THE GATE 1987, Warner Home Video

DIRECTOR:  Tibor Takacs    PRODUCER: John Kemeny   

STARRING:  Steven Dorff,  Christa Denton,  Louis Tripp,  Kelly Rowan,  Jennifer Irwin.

This story begins the day before youngster Glen and early teen Allison (whom Glen fondly refers to as Al)'s parents are going on vacation.   Their parents are taking a leap of faith in Al, since they are leaving her in charge of the house, no baby sitter.   Al is thrilled with this, as are her friends -- because they are planning to have an unchaperoned party.   Typical family situation, right?

Well, not really.   See, some workers uproot a tree in Glen's backyard, leaving a gaping hole. Naturally, being young boys, Glen and his friend Terry HAVE to go explore said hole -- 'cuz that's what kids do, right?   Well, in the hole the boys find a strange stone, which Terry declares is a geode and is worth lots of money.   They take the stone up to Glen's room and try to to break it open with no luck.   But suddenly it opens on it's own in a strange mist.   The mist clears, but has left some symbols on an etch-a-sketch type pad on the desk. As they read the words, commotion starts brewing in the hole in the back yard.

That night the planned party is held, with typical teenage stuff going on.   They tell spooky stories and do that "light as a feather, stiff as a board" thing, lifting Glen with their fingers.  But something goes wrong, and Glen levitates, then falls to the ground.    He's not happy about that, but he gets over it, the party guests go home, and soon it's only Glen, Al and Terry, who is spending the night with Glen. Terry has a dream where his dead mother has come back to life and he hugs her.   Terry wakes to find he is holding Glen's dog, which has died. The kids don't want to call their parents on their vacation and tell them about the dog, so they decide to do away with the dog's corpse themselves.   That task is assigned to Al's boyfriend, who after making several bumbling attempts to get rid of the dog's body finally buries him in the gaping hole in the back yard.   No problem!

Meanwhile, Terry goes home and puts on a heavy metal album by the band Sacrifyx;   Interestingly, this album is the only one Sacrifyx ever put out.   Immediately afterward, they were all mysteriously killed in a plane crash. He listens to a creepy monologue, and when he looks through the album packaging he sees the same weird symbols as he saw on the pad in Glen's room.   He realizes that the album is a warning against opening the gates of hell, which they have almost inadvertently done.

But Terry and Glen believe they didn't complete the ritual, since there was no sacrifice (they are unaware that the dog was buried in the hole in the back yard.)   Naturally they want to make sure they undo any damage they've done, so they play the album backwards to figure out how close the gate completely.   However, because the sacrifice was done, the spell does not work, and tons of little foot tall devil-like claymation creatures issue forth to terrorize Terry, Glen, Al and Al's bitchy friends (whose names I can't remember.)

Eventually, the evil takes everyone except Glen, who miraculously manages to figure out how to defeat the big daddy of the demons with a rocket.   He does away with the demons and and everyone reappears, including Glen and Al's dog.   And the world is safe, until GATE II.

RATING:   NO head bobs!

This movie was clearly made to appeal to a younger crowd: There is no nudity, no blood, and no one really dies -- not even the dog.   There's nothing interesting about this movie, and the special effects are laughable.

No nudity whatsoever.

DID YOU KNOW...,:

 -   Steven Dorff (Glen) has gone on to star in such movies as BLADE, FEARDOTCOM and CECIL B. DEMEMTED.

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