Trick or Treat 2019: Let’s Open Up THE GATE!

Two Cents is an original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team will program films and contribute our best, most insightful, or most creative thoughts on each film using a maximum of 200 words each. Guest writers and fan comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future entries to the column. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion.

The Pick

Two names might jump out at you, the discerning genre fan, as you watch the opening credits for 1987’s The Gate.

#1 is Stephen Dorff, journeyman character and the proverbial motherfucker who was always trying to ice-skate uphill. At the tender age of 13, Dorff is the headlining star of this particular peculiarity as Glen, a young boy whose only problems at the start of the movie are having a best friend, Terry (Louis Tripp) who his parents disapprove of, and a big sister, Al (Christa Denton) who used to be a fun playmate but who has lately answered the siren song of teenager-hood and is no longer interested in hanging out with her kid brother.

But Glen gets a whole new brace of problems when a tree in his backyard is excavated, unwittingly opening a gateway to Hell that slowly but surely begins to trickle out all kinds of demonic activity.

That brings us to item of interest #2: Randall William Cook is today probably best known as one of the Oscar-winning geniuses that helped bring Middle-Earth to life with his work on the Lord of the Rings film trilogy, but prior to that, Cook had a long career doing visual effects for creature features including this, Ghostbusters, Fright Night, and The Thing. Here, Cook brings to life vicious critters both tiny and huge.

Directed by Tibor Takács, (who would go on to helm the pilot for Sabrina, the Teenage Witch) The Gate did only OK box office on release, but pretty quickly became beloved among fans of this era and style of horror, sitting on the intersection between more kid-friendly spooky films like Ghostbusters and the gnarlier fare like Evil Dead or Nightmare on Elm Street. A remake has been kicked around, but has never come to fruition.

So for our final bit of fun before packing up the spooky stuff for one more year, let’s all of us settle in, and take a peek into The Gate.

Next Week’s Pick:

Dolemite is not our name, but fucking up motherfuckers is still yet our game.

Rudy Ray Moore’s iconic ass-kicker has been beloved for decades now, and thanks to the new Eddie Murphy-led biopic, a new generation is falling in love with the hard-loving, harder-rhyming kung-fu superstar.

So we’re giving you guys a chance to talk about either the Craig Brewer-directed Dolemite is My Name on Netflix Instant, and/or the original classic 1971 Dolemite (available to stream on Amazon Prime). Feel free to jib and jab about either (or both) to your heart’s content — within 200 words, obvs.

Would you like to be a guest in next week’s Two Cents column? Simply watch and send your under-200-word review to twocents(at)cinapse.co anytime before midnight on Thursday!

Our Guests

Chris Chipman:

The Gate was another one of those amazing cover boxes I would see browsing the horror section at Video Craze. I’m not exactly sure how I never saw this movie until now, but it would have made a perfect fit with the likes of the Goonies and Gremlins which were in constant rotation.

First, it really amazes me how well these effects hold up. This movie was made at the tail end of stop motion and model work and both were on full display. There is some top notch practical work and camera trickery here as well.

My favorite part of the whole thing, though, is how the hell mouth’s undoing is found by the geeky metal-head kid. His obsession with his albums, song lyrics and album art helps them understand what is happening and learn how to stop it.

A warning, though, like many films of the era there are many homophobic slurs thrown back and forth by the kids that just feel gross now.

All in all, The Gate is a treat!

Verdict: TREAT (@TheChippa)

Brendan Agnew (The Norman Nerd):

There are few things I love more than a good horror film that’s gnarly enough to put a couple gray hairs on your head, but also just “safe” enough to show to kids… so long as they’re A) pretty sturdy, or B) not yours. There’s a certain kind of magic in the Poltergeists and Gremlinses of the world, partly because there are so few of them that work that well.

Welp, add The Gate to that list…mostly. After a solid opening with choice use of “dump the viewer into probably-a-dream so they feel off balance”, The Gate actually takes an unfortunately lengthy time to really get going. Glen (a.k.a Stephen Dorff, a.k.a Baby Deacon Frost) is a solid young anchor for the piece, but the the film kinda wanders around the place setting up the titular Gate as well as supporting players. However, once the film decides to stop messing about and becomes a siege movie with teenagers fighting demons using Arcane Knowledge gleaned from heavy metal albums?

Yeah, that shit’s pretty tight.

Along with some solid planting and payoff (particularly in a way that makes redeems some of the sibling stuff that stumbles a bit early on), The Gate has some sumptuous creepy visuals, neat creature designs, and shockingly effective effects work. It also seems to know just how nasty to get without totally souring the mix for the supposed target audience, and boasts a finale that really cooks.

Call it a solid three-star movie that gains an extra half-star by really sticking the landing — imperfect, but a lot of fun.

Verdict: TREAT (@BLCAgnew)

The Team

Brendan Foley

Ugh.

I frigging hate having to be the party pooper for what’s been a fantastic Trick’r’Treat series this year, but I just can’t with The Gate. I want to love this movie so bad, as it’s hitting all my usual sweet-spots in its tone, characters, and subject matter. I love a good “otherworldly evil in your backyard” story, and The Gate, on paper, should have been a rollicking bit of creature feature fun.

Instead it just lays there, with an overwhelmed young cast that never click together as family or friends, and a script that refuses to engage with any of the interesting ideas floating just underneath the surface. It’s like someone put together a list of cool ideas to include in a horror movie, then forgot to add the movie.

The film’s second half is stronger, as Randall William Cook gets let loose to play. But once the demon stuff starts happening, it has all the rhythm and pacing of a frying pan whacking you upside the head over and over.

I’d be up for a remake, but The Gate remains a miss for me.

Verdict: Trick (@TheTrueBrendanF)

Justin Harlan:

As one of the films I utilized to get my eldest son — Cash — hooked on horror, The Gate has a special place in my heart. I dug it as a kid, but it wasn’t one of my go to films back then. When the Vestron Blu-ray released a few years back, it became a permanent fixture in my home.

While a “family friendly” horror film, it includes extremely fun effects and some legitimate scares. The stop motion is genuinely incredible and the film has such a great heart to it. It’s a perfect GATE-way to the genre and is certainly a major piece in horror sinking its teeth into Cash. For that alone, I’ll never stop loving this film.

Verdict: Treat (@thepaintedman)

Austin Vashaw:

With its kid protagonists, awesome monsters, and potent but mostly goreless scares, The Gate seems like a great gateway horror film for kids who have seen the Amblin-adjacent stuff like Gremlins and Poltergeist and are dipping their toes into the next step up (Silver Bullet, Return of the Living Dead II).

In that tradition, one of The Gate’s more subtly effective elements is that it’s not the terror of a moonlit graveyard, or a lonely cabin in the woods, haunted castle, or creepy carnival. This is the horror that can reach you at home — monsters under the bed, demons in the backyard. Corpses in the walls. Gateway to hell in the living room.

On rewatching The Gate, I still love it — but am a little more aware of its flaws. It’s got a nice buildup in tension but it goes overlong, taking too long to get to the monstery goodness that we’re here for. But the back half is pretty terrific and well worth the wait.