Bezenby How can a film be scary and funny at the same time? I don't know, but that's what Beyond the Door manages to be. It's an Exorcist rip-off with a bit of Rosemary's baby thrown in for good measure, filtered through some Italian film companies' shattered brain pan. Best example of this is the very beginning of the film, which Satan narrates himself while we watch a writhing naked woman on a plinth, whose face then turns into Jesus. A Jesus with boobs.Jessica lives in San Francisco with her husband Robert and their two kids, Gail (who talks like a hippy and sounds ten years older than she looks) and Ken (who is about five and swears like a trooper!). Jessica is once again pregnant, and therefore exhibits the usual symptoms of what we used to called Irish Toothache: nausea, eating weird things, in this case a rotten banana off the street, extreme mood swings, murdering a bunch of gold fish, blaming her husband for every single wrong in the world, slapping her kids about.Vomiting blood isn't the best indication that the pregnancy is going well, and even stranger is that the pregnancy is progressing at an alarming rate. Jessica is concerned and wants to have an abortion as the pregnancy is now causing her to float about the room and leave mud everywhere (don't think about it). When the doctor agrees to the abortion, she goes mental and insists that the baby be born! Women, eh?I burst out laughing when the kids started begging with their father not to leave them alone with their mother, but then the film did a strange thing by becoming effective and creepy. When the kid brother is alone he starts talking to an invisible thing sitting in a rocking chair, his sister arrives, going on about something or other and totally oblivious to the fact that every doll in the room has turned to stare at her. What's harder to ignore is the room going completely mental, the dolls walking about, and a cake floating up to the ceiling and getting squashed.The kids are shipped off somewhere and the strange fellow turns out to be Jessica's ex-boyfriend Richard Johnson, who didn't fare to well with the occult way back in The Witch In Love either. He wants the baby to be born and insists he help, whereas the doctor thinks it's probably for the best if the demon spawn of hell be removed. It's like the worst abortion debate in the world, all set to the soundtrack of a woman vomiting, cussing and flying about the room. I've been looking forward to this film for some time and wasn't disappointed. I thought the really daft period of Italian horror started later in the decade, but here it is, a fully fledged trash classic that ticks all the boxes you need. Or I need, anyway.

kanadianboy-ali10 I watched this growing up in the late 80's, my uncle was a huge horror buff and I watched this one shortly after Exorcist when I was around 12 or 13, its really a mash-up of all the classics (Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby and some Omen) all my favorites, YES its a bit cheesy the dubbed English is hilarious at times especially the kids and their potty mouths. I loved the premise of the film, it had some haunting scores and just something mysterious about it, very nostalgic old school Italian horror, one of my personal faves... if you are willing to sacrifice a bit on the cheesy dialogues and story line, fans of Italian horror and films like Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby will enjoy this one, give it a shot...

callanvass (Credit IMDb) Juliet Mills plays a young pregnant woman in San Francisco who is going to have the devil's baby during her strange possession. Richard Johnson shows up to help her... but what does he really want?This is a huge Exorcist rip-off! So much that Warner Bros sued! There is flattery and ripping people off! This movie proves to be the latter. Don't expect much entertainment in this movie! It's dull as dishwater with not much going for it. It's filled with laughable dubbing that is amusing for a while, but ultimately winds up becoming tiresome. It's very crude as well. The dad calls his son an idiot! and the kids are major brats. How is it the kids are so intelligent at that age? They speak like they are 15 years old with their impressive vocabulary. The kids curse like a sailor, too. We also get a very confusing storyline that has no real payoff. Dimitri (Richard Johnson) plays Satan's disciple, but I have no clue of the story they were trying to tell with it. There isn't one major suspense scene until 40 minutes in! Jessica's possession is beyond cringe-worthy. If you love pea-soup and gibberish, this will probably be right up your alley. The most laughable scene in the movie has to be when Jessica is puking up blood, and the husband asks if she is OK! The ending is painfully bad & angered me as well. The acting is hard to rate because of the dubbing. Stay far away from this crud. It's not even amusing in a so bad it's good way! It's dull, lame, and thoroughly stupid. 3/10

headnotfound This movie came out in 1974, a year after The Exorcist exploded in theatres. The resounding effects of The Exorcist's success are very apparent in this movie. I was shocked to see the blatant similarities! I thought ripping off movies was a 90s disease, but no...The plot is very simple - Jessica Barrett (Juliet Mills) is a San Francisco housewife to a record dealer husband Robert (Gabriele Lavia). They have two foul-mouthed children who call their parents by their first names. The daughter is especially interesting to watch, especially if you get a bad-dubbed copy like I did, and you hear her throw out curse words like a sailor.Beautiful Jessica finds out she has a bun in the oven, despite not missing a day of her birth control pills. The happy couple's excitement for the new baby are short-lived, as Jessica begins vomiting blood and her health quickly declines *(much like Mrs. Woodhouses in Rosemary's Baby). Jessica begins to turn into someone else, hardly recognizable by her loved ones. She starts murdering fish for pleasure, slaps her potty-mouthed daughter, and gives a long and awkward kiss to her young son (I believe this was meant to be a foreshadowing for the 'surprise' ending, but instead the kiss came off as really creepy and icky). Soon, she is in full possessed-Reagan make-up, and her head starts turning around.One of Jessica's past lover Dimitiri (played by a coolly evil-looking Richard Johnson, no relation to the blues guitar player who sold his soul) shows up out of nowhere. We first hear of him in the very beginning of the movie, where it is made clear that he has died in a car accident, and is bargaining with the devil for a couple of more years of life. The devil says that he might give him a couple of years, but will only consider it if he does one thing - "rip the baby out of that woman." So later on, Dimitri shows up and proclaims to be the only one that can help Jessica from her dilemma. He insists that 'she must have that baby!' even in the beginning of the movie, the devil tells him to rip it out of her (which I guess means 'to deliver it'). Dimitri finds out that the devil was just using him with no intention of letting him live, so he starts pounding away at Jessica's stomach in an effort kill the unborn demon. And when Jessica finally does have the baby, it turns out to have no mouth. Low and behold, her young son is now possessed. What was the point of the devil impregnating Jessica if it was just going to die? Besides the fact that this movie is a definite Exorcist clone (with some Rosemary's Baby overtones), and besides the fact that Juliet Mills looks like an aged Kirsten Dunst at times, I dug this movie.