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Written by Mandroid3000
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THE GATE **1/2 out of *****
Genres
1987 Directed by Tibor Takács Written by Michael Nankin Cast Stephen Dorff .... Glen Christa Denton .... Al Louis Tripp .... Terrence 'Terry' Chandler Kelly Rowan .... Lori Lee Jennifer Irwin .... Linda Lee Deborah Grover .... Mom Scot Denton .... Dad Ingrid Veninger .... Paula Sean Fagan .... Eric Linda Goranson .... Terry's Mom Carl Kraines .... Workman Andrew Gunn .... Brad
I never saw The Gate when it was first released on video. But I knew a lot of people at school who did. This was because it had a gimmicky shiny foil video cover that really did induce kids to rent it. Everyone knew that video cover. No one ever recommended I watch The Gate though. In a sign that my childhood really is never coming back I was in a video store recently and saw their old shiny foil-covered copy of The Gate in the ex-rental bin for $2. I felt a pang of sadness that I’d never be seeing that shameful gimmick sitting on the video store shelf unrented as I had done for nearly 15 years. If that awful Winds of Change song by the Scorpions had been playing on the store sound system it would have been one of the most embarrassingly poignant events in my life. Instead it was just depressing.
 | My scanner couldn't capture the
glory of the shiny foil cover, but
did capture the glorious 8 Days for
$2.50 price point. | The film’s story goes thusly: Glen and his older sister Alexandria’s (Al to her friends) parents are going away for two days. A lighting strike knocks a tree over in the back garden. A strange hole is under the tree. The hole happens to be a gate that demons can pass through to take over the world. The correct stars are aligned in the correct way. All you need is a sacrifice and a magic ritual of some kind. The family had an old dog that dies and gets buried in the hole, and Al has some friends over who levitate Glen as a party trick. That is how demons came to be overrunning their house (luckily they seem to leave the neighbours alone).
Glen has a geeky friend called Terry. Terry has a European heavy metal album that has all the information about the gate on its liner notes. He also lip syncs some of the record, which sounds a lot like Stonehenge by Spinal Tap. Terry has a messed up home life. Terry’s mother has just died and his dad’s never there. He has weird visions of his mother at night. One night he thinks he’s hugging her when he’s just hugging the dead dog. Terry also likes geodes.
 | They yearn to read, yet some of
us take this precious gift for
granted. | The demons that attack are kind of small. They look pretty cool, and when they’re stop motion animated they’re impressive. But, for a horror film, they don’t actually do anything horrific. The just grab people’s feet and look through windows. Throwing them in a burlap sack and chucking them in the trash for pickup seems just as plausible a way to get rid of them as standing over the gate and reading passages from the Bible. There’s a cool big demon at the end, but again, he doesn’t actually do anything.
 | I'd make fun, but I used to look like
that without the benefit of looking
like Stephen Dorff now. | But The Gate is good fun in that silly ‘80s suburban family horror film way. The acting is pretty good, in a genre whose curse is awful child actors. There are nice little touches of authenticity in the way the characters act and talk. Probably not the greatest example, but the one I can think of is the way that Glen called one of Al’s friends "fag" and then runs away in that funny way little kids run. And it has that shiny foil cover. After all these years I couldn't resist the gimmick any longer. |
