If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then William Friedkin and company must have been blushing throughout the 70s, as opportunistic producers around the globe seized on The Exorcist and churned out a slew of copycats. Italy especially just couldnt stop ripping it off for yearsnearly a full decade later, cash-ins like Satans Baby Doll (itself more or less a remake of Malabimba: The Malicious Whore) were still arriving to extend the dark lords reign over grindhouses and drive-ins. As is often the case with the Italian film industry, the filmmakers involved zeroed in on the schlock, leaving the Bergman-inspired crises of faith and maternal anxieties of The Exorcist drowned in a flood of pea soup and vulgarity.
Among the earliest and most notorious efforts, Ovidio G. Assonitiss Beyond the Door inspired litigation from Warner Brothers, whose suit was dismissed on the grounds of not having much of a case. I like to think the judge insisted that WB couldnt possibly claim dominion over a film that may or may not be of this Earth. At any rate, the decision not only allowed Beyond the Door to be released, but also opened the floodgates for everything from Abby to The Manitou.
The popularity of Beyond the Door itself allowed itor at least its titleto endure for over a decade, as its success eventually intersected with another Euro-horror pastime: unofficial sequels with nothing more than their predecessors name and some vaguely similar subject matter in common. Lucio Fulcis breakthrough with Zombi 2 famously made this a viable tactic, but it was hardly a new one since Mario Bavas Shock was repackaged in America as Beyond the Door II a couple of years earlier.
So begins the saga of Beyond the Door, a series that owes its existence to The Exorcist but evolved beyond it, carrying with it a demon seed that spread across borders, language barriers, and even sub-genres as it persisted into the twilight of the slasher era. As one character in Beyond the Door intones, evil cannot create; it can only repeat, but repetition which continues for an eternity, a passage that unwittingly summarizes the era that birthed the film itself.
BEYOND THE DOOR aka CHI SEI? [1974] (d. Ovidio G. Assonitis & Robert Barrett, w. Ovidio G. Assonitis, Antonio Troiso, Robert Barrett, Giorgio Marini, Aldo Crudo, Alex Rebar, and Christopher Cruise)
As Pazuzu was infamously chatty in The Exorcist, it follows, then, that Satan would narrate is own exploits in Beyond the Door. His voicewhich always seems to be on the verge of a cackleis the first audiences hear as darkness fills the screen. The insecure devil assures us that, while modern disbelievers have perhaps made many forget his existence, this film could not happen without him. What a prima donna.
Eventually, the void yields to a womans (Juliet Mills) body lying prone, bathed by an ethereal glow, the site of Satans latest nefarious plot. His attention suddenly turns towards sparing a mans (Richard Johnson) life as his car tumbles over a cliff, so long as he can claim his soul in his service. Nothing quite makes sense, especially when the scene abruptly shifts to San Francisco, where the ominous melodies of Tubular Bells have been switched out for wah-wah funk stylings.
A family speeds through the streets, with patriarch Robert (Gabriele Lavia) behind the wheel, musing about his secretarys impending deflowering. His wife Jessica (Mills) finds the news delightful, declaring perhaps she wont be so hysterical now, even as her children sit in the backseat, well within earshot. Their young son (David Colin, Jr.) sips on pea soup, while the daughterwho looks to be about 7 or 8 years oldgags at her father getting all sexy. Exasperated, she coaxes her brother to reveal the new nickname theyve adopted for their father: asshole! he squeals, much to his parents befuddlement.
Within the space of about five minutes, Assonitis practically obliterates standard conventions regarding taste or coherence. Touchstones from The Exorcist appear in the recurring soup gag and the kids incessant obscenities, leading one to believe that Satan has already claimed their bodies as vessels. In one of the films many charming reveals, it turns out theyre not possessedtheyre just ordinary hellions bent on causing grief for their parents. Jessica especially has little time for this now that shes suddenly become pregnant with a baby that is growing at an abnormal rate and threatening to tear her apart from this inside.
Thats the big hook with Beyond the Door: this time, Satan commandeers the mothers body rather than corrupting a child, though his goal in inducing unholy freak-outs is more or less unchanged. Unlike Friedkin, Assonitis and co-director Robert Barrett dont bridge these sequences with brooding atmosphere or drama, opting instead to fill out all the downtime with weird, unaccounted for tics, such as a doctors obsession with lemon drop candies. Absurd dialogue and clipped editing rhythms amplify awkward character interactions, most of which are superfluous to the plot yet feel absolutely vital to the experience that is Beyond the Door.
Unfolding in a schizophrenic manner befitting a film boasting two directors, seven credited writers, and two languages, Beyond the Door nonetheless feels truly singular, especially once it hones in on its Exorcist beats. Assonitis reserves his best filmmaking for these moments, where the usual head-turning bodily contortions, levitations, and vomiting join a parade of other memorable shocks: dolls eyes glow eerily to life, a POV shot captures a dislodged eyeballs flight across a room, and Jessica creepily dotes on her son with open-mouthed kisses as he sleeps. Inexplicable freeze frames and subliminal insert shots regularly disrupt the visuals to unsettling effect as Millss performance descends into hysterics. Her faceregularly spattered with thick, green vomitwavers between that of a woman in peril and a demon in complete control.
Once her salvation arrives in the guise of a former lover (Johnson, finally revealing his purpose from the prologue), Beyond the Door has almost completely escaped the shadow of its more famous American progenitor. Even its exorcism-charged climax takes on a unique tenor in its commitment to obfuscation, a pledge that extends all the way to a great fuck you ending, a distinction it earns not with the downer nature of its conclusion but, rather, with its sheer inexplicability. A final freeze frame holds on the image almost in an effort to assure you that, yes, that just happened whether it makes any sense or not (it decidedly does not).
In addition to cracking the door for its fellow Exorcist copycat brethren, Beyond the Doors distinct brand of celluloid madness is coded with the same DNA that would birth The Visitor five years later. There, Assonitis would completely bend the laws of space and time, essentially rewiring cinematic language with the same garbled tongue glimpsed in Beyond the Door.
