This film is the sequel to The Gate (1987) in which two kids - Terry (Tripp) and his friend Glen (Stephen Dorff) - accidentally found the Gate to hell in the backyard of Glen's suburban home. Now, five years later, Terry is a high school honors student, his mother is dead, his father is a suicidal drunk and Glen's house is abandoned. Terry is now convinced that their mistake was not in summoning the ancient demons, but simply in going about it in the wrong way. Terry is now using his friend's abandoned house as a site for practicing magickal rituals in the hope of tapping the supernatural powers beyond the Gate to rescue his father.
This young magick-geek mixes technology with sorcery: he uses amplifiers and speaks into a microphone during his ceremonies, as though the spirits might have trouble hearing him. He keeps his rituals on floppy disc so that he can read them off a computer monitor during the working, should his memory fail. Terry conducts his evocations from inside a "circle" composed of reflected beams of light which is actually a pentagon and looks almost like a trapezoid (shades of LaVey and the EOD). At any rate, his protective enclosure is composed of the kind of "wrong" geometry which one might associate with Lovecraft - or with a failed geometry student.
The wording of his rituals has a decidedly Simon Necronomicon flavor: "I call upon the Old Gods... to protect this traveler into darkness... I call upon the Seven (Sebittu?) Spirits of the cosmos... Be you sentinel, Watcher or minion of the dark Lord, you now serve this voyager." The ritual itself bears a striking resemblance to "Conjuration of the Watcher" found on pp. 69-73 of the Simon Necronomicon. As further proof of the Sumerian (or Simonian) nature of his magick, Terry uses an "offering bowl" (the "new Bowl" on p. 71) instead of a chalice, a piece of bread ("new bread" on p. 69) in place of a pentacle, a stalk of wheat instead of a wand and a "sacrificial dagger" (athame?) which looks like a Malayan kris. Terry also sprinkles flour around his "circle" as instructed on p. 71 of the Simon book. He paints Simonian-looking symbols on his hands and upon a ritual candle which he uses for a fire conjuration. Compare Terry's incantation; "I summon Thee by fire, minions of darkness", to the incantation; "I conjure Thee by the fire of GIRRA" on p. 72 of Simon's Necronomicon. After the fire conjuration, Terry even burns ritual objects in the bowl, as per instructions on p. 71. He also makes a sacrifice (a trusting hamster) as Simon says must be done to secure the obedience of the Watcher [60].
The young Necro-nerd explains to Liz (Segall), his wannabe girlfriend, that "the symbols are Sumerian but the circle is more of a medieval configuration." Terry definitely considers himself a ceremonial magickian and not a Satanist - "Satanism is for pussies." He classifies what he does as demonology [61]: "the oldest and most powerful religion on earth... interdimensional contact with beings old and powerful." He claims that he has made contact with archdemons called the Unholy Trinity - Israh, Shagor and Zyklon (Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth and Cthulhu?) And explains that "the earth was their playground before they were trapped behind a Gate between dimensions a couple of billion years ago. Now they want out. They're waiting behind the Gate, pissed in a major way. That anger generates spiritual power like a cosmic turbine." All of this sounds very familiar!
Terry frequently consults a crumbling old book entitled The Ancient Mysteries, which is illustrated with woodcuts and drawings of magickal symbols, including The Orphic Egg as seen in Bryant's An Analysis of Ancient Mythology. It isn't the Necronomicon, but it contains information about the "Unholy Trinity" from Outside.
One of Terrance’s rituals is disrupted by Liz, her about-to-be-dumped obnoxious boyfriend John (Villemaire), and John's idiot friend, the appropriately-named Moe (Reynolds). Terry manages to incorporate them into the ritual, but John foolishly shoots the monkey-sized Minion demon when it appears. Terry bears the body of the Minion away and keeps it until it reanimates. Through the intervention of Liz, he discovers that the genie-like Minion can grant any wish, but that the wishes have only a short life expectancy before they backfire in "Monkey's Paw" fashion. Physical objects obtained through the Minion literally turn into shit after a limited period of time.
The jealous John and the moronic Moe break into Terry's house and steal the Minion, thinking to cash in on it. The creature bites the two boys and their bodies become hideously transformed. They kidnap Terry and Liz, transport them into the alternate dimension of the Unholy Trinity and try to compel Terry to sacrifice Liz on a megalithic stone altar. Terry and Liz naturally manage to frustrate the plot.
Barring the insufferably cheesy ending, the film is not as dismal as most teen exploitation horror films, and the occult elements should keep it interesting to critically inclined viewers. Since many young would-be magickal practitioners seem to get much of their "information" from movies, it would be interesting to know what effect, if any, this film has had on the "dabbler" scene.
This movie is so influenced by the Simon Necronomicon that even the word "Gate" in the title might be interpreted as an allusion, especially in light of the many Lovecraftian influences in the first film, The Gate (1987), with its Mythos-like monsters and Necronomiconic associations. Who knows?
1998 © John Wisdom Gonce III. All rights reserved.