Random Movie: The Gate (1987)

Oh, my. The Gate. Why did I like you?

For the uninitiated, this is Stephen Dorf's first film. Honestly, it is not really that good, but as far as bad movies go, it is pretty good. Here is the basic plot. Parents leave teenage daugther and pre-teen son for 3 days because they "trust" them. Son and friend accidentally open a gate to hell in the backyard. Way to piss all over your parents' trust, kid. Basically what happens is, a tree with a treehouse in it is knocked over which causes a hole. While messing around back there, Glen (Stephen Dorf), the aforementioned son, and his friend Terry find a geode in it and get all excited because it will surely get them "100 bucks!" This, coupled with an accidental reciting of some magic words, and a dead dog being put in the hole, blast open a gate to hell. Terry, who is a metalhead, will discover the whole story while listening to an album by a band called Sacrifyx. The album is called The Dark Book and comes with said book. In it, it explains how the Old Gods (demons) once ruled the darkness and now they don't and are angry, and once the stars are aligned properly, they can be summoned, by doing exaclty what Glen and Terry did. Of couse, the stars are aligned properly as well.

I recall liking this movie many years ago, but upon re-watchnig it, I am not sure why. The acting is really bad, the special effects are garbage, the story line and ridiculous ending sucks. Very poor editing and directon. And man is it slow. I mean you don't even really care for the characters. You can kind of see the struggle that Al and her brother Glen go through as Al is pulled between her friends and Glen for attention, but they are such poor actors, it's like, who cares? And we hear that Terry's mother died, and that is why he is "odd," but aside from a hallucination where he sees his mother, there is no other mention of it. And he doesn't really act that odd, so again, who cares? You know what might make it better?

A remake.

Remakes usually piss me off. I really have not seen one that I like. I hated the Friday the 13th remake, the Amytiville Horror remake blew. I found the Halloween remake passable, despite it's problems. Alex Winter will be directing this one. What I think will happen, is that this will probably not be a remake as such, but more so a borrowing of the idea, told completely differently. I mean, honestly, if you saw this movie, you would not want someone to remake it using the exact same things going on, like a model rocket saving the earth. Or a demon infested house in the middle of a neighborhoodthat somehow no one manages to notice. I wouldn't mind it being period and set in the late 80's and seeng some of those clothes and hairstyles again. That was hilarious.

This movie really didn't break any new ground, and it certainly was not really even violent. There was no sex and very little swearing (the film is PG-13) so it is not your typical "horror" movie, but it isn't better, either. Just your run of the mill flick, that I and probably only 8 other people have seen.