Beyond the Door, Part 2 (1977)

It might have something to do with the value of my time that I never saw Beyond the Door, but that notion is quickly shattered by the fact that I did indulge in Beyond the Door, Part 2.  90 minutes of my life are gone forever, dissipated into the ether, ticked off the all-too-short counter of my life, never to be seen again.  I can only deal with that by observing that by not having seen the first one, I am not doubling the loss.  Always the eternal optimist.

Anyway, Beyond the Door, Part 2 apparently has its own set of problems.  Half-assed internet research tells me that it is not really a sequel to Beyond the Door, rather it is a fast-money scheme by distributors who decided to take Mario Bava’s Shock, slap on the title Beyond the Door, Part 2 and call it a sequel for the American release.  Knowing that, you’re not even sure if the bad dubbing is accurate to what the actors were saying.  For all I know, they could have been quoting Shakespeare.

The movie follows Dora (Daria Nicolodi) a disturbed young mother who moves into a new house with her young on Marco (David Colin, Jr.) and her new husband Bruno (John Steiner).  She is a widow after her abusive first husband met a violent death.  And, what do you know, the ghost of the dead husband returns to haunt the new home.  What follows is kind of a cross between The Exorcist and The Omen as the husband possesses the son and tries to do away with the wife – she’s even terrorized by a disembodied hand that creeps up from time to time. 

I don’t want to give this movie points for quality but in the interest of giving credit where credit is due, I must admit that, stylistically, this movie isn’t all-together horrible, but in execution, it does everything it can to keep from being a competent production.  In other words, this is an aggressively bad movie that practically dares you to like it.