The Gate (1987) on Netflix
Glen dreams his tree-house is struck by lightning; workers cut down that tree and uncover a geode. With his parents out of town, he and his friend Terry break it open.
- Netflix3.3/5
- IMDb6.1/1022,095 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes60%
Trailer
Plot summary
Glen dreams of finding his home abandoned, then of lightning hitting his tree-house. When he wakes, workmen are taking down that same tree in his backyard, and they have dug up a big geode. Glen and his older friend Terry find the stone; Glen gets a splinter from it and leaves a little blood on it. Glen's parents go away for three days and put his fifteen-year-old sister Alexandra, called Al, in charge. Al holds a party, and while the guests are in the house, Glen and Terry break the geode apart and read out the incantations that have appeared as writing on a notepad. Downstairs, the guests are playing a levitation game when Glen rises off the floor.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Gate (1987)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Michael Nankin wrote the first draft while unemployed and newly divorced, drawing on what he called the nastiest thoughts from his childhood. In that version the demons spilled into the town to drag neighbors into the streets, and the giant demon was to be made of bloody entrails.
- The little demons were actors in rubber suits shrunk by forced perspective, their size set purely by where they stood in relation to the camera and the human actors, mixed in with stop-motion animation.
- Special effects supervisor Randall William Cook supplied his own hand and his own eye for the shot in which an eyeball opens in the palm of Glen's hand.
- The haunted house was a real Toronto home, with an exterior exit built for the shoot, bricks, stairs and bug zapper included. A new housing development sat just past the garden, so the crew ringed the yard with a fence to keep construction vehicles and workers out of shot.
