Beyond the Door Reviews

This Italian rip-off of both THE EXORCIST (1973) and ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968) stars Mills as the bored wife of a record producer who has an affair with a mysterious stranger and becomes pregnant. Her lover, of course, has made a pact with the devil, and the fetus in Mills's womb is satanic. This causes her to start looking and behaving like Linda Blair in THE EXORCIST, while the little devil inside her causes toys to move on their own and doors to slam. Complete with spinning heads and green puke, this blatant plagiarization made a surprising amount of money in the US, coming in second behind JAWS at the box office for several weeks in New York City. When not reprising events from the Friedkin and Polanski films, BEYOND THE DOOR fails to make much sense, but director Oliver Hellman (Ovidio G. Assonitis) manages to inject a bit of atmosphere into the familiar proceedings. Fans of "Nanny and the Professor" may get a kick out of seeing Mills spew green goo all over the room. Exteriors were filmed in San Francisco, interiors in Rome. A sequel directed by Mario Bava (see below) is a sequel in name only.