Demons at the Door

After watching this movie two thoughts crossed my mind. The first one being why did I rent this? the second one being. "I think i am dumber now then 2 hours before." This movie was so bad words are hard to find to explain it, but I will do my best. The dialog was horrible, full of really bad one liners. The plot sucked beyond all reason. The special effects were done with micro soft paint. If I had made this movie, I wouldn't show it to my friends, relatives, family or anybody. if i had anything to do with this movie I would keep it a secret to the grave. There is one scene where a monster comes out to attack one of the soldiers, but you can see his HUMAN FOOT. A boot must have fallen off or something, but it is right there in the open. This movie was a waste of my time. If I could get those two hours back of my life I would. This film should be burned and barred for life.

I actually rented this terrible excuse for no budget film because I saw it advertised on Fangoria Magazine. Being a big fan of the magazine, and of good low budget film making, I try to never have too high expectations when watching Indie flicks.

This however was worse than I ever expected! I am about as positive and forgiving a person as anyone can ever meet, but even I can't find anything good about this movie. The plot, the acting, special effects, camera work, everything about this movie is just an absolute catastrophe! What in the world can possess anyone to create something this lousy! I just can't explain any of the above to myself. I was actually embarrassed for the people involved in this project simply because I know I'm not the only one who's experienced this disaster...

To top things off - the director of this movie is an effects man for SOTA - a special effects company that in the past has done fantastic work. I figured no matter how bad the movie would be - at least it would have that going for it --- boy was I wrong! I've seen low budget flicks from three decades ago that had better effects than this - I think someone with no experience and a "do it yourself" make-up effects instruction book from the seventy's could've done a better job! You've been warned - stay away from this vile wreck! It really is the worse movie ever made!

In general, I think the digital revolution is a good thing. Somewhere in the world, the next Sam Raimi is creating a horror masterpiece using just a digital movie camera, a home computer and a copy of Final Cut Pro. Hopefully very soon, someone is going to reinvigorate indie horror on a small budget and I can't wait to see it.

This is not that movie.

You know you're in trouble from the first frame of this movie. There's some kind of ridiculous voice over about angels that plays over some really terrible CG shots of the Earth from space and some kind of comet. Then, it cuts to a shot of two archaeologists working on some kind of dig. Apparently they have discovered some kind of ancient door, which they are brushing clean of sand. Take a stock shot of the desert and superimpose a picture of two people with paint brushes in the lower left corner. That's the way this shot looks.

Reading one of the other comments, I was led to believe that the lead "actor", Richard Benedetto, is some kind of established comedian. If I were Richard, I wouldn't quit my day job. Physically, he's a low rent combination of Lou Ferrrigno and Frank Stallone. His acting is the only horrifying part of this whole movie. I'm also not buying the idea that this was meant to be funny. The movie only sways into an absurd comedy in the last half hour. I think someone probably watched the first hour and realized that it wasn't working as a horror movie, so they rewrote the ending to make it into a screwball comedy thing.

The effects are obviously done on a home computer, but not anything that was made before 1979. These look like they were done on an Atari 800. These effects are worse than anything you'll see on a third graders flash animation site. The lighting is horrible. It's as if they couldn't afford a light bulb over 40 watts or they didn't know how to open up the aperture on the camera. They tried to fix this in post by blasting the image with as much light as possible, which just makes it grainy. There are shots in the movie that are so grainy that you'd swear there was sand in your TV screen.

Clearly, the writer and director were influenced by Sam Raimi, but they also seem to love the lowbrow comedy of Trey Parker. Their attempt to create a movie that combines South Park and Evil Dead is a questionable goal to begin with... the result is worse than you can imagine.

I've got to do something about my obsession with ultra-low budget cinema. For every Death Bed, there's at least a dozen Demons at the Door, and after this brain-frying example of cinemasochism, I really have to wonder if it's worth it.

DatD starts out with an expository scroll letting us know how Lucifer got in trouble with God and got himself thrown out of heaven, and now rules hell as Satan and wars against God and Man (just in case any of that is news to you). Oh, and there's a fancy macguffin which will give Satan the power to move about freely on Earth. But don't bother paying too close attention, 'cause were gonna cover this material at least three more times in dialogue.

In fact, repetition seems to be the watchword for DatD scripters. We get the same dialogue, situations, attitudes, and effects, over and over. Spraying your characters from head to toe with green demon goo can be campy fun the first time, but it gets old fast.

The cast is no particular help, either. Even if they could collectively act their way out of a paper bag, the characters they've been given are confused and unlikeable. Let's see, we've got the Marine sergeant who's locked in an eternal pissing contest with the rest of the world, his sidekick who serves little real purpose other than to receive racist insults from the demons, a bland and uninteresting scientist, the scientist's daughter, who starts out weak, useless and uninformed, but then halfway through the movie suddenly transforms into Super Ninja Archaeologist. And there's the Archangel Uriel, who you think would be more help, but who abandons everyone else to their fates after the first reel. Way to go, Forces of Good!

In the end, the movie gives up any pretense of making sense, veering off into a bizarre harrowing-of-hell sequence that I hope was intended to be funny, but it's not, really. Just kinda stupid and pathetic, like the rest of this film. One to avoid.

Dogs and horror. Think of Cujo. That seems like a pretty good combination, if done correctly of course...of course. Well, it seems someone forgot to mention that to the cast and crew of Demons at the Door. Well, let me be fair, it wasn't until after they had completely given up on this project that they gave the spotlight to Fido, so I guess that saves them some humiliation...I guess. Another combination that seemed to have waved bye-bye to this movie way before the beginning were acting and directing. Well...I can't be sure if it was the acting or the directing, maybe it was both, I can't honestly tell. I can be sure about casting though, nice job on the Middle Eastern, very believable????? Seriously, the guy was whiter than Commando Comedian. And please tell me what those demons were doing that the film kept showing over and over again. You remember, the ones that looked liked they were involved in an aerobics class. Were they trying to be scary or looking to dance with each other??? I go with dancing, because they didn't stop doing that the entire movie. ("" just mentally add those quotations in every time I use movie/film from now on) Even when the main "actor" was shooting them, all they did was dance back and forth. Damn you Castellano for shooting up a perfectly benign demon dance party!! I think what had happened was that the crew had accidentally tapped into a taping of "Richard Simmons does Hell Live" and decided to edit it into their movie for lack of content. Will Richard Simmons do anything?? Speaking of Hell, how the hell did this movie get into Blockbuster?? Is the director the VPs cousin?? Oh, and please tell me you didn't actually pay that dominatrix to be in your movie, that was by far the most horrible scene I have ever seen...ever!! I will be permanently scarred for the rest of my life, and I constantly have nightmares that the Weapons of Mass Destruction is sitting on my face!! You have succeeded in one thing crew/cast members of Demons at the Door. You have lowered that bar so much for B horror movies that anyone can now make them...seriously. I am not joking. There is now no limitation for someone wanting to making a movie. No special effects?? No problem..use windows Paint, Demons at the Door did.