The Doorway starts at an old run down house as an electrician named Charlie (Joe Moylan) enters the basement in the hope of turning the power back on, unfortunately for him all he does is disturb an ancient medallion hanging on the wall which opens a gateway to hell & unleashes the demon of Evelyn Van Buren (Teresa DePriest) who happens to be a previous occupant of the house 100's of years ago & had orgies in which herself & other's would engage in sex with demons in satanic rituals, hey it passed the time I suppose... Young care free teenagers Rick (Christian Harmony) & his girlfriend Susan (Suzanne Bridgham) plus two of their friends Owen (Don Maloney) & Tammy (Lauren Woodland) are entrusted with the house rent free in exchange for doing the place up ready for the new owners, the small matter of a $10,000 fee helps as well, even though first impressions are not good they decide to stick it out. It is a decision they may not live to regret as evil demon Evelyn is a horny ghost with sex, murder & mayhem on her mind. In steps ghost expert professor Lamont (Roy Scheider) & his lovely assistant Lydia (Teresa DePriest again) who happens to be a direct descendant of the Van Buren's, will they be able to cleanse the house of evil & send the demons back from where they came? Watch it to find out...
This Irish American co-production was written & directed by Michael B. Druxman who also has a small uncredited cameo as the College Dean, I personally thought that The Doorway was a fairly decent horror film & while nothing outstandingly brilliant it served a purpose. The script feels a bit fragmented & shifts in both direction & tone a few times, it starts of as a standard haunted house tale with things going bump in the night & scarring everyone but then it turns into a paranormal investigation film as professor Lamont sets up his equipment to monitor the ghostly goings on but it then goes into teen slasher mode towards the end as the demonic ghosts turn into green scaly monsters & hunt our teenage heroes down. The Doorway never had a steady constant story as it changed to significantly too many times for my liking, almost as if the filmmakers were trying to please a numerous different types of potential audiences, in the end all it does is frustrate & never really satisfies anyone. Having said that it moves along at a fair pace, it's never too boring, it has a reasonable story although the constant nudity & sexual references seemed forced & provided 90 odd minutes worth of haunted house horror entertainment which is just about all I could have hoped for.
Director Druxman does an OK job, while the film doesn't have much style it's watchable & not too badly made. There isn't much atmosphere, there are no scares & that monster thing at the end looked a bit silly to me. Forget about any real gore, there's one scene where someone has their face gorily ripped off but it's shown so quickly as to be almost totally redundant. There is a fair amount of nudity & sex on display here, if that's your cup of tea.
Technically The Doorway is fine, it's competent & that's about the best we can expect. Even though it's definitely set in America it was actually filmed in Northern Ireland here in the UK which I could tell straight away. The acting was OK considering the material & both Tammy & Susan were nice looking ladies, I had no idea Roy Scheider's career got this bad, what is he doing in crap like this? Needless to say The Doorway is a million light years from classics such as The French Connection (1971), Jaws (1975) & Marathon Man (1976) among other's, then again at least The Doorway was better than SeaQuest DSV (1993) & the subsequent TV series that followed it, but that wouldn't be too hard, would it?
The Doorway is an average haunted house horror with slightly more gore & nudity than one might expect from a film of this type. Worth a watch if your desperate but don't expect too much or you'll be disappointed. To add to his seemingly endless list of credits The Doorway was executive produced by the legendary Roger Corman.
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