THE GATE II
There's no way it could have been as bad as I'd feared
For a kiddie horror movie, this really ain't too bad, and nowhere near as bad as I'd been led to fear. That doesn't exactly make it a good film, but I've seen worse.
All I remember of the first Gate movie was that it had some nifty FX and a big monster at the end which was killed by flying a model rocket into it. Apparently, it also starred a very young Stephen Dorff, and had something to do with opening gateways to hell with backwards messages on heavy metal albums. Damn. All I ever found playing 'em backwards was "Fuck the lord, fuck all of you" and "Sing my evil spirit" (both on Judas Priest's Stained Class, if you're curious, but they're both pretty vague).
This one, on the other hand, features Pamela Segall, who does the voice of that fucked-up, brain dead kid Bobby on "King of the Hill". Who knew that the voice of that little weirdo was so cute? Casting ain't exactly the movie's strong suit. You know how some actors bring out a "Hey! It's that guy!" in you? Well, that can be a good thing, or a bad thing. Here, it's a bad thing. In the lead role is this goofy-lookin' redhaired nonactor playing your typical awkward red-haired movie teenager. Like Anthony Michael Hall, this guy makes my once-awkward, always red-haired, formerly teenaged flesh crawl. Guys like this give us a bad name!
This kid, Terry, has a dead mom and a dad who at first seems to be the Maytag repairman, but turns out to be a former pilot who flew his planes like they were the Exxon Valdez, if you know what I mean. He goes off to the site of the first film to call forth a minion to do his bidding -he wants to wish a happier future for himself and his dad. Aaw, ain't that sweet. He sacrifices his pet hamster and uses a computer in his dealings with the otherworldly, harkening back unfavorably to Evilspeak. By the way, buddy, these rituals usually involve a pentaGRAM, not a pentaGON.
Problem is, he's interrupted by three youths. One is John, who's described on the back of the box as "Dangerously good-looking", as if it were his good looks that were dangerous and not the gun he waves around. When was the last time you were shot in the head by somebody's good looks? Yeesh, Alliance should've fired whatever technical writer came up with that one. Another is a shaven-haired goofball who ends EVERY SINGLE SENTENCE with ", man!" He's actually kind of amusing, although he wears the same slack-jawed idiot gape on his face as Brad Renfro would nine years later in Apt Pupil. The third is Liz, John's girlfriend, played by Segall.
Anyway, the ritual mostly goes as planned, since everybody there seems to be game for it. A minion is called forth - problem is, he's really really small, and could probably fit in a 2L Coke bottle with minimal discomfort. John shoots it in a fit of spazziness (I could see the poor little bastard now - "That man's good looks are killing me!"), but Terry, always the weird one, has to take it home and keep it in a big jar. But no amount of formaldehyde is gonna keep a good gremlin down. Oh yeah, they also visit The Other Side, which looks an awful lot like New Mexico at dusk. Anyway, now that they have their own minion at their disposal, they get wishes. Problem is, a few hours later, their wishes turn to shit. You think I'm being metaphorical. Oh, no. Shit everywhere.
I couldn't really tell how straight we're meant to take this movie. Take one scene where the minion busts out of his cage. To catch it, Terry dresses up in hockey gear and grabs his stick (you know, because these little sub-Leprechauns can be dangerous). He bats it around with the stick for a bit, and then drops a metal can over it, trapping it. Then get gets down on his knees and CLANG CLANG CLANG whacks the can with the stick. Then we see him remove the can, and the minion stumbles around dazed, clutching at its ears! Man, I was rolling on the floor! Sure, it all sounds pretty funny, but the music playing through it seemed to suggest that we're meant to take this scene completely straight. Maybe that just adds to the humor, I don't know. There's some other funny moments (like when John and Moe wish for a big stack of money and go to the nicest restaurant in town), so the movie actually proved to be a diverting enough exercise for 90 or so minutes.
As a horror film, though, forget it. The only actor to come through with integrity intact is Segall, who's quite appealing. Everybody else is not only bad, but should probably be ashamed. ", man!" indeed.
I've made this movie sound somewhat worse than it really is - and really, it's tame, it's silly, it's aimed at kids, and it's cheesy as hell. But it's got a certain sort of charm to it, and sports some excellent stop-motion animation in a creature small and another large. There's worse ways to waste an hour and a half. But, as you well know, there's much better too.