The Devil’s Door
Gordon Price’s films are low on production value, but high on imagination. Like last year’s “Music Store Massacre,” “The Devil’s Door” looks like it was made for practically no money whatsoever, but the story the writer-director has to tell is too good to not make, regardless of one’s resources. In all honesty, this story deserves bigger resources to be told the very best it could be, but Price’s verve and passion for the concepts is impossible to ignore. He’s the type of filmmaker I can’t help but admire, one that takes what he can get, and makes his movie regardless. Thankfully, he’s got interesting stories to tell.
Possession by evil spirits, and forces out of one’s control, are a common denominator in both of his films. With “The Devil’s Door,” we start out with a crime scene, and a woman dead. The main cop on the scene, Detective Young (Ricky D’Alonzo), has the on-scene photographer take pictures of the onlookers, thinking they might have the killer looking at his work. One of the people at the scene is Bill Sykes (James Shiels III), an Afghanistan war veteran who recognizes the work from his days in the military. While at a bar, he has flashbacks of when he was taken prisoner and forced to kill for his captor (Billy Obryen Cobb) using a baseball bat. As Sykes starts to put the pieces together on his end, Detective Young goes down the rabbit hole of occult killings and comes across stories of The Devil’s Door massacres from the 19th Century, which seems to have some parallel to what he is investigating. He goes to where the massacre took place, but an encounter with Reverend Abernathy (Johnny Trash), and Sykes coming in to talk about the case, only raises more questions than it answers when it comes to solving this puzzle.
There’s a part of me that actually kind of loves watching a movie like “The Devil’s Door,” and seeing that it is a shoestring budget affair. I suppose you can chalk it up to my love of “Mystery Science Theater 3000” and the cinematic cheese it provided, but the truth is, as someone who has tried to make their own films on painfully limited resources, I can’t help but admire the tenacity someone like Price has to do something ambitious whether he has the money to make it look like an A-list production or not. If you submitted “The Devil’s Door” “For your consideration” to guilds, it’s likely most of them would think you were insane, but filmmaking skill isn’t the important thing with a film like this- storytelling is, and while it may seem predictable as it unfolds, it’s certainly compelling as a horror fan. You enjoy watching it unfold, and enjoy watching Price bring it to life with as much visual and storytelling imagination as he can. This is a film where special effects get really cheesy, and performances aren’t always strong, but the narrative carries you along anyway, giving you an interesting experience all the same. I love it when that happens, and Price does a very good job of focusing on what truly matters when you don’t have money for much else.
