Horror Film Review: Evil Dead II (dir. by Sam Raimi)

Posted on by Arleigh

“Swallow this.” — Ash Williams

With Evil Dead II, Sam Raimi took the basic cabin-in-the-woods nightmare of The Evil Dead and turned it into a frantic horror-comedy fever dream. Released in 1987, the film occupies a strange and wonderful place between a genuine continuation of The Evil Dead and a wildly exaggerated reimagining of it. It is nastier, funnier, more technically ambitious, and considerably more confident than its predecessor, yet it retains the homemade, anything-can-happen energy that made the original such a cult landmark. If The Evil Dead was a lean, rough-edged cabin-in-the-woods nightmare made by young filmmakers determined to prove themselves, Evil Dead II is Raimi and star Bruce Campbell returning with more resources, sharper instincts, and a total willingness to push every idea until it becomes cartoonishly grotesque.

The film begins with Ash Williams and his girlfriend Linda arriving at the infamous isolated cabin in the woods. It does not take long for them to stumble across the Necronomicon, the ancient book responsible for awakening flesh-hungry Deadites. What follows is an escalating barrage of possession, bodily mutilation, flying blood, demonic laughter, severed limbs, possessed household objects, and increasingly deranged attempts by Ash to survive the night. On a basic story level, it is familiar material. A group of people trapped in a remote location awaken evil forces and become possessed one by one. Raimi’s great achievement is that he never treats the formula as a limitation. Instead, he turns it into a delivery system for visual invention, slapstick timing, and creative violence.

The question of whether Evil Dead II is a sequel, a remake, or both has followed the movie for decades, and the honest answer is that it is effectively a sequel with a condensed remake-style opening. Raimi could not simply reuse footage from The Evil Dead, so the beginning retells the essential premise of the first film with Ash and Linda as the only characters at the cabin. That recap changes details, leaves out the original group of friends, and presents a shortened version of Ash’s first encounter with the Deadites. Once Ash survives the opening stretch and the evil returns, the movie continues beyond the events of The Evil Dead, making it a genuine sequel. Still, because the first act recreates so much of the original’s setup in a more polished and heightened form, it understandably feels like a remake before it becomes a continuation.

Bruce Campbell is the center of everything, and his performance is a huge part of why the film remains so beloved. Ash begins as an ordinary, frightened guy in over his head, but Campbell slowly transforms him into the character audiences recognize today: bruised, filthy, angry, absurdly resilient, and just arrogant enough to make his suffering hilarious. One of the movie’s most impressive qualities is how long Campbell can hold the screen almost entirely by himself. For substantial stretches, Ash has no real human companion to play off. He is acting opposite fake hands, props, stop-motion creatures, splattering fluids, camera movements, and the hostile architecture of the cabin. Campbell has to sell physical terror while also land jokes with the precision of a silent-film comedian.

The famous scene in which Ash’s possessed hand attacks him is probably the clearest example of what makes Evil Dead II special. In another horror movie, a man losing control of his hand might be played as disturbing body horror. Raimi turns it into a manic live-action cartoon. Ash battles his own hand with plates, books, a mousetrap, and anything else within reach, while Campbell throws himself around the room with astonishing commitment. The scene is funny because it is so excessive, but it never entirely stops being gruesome. Ash is still bleeding, suffering, and increasingly losing his mind. That balance is essential to the movie. Raimi does not abandon horror for comedy; he makes the comedy emerge from the intensity of the horror.

The cabin itself becomes one of the film’s great characters. In The Evil Dead, the location feels claustrophobic and decayed, a believable place that happens to become a site of supernatural violence. In Evil Dead II, it becomes something closer to a haunted funhouse. The walls seem alive, furniture appears to mock Ash, mounted animal heads laugh at him, and the entire building seems to participate in his breakdown. The sequence where Ash starts laughing alongside the room’s objects is especially memorable because it captures the film’s unstable tone. It is visually ridiculous, but there is genuine unease underneath it. Ash may be seeing a supernatural manifestation, losing his sanity, or both. Raimi keeps the audience off-balance by making laughter and fear feel almost inseparable.

