Dis­cov­er this bizarre B‑movie riff on The Exorcist

“Evil can­not cre­ate, it can only repeat,” says Dim­itri (Richard John­son) near the end of Ovidio G Assoni­tis and Robert Barrett’s Beyond the Door, aka The Dev­il With­in Her. Dim­itri is a haunt­ing pres­ence in the film right from the open­ing sequence in which we see, or rather hear, him being scold­ed by the Dev­il (voiced in a clipped Eng­lish accent by an unseen Edward L Mon­toro) for let­ting a woman, Jes­si­ca (Juli­et Mills), ​“get away”.

The Dev­il pun­ish­es Dim­itri for this rather abstract trans­gres­sion by mak­ing his red car go crash­ing over a cliff, but then freezes the vehi­cle in mid-air, and offers Dim­itri an irra­tional last-sec­ond deal: ​“You must find a house, a woman, that woman, you must find the child she is car­ry­ing in her womb, you must find me… You only have a few days in which to suc­ceed or fail.”

It is not just the car but time itself which is in sus­pense here. For despite Dimitri’s express­ly tight dead­line, it will be actu­al years before he catch­es up with his ex Jes­si­ca again – enough years for Jes­si­ca to have in the mean­time mar­ried Robert Bar­rett (Gabriele Lavia) and had with him two chil­dren, Gail (Bar­bara Fior­i­ni) and Ken (David Col­in Jr).

They are a thor­ough­ly mod­ern San Fran­cis­co fam­i­ly: sound engi­neer Robert has just cut a sin­gle enti­tled Bar­gain With The Dev­il; Jes­si­ca is on the pill; and the con­stant swear­ing of their two ​‘mon­sters’ could make a sailor blush, with pre­co­cious Gail talk­ing like an adult hip­ster (“If you don’t quit cry­ing you’re going to have a real­ly bad trip”) while read­ing mul­ti­ple copies of Erich Segal’s nov­el Love Sto­ry, and her younger, appet­i­tive broth­er ​“suck­ing in cans of pea soup all day.”

This is a sec­u­larised clan liv­ing in a god­less age, and when Jes­si­ca dis­cov­ers that she is, despite all the pro­phy­lac­tic mea­sures that she has tak­en, preg­nant with child, the invis­i­ble dev­il, it seems, has found a back door through which to reemerge for some sadis­tic fun and games that will tear the fam­i­ly apart.

The bizarre detail of ​‘pea soup’ is an impor­tant self-con­scious touch here. For soon after­wards Jes­si­ca, filled with foe­tus and pos­sessed by the Dev­il, will be copi­ous­ly vom­it­ing green vis­cid pea soup of her own, much as Lin­da Blair’s Regan Mac­Neil had famous­ly done the pre­vi­ous year in William Friedkin’s block­bust­ing pos­ses­sion hor­ror The Exorcist.

Indeed, although Assoni­tis was prob­a­bly bet­ter known for his long career pro­duc­ing B‑movies, as a direc­tor he had made some­thing of a spe­cial­ty of the quick­ie hor­ror ripoff, with his Ten­ta­cles (Ten­ta­coli, 1977) cash­ing in on the recent fame of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, while Piran­ha II: The Spawn­ing, on which he was uncred­it­ed co-direc­tor to a debut­ing James Cameron, stole equal­ly from Jaws and Joe Dante’s Piranha.

So per­haps it might be sup­posed that Assoni­tis’ hor­ror fil­mog­ra­phy, like evil, ​“can­not cre­ate, it can only repeat”. Cer­tain­ly Warn­er Bros regard­ed Beyond The Door to be sim­i­lar enough to their hot prop­er­ty The Exor­cist to sue for copy­right infringe­ment, ulti­mate­ly win­ning a set­tle­ment (includ­ing a por­tion of future prof­its) from the film’s Ital­ian pro­duc­tion company.

Yet although Beyond The Door may fea­ture a bed-bound woman spew­ing green liq­uid, speak­ing in mul­ti­ple voic­es, lev­i­tat­ing into the air, and even at one point revolv­ing her head 180 degrees, in fact its dif­fer­ences from The Exor­cist are much more strik­ing than its sim­i­lar­i­ties. Here the Devil’s tar­get is not a girl on the cusp of ado­les­cence, but a world­ly moth­er of two (with a third on the way). Here there is pos­ses­sion, but no priest­ly inter­ven­tion, or even priest, and not the barest hint of exor­cism either.

While Friedkin’s film was designed to scare audi­ences back into church, Assoni­tis’ seems entire­ly unin­ter­est­ed in the rit­u­als and struc­tures of organ­ised reli­gion. The Dev­il insin­u­ates him­self invis­i­bly into a world with­out faith, wag­ing a two-day bat­tle of wits and will with the beard­ed Dim­itri – who may be Jesus, or may be God, or may just be, you know, Dim­itri. In fact, the film is not a mil­lion miles from that strange col­li­sion of the thor­ough­ly con­tem­po­rary and the abstract­ly cos­mic to be found in Michael J Paradise’s lat­er The Vis­i­tor, which Assoni­tis pro­duced and helped write.

So Beyond The Door is too odd, too inde­fin­able, too sin­gu­lar, to be dis­missed as mere­ly deriv­a­tive. Here the dev­il is in the details – and any­one who imag­ines that what is going on in the film is in any way straight­for­ward should try to ratio­nalise to them­selves in a sim­ple sen­tence or two just how exact­ly its begin­ning, mid­dle and end fit togeth­er. It is not that the film is inco­her­ent, exact­ly, but rather that its nar­ra­tive con­nec­tions are more sug­gest­ed than stat­ed, and more metaphor­i­cal, per­haps even meta­phys­i­cal, than direct and lit­er­al, as eter­nal evil keeps mir­ror­ing and repeat­ing itself ad nauseam.

Beyond The Door is avail­able in a Lim­it­ed-Edi­tion Blu-ray, remas­tered in brand new 2K restora­tion of the extend­ed Uncut Eng­lish Export Ver­sion, with bonus disc of alter­nate US The­atri­cal Ver­sion and fea­ture-length doc­u­men­tary Italy Pos­sessed, on 30 March.