If you’re going to infringe on someone’s copyright, go big or go home.
Horror is one of art’s oldest genres. It also happens to be one of the most lucrative ones. There’s an incredibly simple reason for this: For every original success story within the genre, there are a hundred copycats just waiting to dig their claws into the coattails of their inspiration and ride their way to a quick buck.
Though it’s been largely forgotten in the wake of a newer crop of devilish thrillers, BEYOND THE DOOR (also known as THE DEVIL WITHIN HER internationally) will ultimately endure for a number of whacky reasons. Its original surprise success was very likely the reason for its notoriety–namely that it ended up being one of the only films you’ll ever see that had its ass sued off by the rights owners of the “inspiring” source material.
Warner Bros. took one look at the head-turning, vomit-blasting, profanity-filled possession romp and immediately phoned their attorneys. Sure, they had a point (and won the case, to boot), but let’s look at the two real reasons BEYOND THE DOOR made more than 20 times its budget in the US alone.
First, let’s talk marketing. You gotta admit director Ovidio G. Assonitis worked fast, getting his “tribute” into theaters less than a year after THE EXORCIST first exploded onto the horror scene. Even more admirable were its original TV spots. These should have won some kind of early Clio Award for destroying the minds of an entire generation of American children. Just imagine the shitstorm this created when it popped up in the middle of something like “The Waltons”.
Next, we’ve got to take a peek at the casting. Just a few years earlier, Emmy Award-winner Juliet Mills was playing a proper, yet keenly intuitive English nanny on TV’s “Nanny and the Professor”. Here, both her head and her career take a 180-degree turn. When she’s not having violent mood swings and eating discarded bananas, Mills is levitating and doing kooky things with her eyes (trust me, you’ll know it when you see it). Talk about going against type!
But if we’re going to talk about casting, there’s no way we can ignore Mills’ two kids, who are hands-down the best thing in the film. These tots are barely out of kindergarten, but they curse like they’re already enrolled in the Samuel L. Jackson School of Technology. Also, the film’s seven writers pulled their collective genius to give these little semen demons arguably the most entertaining dialogue of the mid-70s, which, in hindsight, might be more normal than you might think if you have to endure a devil-possessed mother. The line “Man, if you don’t quit crying, you’re gonna have a real bad trip!” is so righteous, I hang out with unstable people just so I can work that ripper in conversation.
To celebrate a half-century of all this nutty bullshittery, go treat yourself to the Code Red or Arrow Films release of BEYOND THE DOOR on Blu-ray. Why? Because it not only contains the original cut of the film, but also the extended European version suitable for all of you who have absolutely no shame (and that’s basically 93% of the people reading this article–bless all of you and your perverted little hearts).
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