Raimi’s direction is ferocious. The camera is constantly moving, rushing through forests, crashing into rooms, swooping toward characters, and creating the impression that the evil itself is an invisible force with a point of view. The “demon-cam” technique, in which the camera races through the woods toward its victims, returns from the first film but feels even more aggressive here. It gives the Deadites a strange presence despite the fact that they are often unseen. You do not merely hear something approaching; you feel the camera barreling toward Ash as if the movie has become possessed.

The practical effects remain a major reason to watch the film. They are intentionally messy, tactile, and sometimes obviously artificial, but that artificiality is part of the charm. The Deadites look like diseased puppets dragged out of a nightmare, their faces stretching into exaggerated masks of rot and rage. Blood does not behave like blood; it sprays in impossible volumes and bizarre colors. Bodies deform, heads spin, limbs detach, and tiny monsters swarm the frame. Rather than striving for realism, the effects aim for maximum impact. They create a world where physical rules have broken down, which suits a story about ancient evil invading the ordinary world.

The film’s humor also deserves credit for never making Ash too cool too early. Later installments, especially Army of Darkness, would lean more heavily into the swaggering, wisecracking version of the character. In Evil Dead II, he earns every bit of confidence through suffering. He is not a superhero with a chainsaw hand; he is a man forced to improvise a grotesque solution because he has no better option. When he straps the chainsaw onto his stump and prepares for battle, it is triumphant, but it is also the result of one of the most painful and grotesque scenes in the movie. The iconic image works because Raimi lets the audience experience the desperation behind it.

The supporting cast arrives later than expected, including Annie Knowby, daughter of the archaeologist connected to the Necronomicon, along with several others whose involvement predictably goes terribly wrong. They are not developed with the same attention as Ash, but that is not really the point. Their function is to give the Deadites fresh bodies to possess, create new complications, and help move the story toward its gleefully chaotic finale. Sarah Berry gives Annie an appealing mix of intelligence and panic, while Ted Raimi’s Henrietta becomes one of the movie’s most monstrous creations. The cellar scenes involving Henrietta are nasty, darkly funny, and among the strongest reminders that Raimi still knows how to make the audience uncomfortable even amid all the comedy.

By the time the film reaches its ending, Evil Dead II has become larger than its cabin setting. Its final twist sends Ash somewhere no viewer could reasonably have expected, turning what began as a contained survival-horror story into the launching point for the more openly fantasy-driven Army of Darkness. Yet the ending works precisely because the entire film has trained us to expect escalation. Every scene somehow finds a way to become more exaggerated than the last. A possessed girlfriend becomes a dancing corpse. A severed hand becomes a homicidal creature. A cabin becomes a carnival of insanity. A man with a chainsaw becomes an accidental hero.

More than three decades later, Evil Dead II still feels alive because it has a personality that no polished studio production could replicate. Its effects are physical, its performances are fearless, and its direction is so energetic that the movie seems ready to burst through the screen. It is gross, loud, silly, inventive, and sincerely scary in flashes. Raimi understands that horror can be horrifying and hilarious without weakening either quality. Evil Dead II is not merely a cult classic because people quote Ash or remember the chainsaw. It is a cult classic because it transforms limitations, madness, and handmade craftsmanship into a one-of-a-kind cinematic experience.

October Positivity: Beauty and the Atheist (dir by Donald James Parker)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 2026’s Beauty and the Atheist, Beau Davidson plays Trey Crawford.  Trey is one of the country’s most popular atheist podcasters.  He spends his entire show making fun of creationists and the makers of Christian movies.  When he discovers that Douglas Connors (Donald James Parker), the star of Gramps Goes to College, is living nearby, Trey decides to invite him on the podcast for a debate.

Now, already, this is just a smidgen more interesting than the usual Douglas James Parker film.  Parker is essentially playing himself but he’s calling himself Douglas Connors.  This film seems to acknowledge that Gramps Goes To College has a certain Room-like reputation.  Could this be a Donald James Parker film that actually has a sense of humor about itself?

Douglas reluctantly goes on Trey’s podcast, expecting to get ambushed by a slick podcaster who hides his own bitterness and personal failings behind a bunch of scientific terms.  And that’s exactly what happens.  Douglas is earnest and polite.  Trey is snarky and angry.  Even Douglas admits that he lost the debate.

