Now Onto the Movies: New Beverly Cinema Marathon

Beyond the Door

That tag line is just awful.

This was the first film of the night. I had never heard of at the very least seen this film, which is the same for almost all the films of the night. The people running the show introduced it as one of the first The Exorcist  rip-offs that flooded into theaters after the success of the film. And I truly believe that is the best way to describe this movie.


To give you a quick synopsis of the film. Happy family with Mother, Father, daughter and son living their life in San Francisco oh so blissfully. Then the wife, Jessica,  reveals she is pregnant to her husband. Of course it is possessed throughout the film. So her health and mental well being slowly degrades and it becomes more evident that she’s possessed in Exorcist fashion her face looks messed up and is puking green.



***SPOILERS***(In Case you care)
A man who had been stalking the family throughout the film had made a deal with this demon to save his life when he was in a car accident ten years earlier. He tries to birth the child to save his life for more than the ten year deal. The demon still kills him the mother doesn’t remember anything and their son they had is possessed with the demon.



I know that isn’t the best description of the film but it was such a shitty movie my brain basically shut-ff half way through the film. first thing that was bad about the film is that there was a voice-over that started the film that was supposed be the demon talking about the accident from ten years ago, involving our mystery man. Of course at this point it means nothing to the viewer and I honestly completely forgot about it until trying to remember the movie for this post.


Just to breeze through this the weirdest and best part of the movie was the fact that the entire movie was ADR’d, meaning all the dialogue had been replaced in post production. But of course it being a shitty movie it wasn’t done well so lines were barely synced up and the children’s dialogue was I think played by adults. Since they barely sounded like children and they would curse pretty frequently and to their parents. And when I say curse I mean like fucking curse. It was weird to listen to.


Creature From the Black Lagoon

I don't know about you... I love old movie posters.

The only film I was somewhat familiar with going into the night. I had never seen it in its entirety. To describe the plot quickly: A team of geologists find a weird fossil that non can explain. They use this as an excuse o search deep into the amazon to find what could the fossil possibly have been from. Little do they know that “the creature” is waiting for them. They find the black lagoon where everything starts to go wrong. They lose most of the “local” crew before they decide something needs to be done. After a few failed attempts to paralyze the monster with some chemical the captain has, and killing a couple of the leads in the film,  the creature kidnaps the damsel.


**SPOILERS**
They manage to rescue the girl and pump the creature full of lead before he swims off slowly. So I guess he’s “dead.”


I know that description was shitty as well but this is a classic horror film that I think should be viewed by any horror fan. Considered on of the original Universal Horror Films along with Dracula, Mummy, Frankenstein and more. It was a good movie for what it was. What it had going for it was the fact that it wasn’t too campy. It came out around the same time as the sci-fi atomic age films started to come out.


The story itself was honestly nothing that you haven’t  seen before. I honestly always feel weird about saying that about older movies that were influential since in reality people may have really not seen that before when the film was new. I think even for this film it was already a common story-line that was slightly similar to The Wolf man from over a decade earlier. The love story luckily was not as overbearing as some of the earlier films had it. The visual aspect is What i think that really makes the film hold up is the visual aspects of the film.


I feel lucky to have seen this print of the film because it was present to us in the original stereoscopic 3D. For a film that was made in the 50’s it did so much right with the 3d.  I had seen at the beginning of the film  that there were two directors, one for on land and one for underwater. The underwater director was the obviously the better of the two just based on what I saw. I never felt confused about the space they were in and it just was all very interesting to watch.


The other visual aspect of the film that still holds up is the creature itself. The costume looked great and was pretty creepy. It did the job of instilling fear and some disgust in the audience and for that it was a great aspect of the film. There are moments with the monster that become campy or even funny because of the music that is associated with it. It was so loud and just repetitive so anytime he popped on screen it would play and it would be ridiculous.


Its hard sometimes to judge a movie like this since it has been very influential and is culturally ingrained into people even if you haven’t seen the film.




Hell Night

Those hands are about to rip her skirt off...

At this point in the night my mind was starting to go crazy, but anywho, this is the film I was most looking forward to seeing.


The story is pretty standard slasher flick. Starts at a frat party that is doing a special party for their pledges for the frat an d a sister sorority. The hazing ritual is to take them to an old abandoned creepy mansion and make them stay the night.  Of course they are locked in with the promise they will be let out at dawn and that the previous owners had all been murdered by the father who committed suicide, except for the son who had never been found, supposedly living in the house still.  They leave only two guys and two gals, one of them being Linda Blair. Also as predicted there is someone living in the house that is going to kill them all. To add a little more to the body count some of the frat guys  come back later to set off pre-set scares for the people staying in the house.


**SPOILERS**
After a couple deaths and an escape that goes horribly wrong Lind Blair is able to kill her attacker by ramming him into the front gate with a car.


This was by far my favorite film of the night. I have an affinity for a good slasher film so even if its half competent I will be compelled to watch, and this film was much more than half competent. this was the only film of the night that was able evoke actual scares and authentic tension from the audience.


What the film did well is something that not all slasher films, or for that matter horror films which is character. Its not great in the film but its there and its worth the amount of screen time it gets. Linda Blair’s character and the other pledges do a good job with what they were given.  You do get a good sense of who these people are outside of this ridiculous situation that they have been placed into, which is what you can only ask for in a film like this.  You get an emotional attachment to each of the. Including the sex driven Steve who is kind of a dick, you still are rooting for him.

Like any good slasher film it does have comments on society but nothing that hadn’t been in slasher films before like it such as Black Christmas (1974). The commentary in both films is dumb policeman. Not being a child of the 70’s I guess there was a lot of animosity towards the man because of events like Vietnam and other political unrest.


Whats left to make a good slasher film? That’s right some pretty great kills. They aren’t over the top in this film,  just right for the story which is great. They do a really good job of setting up scares and ways to kill people. For instance there was a part with a character earlier on in the film climbing up a ladder and in the shot showing this there is a wide open blacked-out window. Of course you see it and think nothing of it at the time but it comes back during a chase scene and offers a good scare. Little touches like this really help distinguish the difference between a good film and a great film.

For what the film is it is a lot of fun to say the least. I definitely recommend checking this one out if you get a chance.


Alright, still got three more films from the marathon to talk about. I will be posting these soon! Check back. Make sure to talk about your impressions of the films if you’ve seen them or anything you want to talk about really!