Le démon aux tripes

In all fairness, this movie is a ripoff. However, if you know what it's gonna be and you're cool with that, it is damn entertaining.

From the get-go with the kids cussing and the bizarre antics of the parents, you know you're in for an Italian trash treat. It just gets better and better. By the end, you'll be loving life, if you're anything like me.

Recommended for fans of Fulci, Argento, D'Amato, etc. It was a little more old school than I thought it was gonna be, but I'm good with that. It is definitely more early 70's than late 70's. I like that Bava used the same kid in "Shock" aka "Beyond the Door 2." 6 out of 10, kids.

If "The Exorcist" is a big taco, "Beyond the Door" is a taco burp: vaguely reminiscent of the real thing, but with no substance or nutritional value. I don't like tacos anyway, and I don't like this movie. It tells the tedious, glacier-paced story of a dull woman who is pregnant with some sort of demonic baby and starts vomiting pea soup and spinning her head around. She and her family are plagued by a Mr. Beale-esque gentleman who tries to exorcise the demons, but may have his own nefarious reasons for helping- like we care. The only good parts in this crappy, boring movie are the foul-mouthed little kids who cuss like sailors and read cheap romance novels. Also appearing is the guy from "Deep Red", "Zeder", and "Inferno", but this performance is much different from his previous roles because this time he has a mustache.

Not recommended, although I do heartily recommend Mario Bava's "Shock", which was released as "Beyond the Door II" despite the fact that it has nothing to do with "Beyond the Door" and actually has things happen in it.

Oy vey, what a doozy we have here. "Beyond the Door" (also known as "Chi sei" and "The Devil Within Her") has Juliet Mills as a San Francisco housewife who becomes pregnant with a Devil child, which puts a hamper on her otherwise bourgeois West Coast existence. She also becomes apparently possessed, and does a lot of really wacky and scary stuff.

A low-budget, unabashed riff on "The Exorcist" and "Rosemary's Baby," "Beyond the Door" is one of the weirdest offerings in the possession horror sub-genre of the 1970s, and despite its unashamed ripping-off of about every possession film up to that point, there are still moments of technical flair and genuine creepiness here. An Italian production, the film was directed by Ovidio G. Assonitis, who at times seems to be tapping into surrealism with the moody and disorienting camerawork; as some other reviewers have noted, there are things about this film that are very much dreamlike. Take for example, the first five minutes: We have a sea of candles appear on screen, with overhead narration by none other than Satan himself; the camera pans to the right, as Juliet Mills inexplicably stands amidst the candles in a white nightgown, wearing a brainwave monitor. Three minutes later, we have a random montage of Mills grocery shopping in the Bay Area set to a hokey funk track by Sid Wayne. Surrealist horror, or funk rock music video? I don't even know, nor do I want to attempt an answer.

The film suffers tremendously from godawful dubbing, and Mills' foul-mouthed children who look about ten but talk like nineteen-year-olds bring some terribly laughable lines, while the bulk of the dialogue between the family is utterly brainless chatter. Despite all silliness, the real treat of this film lies in the execution of its possession scenes which, despite their derivative nature, are really well-done and at times genuinely scary. Mills does a commendable job with the script and is convincingly frightening as she transforms into a complete monster. There are some surprisingly out-there twists in the script that will leave you scratching your head, but also work in favor of the "surrealist horror" wave the film seems to be riding (funk rock music video is still a solid choice though, just for the opening credits alone).

Overall, "Beyond the Door" is a divisive film because it has moments of acute technical success and truly spooky moments, but it's also horribly dubbed, generally badly acted, and the plot is a rehash of the decade's earlier possession films with some absurd twists thrown in for good measure. As I said before, it is worth a watch for Mills' possession alone, and for the borderline surrealist visuals on display, but the undertone of utter silliness rarely escapes the screen. 6/10.

This might be giving it too much credit, but I would venture to say that this film is the king of rip-offs. Like so many other horror flicks of its day, this movie lifts its plot from THE EXORCIST, and also seizes the opportunity to "borrow" elements from ROSEMARY'S BABY. Juliet Mills plays the wife of a successful San Francisco record producer who becomes possessed by you know who..... Mills(the older sister of Hayley) is a very beautiful and supremely gifted actress, but the repetitive and repulsive script has given her very little to do but spin her head and spit up pea soup. Co-star Richard Johnson is also a talented actor who is severely misused. Director Hellman went on to make a JAWS rip-off entitled TENTACLES. That film also features a great cast at their all-time worst.

Of all the "Exorcist" rip-offs made right after the box-office success of the original, "Beyond The Door" is the most blatant. All of the sensationalistic happenings of the first movie occur here (head spinning, levitation, green pea vomit, foul language spoken in a demonic voice), but in "Beyond The Door" they occur not so much as a manifestation of demonic possession as they do because they occurred in "The Exorcist". This tale of a woman becoming possessed by her demonic fetus (they even threw some "Rosemary's Baby" into the mix) certainly didn't help the careers of its stars Juliet Mills and Richard Johnson, despite its box office success (indeed, Shakespearean trained Johnson saw his career degenerate into more and even schlockier films than this). Still, one has to admire the film for its chutzpah: it's such an OBVIOUS rip-off that one can't help giving it credit for having the nerve to be such.