Meanwhile, Trey has fallen for Jeweli (Tara Massey), a woman who he keeps spotting in his local coffeehouse.  (It wouldn’t be a Donald James Parker film without a coffeehouse.)  What Trey doesn’t know is that Jeweli is the daughter of Douglas Connors!  And she’s a believer.  Soon, the Atheist has fallen for the beautiful Christian which …. actually, I knew quite a few couples where one partner is religious and the other is not.  It’s not really that unusual of a thing.

Beauty and the Atheist is a smidgen better than the usual Donald James Parker film, largely because Beau Davidson and Tara Massey are better performers than usually appear in Parker’s films.  As well, the scenes set in Davidson’s podcast studio actually require Parker to make some lighting and design choices as opposed to just turning on the camera.  Interestingly enough, despite the film’s premise, Beauty and the Atheist is not quite as aggressive as some of Parker’s other films.  There’s one rather lengthy scenes in which Douglas explains all of the tricks that Trey supposedly used to make him lose the debate but otherwise, this film is far less angry than something like Operation Unite or, for that matter, Gramps Goes To College.

That said, it’s still a Donald James Parker film. This is yet another film where the atheist is an atheist because of family trauma.  Now, to be honest, I’ve met any number of atheists where that stereotype is indeed true.  But it still feels a bit too easy of a  narrative excuse.  On a technical level, the sound recording is often abysmal.  While Davidson and Massey are adequate in their roles, the rest of the cast delivers their lines flatly.  As for the dialogue, it’s sometimes a blessing that it’s hard to hear what the characters are saying.  Most of it falls flat and the attempts at humor are painful to watch.  When Jeweli’s sister comes across some evidence online that she thinks will put Trey in his place, she literally shouts, “Eureka!”  It’s hard to listen to and hard to watch.

 

Late Night Retro Television Review: CHiPs 6.11 “Day of the Robot”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Mondays, I will be reviewing CHiPs, which ran on NBC from 1977 to 1983.  The entire show is currently streaming on Prime!

This week, Ponch is busy.  The rest of the Highway Patrol is impressed.

Episode 6.11 “Day of the Robot”

(Dir by Phil Bondelli, originally aired on January 2nd, 1983)

Years ago, Emily’s younger brother was killed by a reckless driver.  Now, Emily (Melody Anderson) is the leader of a group of young women who drive their motorcycles up and down the highway and keep an eye out for people who run stop signs and make unsafe lane changes.  They issue their own tickets.  They attempt to make citizen’s arrests.  They always call the Highway Patrol before going off in pursuit but Ponch, Getraer, and even Bobby still think that they’re putting their own lives at danger.  When two stereo thieves decide to get revenge on Emily for a ticket, can Ponch save the day?

Meanwhile, a robot named MERV has been loaned to the Highway Patrol to help with filing and other tasks.  When it turns out that MERV has a short in its system that’s turned it into a “ticking time bomb,” can Ponch figure out how shut it down so it can be repaired before it accidentally blows up the children’s wing of the hospital?

Of course, he can.  Ponch can do anything!

This episode was a good example of how, during the show’s final season, everyone at the Highway Patrol was pretty much useless except for Ponch.  Ponch is the one who knows exactly what to say to Emily.  Ponch is the one who saves a bunch of sick kids from a potentially explosive situation.  Ponch is practically the only member of the Highway Patrol who couldn’t easily be replaced by a robot.

One gets the feeling that the show’s producers were getting a little desperate during season 6.  Not only have we had a UFO and a tragic death but this season has also given us a robot.  Remember how the early seasons mostly just tried to be a realistic portrait of the day-to-day activities of the Highway Patrol?

Those days are over.  The episode reminds us that CHiPs is now….

On the plus side, at least the robot was cute.

Horror On TV: Fear Itself 1.5 “Eater” (dir by Stuart Gordon)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

On tonight’s episode of Fear Itself, a young police officer (Elisabeth Moss) finds herself assigned to be a part of a detail that is guarding a serial killer cannibal named Duane Mellor (Stephen R. Hart).  As the night goes on, strange things start to happen and it becomes apparent that Mellor has powers and habits that go beyond just eating people.

