of the park!

While plagiarism abounds in this film, its not terrible. Not good either. The acting is not great. Its something to watch if you have nothing else.

This could have been a really great, creepy little b-movie with just a few minor tweaks. The first 20 or so minutes really had me drawn in. The acting was a little inconsistent but passable. Wardrobes and sets felt pretty cheap but I can usually overlook that. But then the witches show up. And I mean cartoonish, pointy-nosed, cackling Wizard of Oz witches. But they're also zombies sort of? Spraying blood everywhere and just ruining the good occult horror vibe the film had going. Some other reviewers have drawn comparisons to From Dusk Til Dawn and yeah that does come to mind but Pale Door had absolutely none of the self aware, self deprecating humor which made that work. It's like there was one idiot producer involved who at the last minute decided, "it needs monsters, though." And they just shoe-horned in these absurd witch-zombies that I cannot get past. Shame on whoever thought that those noses had any place in a horror movie that was trying to take itself at all seriously.