The Gate (1987) Is The Distilled Horrors Of A Childhood Left Behind
I've often told my anecdote about first seeing The Gate. At a young age, I vividly remember catching it on television while home alone. Unlike the curated hellscape of apps that is modern television, I had no guide (or TV guide for the matter) to clarify that I was watching Tibor Takács first feature film. All I knew was that there was something very wrong in the lives of proto-hesher Terry, and baby Stephen Dorff (on Golf). My intrigue turned to unadulterated horror as the supernatural hemorrhaged into an idyllic suburbia. Dorff gripping his enraged father's face only to watch it collapse into fluid, then reforming into stop-motion demons. The wall of Dorff's room collapsing to reveal a handyman's moldering corpse. A demonically-corrupted Terry stabbed in the eye with a barbie doll, the plastic leg coming away soaked in gore. My child mind was, how you say, not fucking prepared. Turns out, that is the very intentional (black) magic of The Gate.
Young Glen (Stephen Dorff) is on the cusp of his teen years, and already his world is in flux. His once close relationship with older-sister Alexandra (Christa Denton) seems to be slipping away, their previously shared hobby of model rockets making way for her burgeoning interest in boys and new friendships. Left to his own devices, Glen spends his days with senior dog Angus and proto-metalhead/future demonology student, Terry (Louis Tripp). Exploring the site of an uprooted tree, Glen discovers a geode which later transmits an incantation onto paper. Uttering the words (And having unintentionally provided a blood sacrifice), Glen and Terry discover they have begun the ritual of opening a gate to an unholy realm. Malefic beings begin to emerge from the schism, seeking to complete the ritual so that they can turn Glen's banal suburbia into a living hell.
The Gate has had immense resonance with both myself, and many of my close friends. I believe this comes from its pitch perfect portrayal of lived adolescent experiences. Glen is watching his sister evolve out of her childhood, and on some level he knows he's also bound for that path. Its a source of fear and heartbreak that this change comes with the price of distance between the siblings. Glen is grieving a loss of innocence. Adding to that sense of loss is the element of Angus the dog, sacrificed unintentionally to open the gate during the first half of the film. The death of a family pet is often the first time a child encounters the notion of mortality. The emotional response is a complex one: Fear and anger focused at what can only be described as an unseen, yet infinitely cruel force.
The horrors emerging from the gate appear in a way that fulfill the infinite imagination we all possessed as children. In both form and function, they scratch the same itch that caused you to believe an older kid when they told you Freddy Krueger actually lived down the street, or that Blood Mary was three chants from appearing in your mirror. Hence the dead handyman collapsing out of the foundations of Glen's house, ready to drag his victims into an otherworldly void. The aforementioned face-melting parents represent a particularly cruel joke. Glen thinking that his salvation has arrived in the form of his parents is like running from a pursuing nightmare creature, only to find out no distance has been made. That both the handyman and the parental doppelgängers are composed of the same drone demons is not coincidence. Fear comes from the same place, but its inscrutable nature is what make it so powerful.
Moving away from critical analysis, I'd be remiss if we didn't talk about some of the genuinely cool horror shit at play. Terry's whole proto-metalhead vibe is impeccable, his lonely home life likely a factor in his (Very cool) socially less acceptable music taste. That interest is what allows him to discover that the black sorcery at play may have been the undoing of occult-dabbling band Sacrifyx. Their album the Dark Book and the lore behind it makes for great exposition and again, links to heavy metal urban legend in a way that lead us to Manson taking out his own ribs to self-fellate. Touches like the portraits of Glen's family changing so their bodies look massacred give the evil force a singular vindictiveness, especially given that our young protagonists crave an escape from the barrage of terrors they have unleashed.
The original script by Micheal Nankin was a more brutal affair, the emerging demons slaughtering neighbors, and the arch-demon composed of bloody innards. .While I would have loved to see it, the final version of this film strikes a cinematic cord that is as close to perfect as one can get. The Gate is a powerful ritual that stays deep in the bones of those who consume its offerings. It goes without saying, that type of magic can be magnificently dangerous.
-Dr. Benny Graves