You may have noticed that I skipped the fourth episode of Fear Itself.  That episode was In Sickness and In Health and it was about a bride-to-be who, on her wedding day, receives a note that reads, “The person you are marrying is a serial killer.”  It all leads to a pretty predictable twist.  The reason why I decided not to post that episode is because it was written by Victor Salva, a filmmaker who sexually abused the 12 year-old star of his first film and who, after serving 15 months in prison, somehow went on to continue making movies.  I’ve made a personal decision not to review anything involving Victor Salva.  That said, I do think everyone has to make their own decision as far as problematic filmmakers are concerned so I will say that the episode is on YouTube if you want to watch it.

As for Eater, it’s an intense and atmospheric episode that benefits from Stuart Gordon’s strong direction and which features good performances from both Moss and Hart.  You can watch it below!

 

October Hacks: Buried Alive (dir by Gerard Kikoine)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

1990’s Buried Alive may be the worst Edgar Allan Poe adaptation ever filmed.

The film takes place at the Ravenscroft Institute, a former mental asylum founded by the fearsome Jacob Julian (John Carradine). Jacob’s son, Gary (Robert Vaughn), took over the Institute after his father’s death, treated his patients with kindness and compassion, and preached about the need for “freedom.” Now, Gary has transformed Ravenscroft into an all-girls school for juvenile delinquents. The students worship him because he tells them that nothing is their fault and that they deserve to live the life they want. His newest teacher, Janet (Karen Lorre), is a fan as well. In fact, she soon finds herself falling in love with Gary.

However, from the minute Janet shows up at Ravenscroft, she starts having strange visions. She sees thousands of ants crawling over her feet. She hears strange sounds in the walls. At one point, an arm reaches out of a toilet and tries to grab her. She thinks she sees a distinguished Shakespearean character actor sealed behind a wall. Is she losing her mind, or has she stumbled across something more sinister?

Now, when I say that Buried Alive is one of the worst Edgar Allan Poe adaptations I’ve ever seen, understand that it is not the fault of the cast. There are some truly talented people in this film. A young Nia Long plays a student named Fingers. Ginger Lynn Allen has fun playing a bully named Debbie. Robert Vaughn is appropriately intense as Gary, and John Carradine is… well, he’s John Carradine. This was one of Carradine’s final films, and he actually died before it was released. Obviously, Carradine doesn’t do much, but, as was often the case, his intimidating screen presence meant that he didn’t have to do much to make an impression. He just had to exist. Donald Pleasence plays Dr. Schaeffer, a German-accented member of the staff who wears round glasses and an ill-fitting toupee and who pops up occasionally to tell Janet not to wander around at night. Pleasence was obviously not in the best of health when he played Schaeffer, but, much like Carradine, his eccentric presence gives the film some much-needed atmosphere, and there is a fairly effective twist involving his character. Finally, there’s an absolutely adorable black cat that randomly appears throughout the film. It’s the film’s way of acknowledging Edgar Allan Poe, I imagine.

No, the failure of Buried Alive is not due to the cast. It’s really not even due to the script, which borrows the idea of someone being buried alive and not much else from the Poe story. Instead, the fault almost entirely rests with the film’s direction. The story unfolds with little momentum, some scenes meander while others are over far too quickly, and the director seems to think that filming anyone in an extreme close-up will automatically make them creepy. There are a few gross sequences involving a bunch of ants and the film has a few slasher moments, like the silencing of one annoying victim via a garden tool to the forehead , but otherwise there’s little horror and next to no suspense. I actually found myself getting angry over how poorly directed this film was.

The cast deserved better.

SOV Horror Review: Spine (dir by John Howard and Justin Simmonds)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In the 1986 Shot-on-Video film Spine, a killer is stalking …. well, to be honest, I’m not sure which state this movie is supposed to be taking place in.  Some of the shots feature mountains in the background so it’s definitely not Texas.  I’m going to guess that the film was shot in California, despite the fact that some of performers had Southern accents.

Anyway, a killer is stalking California.  His victims are all nurses who stand 5’3.  He attacks them at home.  He ties them up in a way that causes them to strangle themselves when they struggle.  He cuts out their spinal cords.  Using his victim’s own bloody hands, he writes “LINDA” on the wall.  None of the victims are named Linda.

Who could this killer be?

Well, we know from the beginning.  This film is not a whodunit,  From the start, we see that the killer is Lawrence Ashton (R. Eric Huxley), a hulking man who has a Graham Platner-style beard and who apparently thinks that every nurse that he sees is his former girlfriend, Linda.  He holds Linda responsible for the death of his mother and he’s seeking revenge.

