How can a film be scary and funny at the same time? I don't know, but that's what Beyond the Door manages to be. It's an Exorcist rip-off with a bit of Rosemary's baby thrown in for good measure, filtered through some Italian film companies' shattered brain pan. Best example of this is the very beginning of the film, which Satan narrates himself while we watch a writhing naked woman on a plinth, whose face then turns into Jesus. A Jesus with boobs.

Jessica lives in San Francisco with her husband Robert and their two kids, Gail (who talks like a hippy and sounds ten years older than she looks) and Ken (who is about five and swears like a trooper!). Jessica is once again pregnant, and therefore exhibits the usual symptoms of what we used to called Irish Toothache: nausea, eating weird things, in this case a rotten banana off the street, extreme mood swings, murdering a bunch of gold fish, blaming her husband for every single wrong in the world, slapping her kids about.

Vomiting blood isn't the best indication that the pregnancy is going well, and even stranger is that the pregnancy is progressing at an alarming rate. Jessica is concerned and wants to have an abortion as the pregnancy is now causing her to float about the room and leave mud everywhere (don't think about it). When the doctor agrees to the abortion, she goes mental and insists that the baby be born! Women, eh?

I burst out laughing when the kids started begging with their father not to leave them alone with their mother, but then the film did a strange thing by becoming effective and creepy. When the kid brother is alone he starts talking to an invisible thing sitting in a rocking chair, his sister arrives, going on about something or other and totally oblivious to the fact that every doll in the room has turned to stare at her. What's harder to ignore is the room going completely mental, the dolls walking about, and a cake floating up to the ceiling and getting squashed.

The kids are shipped off somewhere and the strange fellow turns out to be Jessica's ex-boyfriend Richard Johnson, who didn't fare to well with the occult way back in The Witch In Love either. He wants the baby to be born and insists he help, whereas the doctor thinks it's probably for the best if the demon spawn of hell be removed. It's like the worst abortion debate in the world, all set to the soundtrack of a woman vomiting, cussing and flying about the room.

I've been looking forward to this film for some time and wasn't disappointed. I thought the really daft period of Italian horror started later in the decade, but here it is, a fully fledged trash classic that ticks all the boxes you need. Or I need, anyway.

I will consider this DVD viewing a first-time watch for me, because I saw the unedited edition now released on disc by Code Red, under the European title THE DEVIL WITHIN HER (not to be confused with the Joan Collins film of the same name). Indeed, this Italian horror movie has gone through several title changes -- from CHI SEI? in its own country, to its most recognizable American name, BEYOND THE DOOR. But the only way to see it is under the complete DEVIL WITHIN HER form, since the U.S. version -- which I did see on a crappy videotape 20+ years back -- is a much more incomprehensible mess. Two directors tackled this (Ovidio G. Assonitis and Roberto D'Ettore Piazzoli),which is obviously a ripoff of THE EXORCIST with hints of ROSEMARY'S BABY. Director Ovidio states he got the idea from seeing the Polanski film, and from only reading the Exorcist novel.

Juliet Mills (of TV's NANNY AND THE PROFESSOR) stars as a British woman named Jessica living in San Francisco with her husband Robert (Gabriele Lavia) and her two small children. She becomes impregnated with what may be a spawn of the devil himself, and as a result she goes through a series of disturbing trends: smashing her hubby's favorite fish tank, eating a raw banana peel from the street, kissing her sleeping little boy lustfully on his lips, spewing blood and vomit, and rotating her head and levitating. A strange bearded man (Richard Johnson) who has had ties with her from the past, follows her husband around and introduces himself as Dimitri, a cultist who is now trying to help Jessica and to also release his own soul.

I don't think this is a good movie, but it's serviceable horror fare with enough shocks and eerie optical effects considering it's an EXORCIST copycat made on a limited budget. Some of the photography is hauntingly done, and Juliet Mills is quite good in her part as the possessed mom. The participation of Richard Johnson also lends something of class to such horrific goings-on. I think this film gets too harshly judged, though I am not surprised if most of those reviewers only got to see the inferior common U.S. Theatrical Cut. **1/2 out of ****

'...you gotta stop that, or it's going to blow my mind. Man if you don't quit crying, you're gonna have a really bad trip. For Pete's sake, get under the blanket and cool it, will you?'

"Beyond the Door" is pretty much a combination of "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Exorcist"--though with none of the style or quality of these films. It's an Italian-made film--with some English speaking actors and some Italians who are dubbed. However, unlike most Italian films, much of this was made in the US.

The film begins with some really silly dialog from Satan as well as some full-frontal nudity that seemed very gratuitous. This is all part of some strange introduction that doesn't make a lot of sense.

The scene now switches to San Francisco and shows a very bizarre set of kids with their mother, played by Juliette Mills. This entire family is weird--with the boy constantly drinking condensed Campbell's Green Pea soup (??) and the sister using some of the most bizarre and inappropriate dialog I've ever heard. Part of it, I am sure, is for shock value and part of it is simply bad writing (see the example at the top of the review). As for the husband, he lives in complete denial, as throughout the film his wife becomes increasingly bizarre and possessed and yet he refuses to get her professional help. All this, apparently, because she carries the spawn of Satan within her.

So is this any good? Well, yes and no. The film is dumb and derivative. The writing, especially the writing, is just terrible. But, no the other hand, I must admit that the special effects for Mills were pretty amazing for 1974. Worth seeing if you have very, very low standards.