Door to Silence (1991)
Starring John Savage, Jennifer Loeb & Elizabeth Chugden
Written & Directed by Lucio Fulci
Severin Films is a fairly new company in that they have existed for just under five years. In that time, they have released independent films both theatrically and on DVD. We have them to thank for the current DVD releases of Roman Polanski's WHAT?, GWENDOLIN with Tawny Kitaen (yes, originally THE PERILS OF GWENDOLINE!), Patrice Leconte's THE HAIRDRESSER'S HUSBAND and THE PERFUME OF YVONNE, Richard Stanley's HARDWARE, and Enzo Castellari's INGLORIOUS BASTARDS to name a few. Recently, Severin Films added Lucio Fulci's directorial swan song to its roster. Fulci passed away in 1996 at the age of 68, but he filmed DOOR TO SILENCE (LE PORTE DEL SILENZIO) during April and May of 1991. If the title sounds familiar it's because it sounds similar to Dario Argento's DOOR INTO DARKNESS, a series of four, one-hour episodes that aired on Italian television in 1973. Fans of Fulci will more than likely find little of interest with this effort, as his proclivity for eye-gouging, impaling, and flesh-eating are all absent from this film, and the overall theme is one of supernatural horror.
DOOR TO SILENCE, inexplicably named as DOOR INTO SILENCE on the DVD box cover, stars John Savage as Melvin Devereaux. Savage is an actor you may not have seen too much of but whose filmography actually stretches back forty years. He's best known for playing Steven in Michael Cimino's Oscar-winning THE DEER HUNTER and also appeared in many films during the 1970's, among them BAD COMPANY, THE KILLING KIND, HAIR, and THE ONION FIELD. Savage plays a man who buries his father and takes a strange trip through Louisiana where the entire film was shot on location (New Orleans, LA, the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway and Madisonville, LA). He finds himself in a deserted town with car trouble, and in a hotel room with a beautiful woman, although nothing transpires. With his car fixed, he proceeds on his way and finds himself behind a hearse that won't permit him to pass. The sequence is uneven, poorly edited, and worst of all, the action is sped up (a tactic that is cheap and never, ever works).
He eventually catches up with the owner of the hearse at the Salt Bayou Lounge and confronts him about his erratic driving. Up until this point the film comes off as a modern day variation of Steven Spielberg's DUEL, minus the suspense. It turns out that the name of the person in the casket is (drum roll) Melvin Devereaux. Is this coincidence or fate?
Savage then has a ludicrous encounter with a yappy young prostitute who hops into his car and attempts to seduce him. The remainder of the film gives hints as to what the audience can see coming as the film's inevitable conclusion and one wonder's if M. Night Shyamalan ever saw this. By that point, the effect is not shock at the circumstance that occurs, but rather relief that the film is finally over.
Fulci has legions of fans, but I have never considered myself a die-hard follower. ZOMBI (1979), THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY (1981), and THE BEYOND (1981) are enjoyable Fulci favorites. And how can you go wrong with THE NEW YORK RIPPER (1982), about a killer who quacks like a duck before he strikes? Whereas Argento and Mario Bava tend to favor sumptuous sets, vertiginous camerawork and labyrinthine plots, Fulci's work has often come across as television movie-of-the-week-ish, and DOOR TO SILENCE is no exception. Spielberg made DUEL interesting and gripping, and it is not easy to have long stretches of a film between two vehicles where nothing happens, but Spielberg made it work.
Distributed by Filmirage, the folks who gave us Fabrizio Laurentis' LA CASA 4 (1988) with (d'oh!) David Hasselholf and Linda Blair; Aristide Massaccesi's ANTHROPAPHAGUS (1980) with Tisa Farrow; and Michele Soavi's terrific DELIRIA (1987), DOOR TO SILENCE comes off like an amalgam of conceits drawn from better sources, among them Rod Serling's 1959 "The Hitchhiker" episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE (which itself was adapted from Lucille Fletcher's story of the same name), and from Ambrose Bierce's short story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," which has provided the basis for more than a handful of supernatural stories.
Although the film has an 87-minute running time, it feels twice as long as it becomes boring and wildly ponderous. It also boasts a strange and out-of-place quasi-jazz score by Franco Piana that would be better suited to a 1970's New York cop film.
Like Umberto Lenzi's GHOSTHOUSE (1988), the film steals a musical cue from Simon Boswell's score to Michele Soavi's superior DELIRIA (1987) in the scene when Savage sees his own body in a coffin, which is just about the only truly creepy moment in an overall series of less-inspired moments. Filmirage was the producer of all of these aforementioned films, so they must have had some deal to use this music uncredited.
Severin's transfer of the single-sided, single-layered NTSC Region 1 DVD-5 is very good; the film is remarkably free of speckles and "jumps" at the reel-changes. There are no extras, though the only welcome extra would have been a better version of the film.
Recommended for Fucli completists only.
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jonathan