Who can stop Ashton?  How about a cop who does things his way!?  Sam Joffrey (Carl Elliott) doesn’t have time to go by the book!  He’s got nurses to save!

I spent most of this film thinking that Sam Joffrey was terrible at his job.  There was a lengthy and rather distasteful sequence in which Ashton menaced two nurses.  The whole thing seemed to go on forever and I found myself wondering just what exactly our “hero” was doing while all of this was going on.  However, the entire sequence turned out to be just a nightmare.  Really, movie?  I mean, again, I thought the whole sequence went on for way too long and that the film seemed to be celebrating the violence more than condemning it but, if you’re going film something like that, you should at least commit to it.  If you’re going to make a gory film about a sadistic murderer, there’s no excuse for hand-waving away the bloodiest part of the movie by making it “just a dream.”

Spine has all of the typical SOV flaws.  Even though it’s only 72 minutes long, I struggled to pay attention to it.  For the most part, the dialogue was either too muffled or too loud for me to really be able to follow any of the conversations.  (Even today, amateur filmmakers tend to underrate the importance of a clean soundtrack.)  The actors were pretty amateurish.  The dialogue had that “everyone told me this line was funny so we’re not cutting it from the script” feel that is such an integral part of the SOV experience.

That said, I have a weakness for these SOV films.  A part of it’s because I’m a history nerd and this film allowed me see just how tacky 1986 could be.  It’s one thing to shoot a scene on a soundstage that’s been designed to look like a living room.  It’s another thing to shoot a scene in an actual living room that has a really ugly couch as a centerpiece.  Finally, Spine actually did have an effective score.  In the usual SOV tradition, it was a synth score but it still did a good job of creating a slight feeling of unease.

There are better SOV films than Spine but there are worse ones as well.  Spine is right in the forgettable middle.

The TSL Horror Grindhouse: American Rickshaw (dir by Sergio Martino)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

1989’s American Rickshaw opens in Florida. Scott Edwards (played by Olympic gymnast Mitch Gaylord) is a college student who pays the bills by pulling a rickshaw through the streets of Miami. One day, he sees an elderly Asian woman (Michi Koba) sitting by herself at a bus stop. When it starts to rain, he offers her a free ride home. Though Scott was just being nice, it turns out that this is the most important thing he’s ever done. The woman is a witch, and when Scott is subsequently implicated in the murder of the son of televangelist Rev. Mortom (Donald Pleasence), she uses her powers to help him escape both the police and the hitman trying to track him down. The witch, aided by both a cat and a cobra, has a history of her own with the duplicitous Rev. Mortom.

American Rickshaw is an odd hybrid of a film. In many ways, it’s a standard action film. Gaylord plays Scott as a lovable loser who gets set up by a stripper named Joanna (Victoria Prouty) and Jason Mortom (Gregg Todd Davis). While Joanna seduces Scott on a boat, Jason hides behind a two-way mirror with a video camera. When Scott hears Jason behind the mirror, he breaks Jason’s camera and leaves the boat with a videotape he thinks features him and Joanna. Only later does he discover that he grabbed the wrong tape. When Scott returns for the correct tape, he discovers that Jason has been murdered. With the hitmen determined to get the tape Scott did take, he ends up getting chased all over Miami.

At the same time, it’s a horror film. The witch uses her powers to help Scott, which means there are scenes of hitmen suddenly seeing a snake approaching them. The witch’s cat also shows up and stares at the ocean until Scott finally realizes he’s meant to dive in so he can find a clue. It’s established that the witch has a magical past with the demonic Rev. Mortom and that Mortom himself is involved in his own son’s murder. “He’s the devil!” Mortom’s wife (Judy Clayton) yells at one point, and it turns out she’s pretty much right.

This, of course, is all a polite way of saying that the film doesn’t make much sense, but anyone familiar with the films of Sergio Martino will not be surprised to hear that. Like many of the great Italian horror and thriller directors, Martino was always more interested in a few strong set pieces than in a coherent plot. American Rickshaw is more about the chase than the destination, and there are enough weird moments to keep things entertaining. Mitch Gaylord is just as blandly engaging here as he was in American Anthem. (“Steve Tevere has thrown a tripus!”) What Gaylord may have lacked in range, he made up for with earnestness.

