A gang of train robbers who are not the Daltons tangle with a coven of witches who were killed 200 years ago (to the day) by Cotton Mather. They needed a better title like "Dalton's vs the Salem Witches". That way they could run it with "Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter" (technically the granddaughter) and "Billy the Kid Versus Dracula."

The film started out great and once they got to the brothel it unraveled.

Guide: F-word, sex, no nudity.

Well, initially all I knew about "The Pale Door" was that it was allegedly some sort of horror movie. And truth be told, that was essentially all that was needed to have my interest. But I must also say that the movie's cover/poster definitely had caught my attention as well.

So I sat down to watch the 2020 movie titled "The Pale Door", not really knowing what to expect from it, so writers Cameron Burns, Aaron B. Koontz and Keith Lansdale had all the possibilities to impress me with this movie.

Sadly, they didn't really manage to do so. Sure, I will admit that "The Pale Door" definitely had potential, but director Aaron B. Koontz just dropped the ball before the movie hit the halfway marker, and the movie never regained its momentum after that. And it ended up being a less than mediocre movie, actually.

The storyline told in "The Pale Door" started out adequately, but it was fast sliding downhill before hitting the halfway milestone, and director Aaron B. Koontz didn't manage to bring the movie back on track. And then suddenly there were crisp and burnt women milling about, just to add to an already befuddled storyline.

It should be said that the acting in the movie was adequate, but it was a real shame that the actors and actresses had precious little to work with in terms of a proper script and storyline. And it reflected poorly on the overall impression of the movie.

I am rating this western horror a less than mediocre four out of ten stars. This was a movie that came quietly in under the radar, and it will leave just as quietly as well, never to be seen a second time. I suppose if you have absolutely nothing else to watch, "The Pale Door" can suffice. But don't get your hopes up for a grand moment in cinematic history.

Deciding to pull off a train-robbery, a group of outlaws is shocked to learn their target is not gold but rather a chained-and-shackled young woman who offers to take them back to her home-town as a thank you, only to realize too late they've stumbled into a coven of witches and must fight to get away alive.

This was a decent if overall flawed effort. Among its better qualities is the enjoyable and explosive change-over that occurs where it stops being a western and turns into a witchcraft effort. Using the ravenous witches as more of a creature feature due to the unusual abilities they are shown to utilize, from turning into burnt-skin deformities and crawling on ceilings to prancing through the trees which makes for a great time overall here when mixed with more traditional spell-casting. That this livens up the final half with some solid confrontations and tons of gore as the viciousness of their straight-forward attacks or the eeriness of the supernatural spells in general really works nicely for this one this is really what the film does best is dish out the blood and gore for the action. There are some big flaws featured here. One of the main problems is the utterly dreary and slow-going pace that keeps this one stalled out for long periods of the running time. The first half takes forever to get into the main story, going overboard on overly talkative scenes showing the various problems and issues the family has in town with the bar confrontations and discussions that don't spell anything out as to what's happening or provide this with any kind of explanation as to what's going on. The opening invasion and shootout that tries to provide this with some action yet ultimately are so confusing and disjointed that there's nothing useful about it other than eating up running time, which is the issue. As well, the film tends to struggle with how to resolve itself because it can't mix the genres together all too well. The idea of the witchcraft angle taking place in the old-west could've been far more significant here but it just comes across as slightly lazy and uninspired with the finale resorting to maudlin speeches and tender reflections about the past which are incredibly contrived and cringe-inducing. They have so little room to be had placed inside a film about the goings-on in place as the series of revelations about what's going on just stops the pace dead and could've been removed without meaning anything. They manage to hold the film down quite a bit over the positives.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language and Brief Nudity.