The Gate (1987)

And so it begins . . .

This is a horror movie that stars a very young. Stephen Dorff as Glen.  The basic premise of the story is that Glen and his friend inadvertently open up a gate to hell in Glen's backyard.  The movie begins with the large tree in Glen's backyard been cut down and a huge hole is left where the tree once stood.  Glen and his friend Terry dig in the hole and find a geode.  That night weird things begin to happen.  When they crack open the geode it leaves imprints of words on a notebook.  The boys read the words and unknowingly begin the process to opening the gate to hell.  Glen's parents leave the kids alone for the weekend with almost 16 year old sister Al in charge.  That night strange things begin to happen.  Glen is levitated in his living room by some of his sister's friends.  Terry has a dream of his dead mother and wakes up with the family's dog dead in his arms.   While listening to a heavy metal album in his own house, Terry discovers the words that Glen and he read out loud are part of the lyrics to this album.  The lyrics for this album were supposedly taken from "The Dark Book" which is like the Devil's bible.  More strange things continue to happen.  Little demons start attacking Glen, Terry, Al and Al's friends.  They try to close the gate by reading from the Bible, but it only temporarily closes the gate.  Both Al and Terry are taken by the demons into the hole.  It is left to Glen to figure out how to get them back and close the gate.  The only way to close the gate is through love and light.  So Glen uses the rocket he built with his sister and shoots it into the demon god.  All goes back to normal (well mostly, the house is pretty destroyed).  This includes their dog coming back to life.


Creepy factor

Gate to hell opening in the backyard.
Face melting.  A special effect they seemed to love to use in the 80s.  See Poltergeist and Raiders of the Lost Ark
Kids all alone left to deal with demons.
Kids being dragged to hell.

Lessons learned

Never let children dig around any kind of hole or construction site. 
Never read words in a language you don't understand.  You could end up invoking demons.
Don't try to levitate anyone, ever.
Heavy metal is the cause for Satanic occurrences (this was a big issue in the 80s, people thought that heavy metal and playing Dungeons and Dragons would lead teenagers into becoming killers, they were wrong it's actually violent video games).
Neighbors don't care that smoke or demons are spewing out of someone else's house.  Nor do they call the police because of those things or that they hear children screaming.