Of course, the main attraction here is Donald Pleasence, playing the televangelist with an appropriately predatory glint in his eyes. Pleasence doesn’t get a lot of scenes, but, as always, he’s a memorable presence and he commands the screen whenever he does show up. The reverend is such a strange character that it’s hard to think of any actor other than Donald Pleasence in the role.

American Rickshaw is one of those films that seems to get a lot of bad reviews, largely from people who aren’t familiar with the unique style of Italian exploitation films. Personally, I think it’s impossible not to enjoy something as weird as this film. Seriously, how can anyone resist Donald Pleasence and Mitch Gaylord in the same movie?

Dr. Strange (1978, directed by Philip DeGuere)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Dr. Stephen Strange (Peter Hooten) is a compassionate psychiatrist at a big-city hospital. He’s a man of science who lost his parents when he was eighteen and who has no idea that some of the items he inherited from his father have the ability to cast magic spells. Strange is treating a young woman named Clea Lake (Anne-Marie Martin). Clea has been having strange nightmares because she has been possessed by the sorceress Morgan Le Fay (Jessica Walter). Morgan Le Fay hopes to use Clea to kill Earth’s Sorcerer Supreme (John Mills) before he can appoint Dr. Strange as his successor.

Before there was Benedict Cumberbatch, there was Peter Hooten. A journeyman actor with a long list of TV credits, Hooten was cast to play Strange in this TV movie, which was obviously meant to serve as a pilot for a television series. Unfortunately, beyond having a mustache, this Dr. Strange doesn’t have much in common with his comic book counterpart. He’s not a former surgeon who injured his hands and is now looking for redemption for his former arrogance. Instead, he’s a mild-mannered psychiatrist who takes a “golly gee” approach to discovering that he has the power to travel between dimensions and cast spells.

CBS aired Doctor Strange opposite Roots, which was such a cultural landmark and a ratings phenomenon that a movie about a not widely known comic book hero didn’t stand much of a chance against it. It’s actually not that bad of a film. Jessica Walter is a sexy Morgan Le Fay, and Clyde Kusatsu is perfectly cast as Wong, who is more of a potential mentor here than he was in the later adaptations of Doctor Strange. The scenes where Strange travels from dimension to dimension are done well enough to suggest that, if the movie had led to a series, it could have captured the feel of the comic book. The only real problem is that Peter Hooten is a little bit bland in the title role. Hooten’s Strange would not have been a dynamic hero or an enigmatic figure. He would have just been a typical television lead.

Dr. Strange did not lead to a series, which means viewers were cheated out of a potential Nicholas Hammond/Bill Bixby/Reb Brown/Peter Hooten crossover event. After the failure of the film, it would be 38 years before Stephen Strange again showed up on screens across the world.

The Gate (1987, directed by Tibor Takacs)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

The parents of 12-year-old Glenn (Stephen Dorff) have gone on a trip for the weekend. While Glenn’s 15-year-old sister, Al (Christa Denton), throws a party, Glenn and his best friend Terry (Louis Tripp) break open a geode and read the incantation they find inside. That turns out to be a mistake, because a big tree has recently been removed from Glenn’s backyard and left behind a hole that is also a portal to Hell.

If you were a kid whose family had a subscription to HBO in the late ’80s or the early ’90s, The Gate was inescapable. It sometimes seemed as if it aired every day, once in the morning and once late at night. I remember also seeing it frequently on TBS. It was the perfect movie for a network like TBS. It was a horror movie, but with a sense of awe and wonder. Glenn may have been scared of the hole in the backyard, but he and Terry were still excited about having discovered something that only they knew about. I had a crush on Christa Denton, and Louis Tripp’s Terry reminded me of my best friend, the one who was still into heavy metal and punk while everyone else in the neighborhood was listening to rap.

Today, it’s a lot easier for me to see how derivative The Gate was of films like Gremlins, Poltergeist, and Ghoulies, but it still inspires a feeling of nostalgia whenever I see it. The stop-motion monsters that come out of the gate are still effective, as is the scene with the eye. (If you’ve seen the movie, you definitely know what I’m talking about.) The Gate is a horror film with a sentimental heart. You can open the portal to Hell and still manage to make everything all right if you have enough love for your friends and family. The only thing you can’t escape is your parents coming home at the end of the weekend.