Review: The Gate (1987)

Stars: Stephen Dorff, Louis

Directed by: Tibor Takacs

Budget: $2.5 million

Yes another one of them 80s comedy horrors, accept this ones a bit more serious than the rest.
So we see a very spritely Stephen Dorff apparently awake in the night. He takes a little walk through the house.
This amused me as when he passes the kitchen table a bottle of HP brown sauce is on there, a popular British brand of sauce we enjoy mostly on our breakfasts. Anyway hearing some kind of crying he ventures out to his treehouse in the garden. Inside he finds a doll crying then the tree gets hit by lightning and falls over with him inside.

Bam he wakes up again to the sounds of saws and work men, as the tree really has fallen down. When the roots removed a small geode falls free. We meet Terry later a friend who we learn lost his mum. He thinks digging will find them a bigger one they can sell for 100 bucks.
The inadvertently free up some gas which clears to reveal a large geode and bigger hole.

We then meet glen's older sister Alex, she's a typical teen girl not interested in her brother only herself. They borh persuade their parents to leave them alone in the house for 3 days while they're away. It backfires on glen as he gets grounded while they're away.
Alex immediately throws a party like any teen would. Terry and Glenn manage to crack open the new geode which leaves words written on a sketch pad.
Reciting the words glen and Terry unknowingly open the gate under the tree but only a crack.

Then the shit really hits the fan (foreshadowing) glen gets levitated, Terry gets a visit from his dead mum. Unfortunately his mum turns out to be the families aged dog dead in his arms. We then see Terry go home the next day, he seems to be having life hard with a dad that's rarely there. He reads on of his metal albums and realises that they were into demon worship/summoning and learns that the gate needed a sacrifice to open.

Alex entrusts her almost boyfriend to take the dog to an animal shelter. When the place is shut he returns and burries the dog in the gate hole.
Terry warns glen that the sacrifice should not be put in the hole otherwise the gate will open. They use some woods from the album sleeve and think they've sealed it.
Later Terry mentions that if the gate was opened it would need 2 human sacrifices to release it's evil into the world. Also then it would take an act of great love to kill/seal the demons back up.

Again demon shit goes down and they try to use the sleeve to seal the gate, it burns up. They then try passages from the Bible and when Terry after escaping from falling in the hole throws the Bible into there, they think they've sealed it. The twins who were staying over with Alex hid during all this and when the boys come over Alex just tells them all to leave.
The demons return in the shape of a dead worker Terry said was sealed in the walls, just as a joke to scare glen earlier. It drags both glen and Alex into the walls thus getting its sacrifices.

Vaguely glen does later stop it all with something that has a lot of love in it. I wont spoil anymore and leave it to you to see how it all ends.
Ok then sooooo the gate like some 80s comedy horror it's very hit and miss, the acting ranges from decent to diabolical at times. Also it truly feels like it was wrote by a kid as plot points seem to come as and when needed.
This doesn't necessarily make it a bad film though it's just it's pacing feels like it needed this padding wrote in over the weekend lol.

Overall the little demons are amusing and it really tries to hit notes that miss in the 80s comedy horror genre. But not by far so I'll give the gate a reasonable 3 out 5.