Through the Fire (1988) User Reviews

Ugh

[BandSAboutMovies · 3/10 · 23 January 2020]

Also known as Gates of Hell Part II: Dead Awakening - while having nothing to do with Lucio Fulci's City of the Living Dead, which was released in the U.S. with that title - is at least dedicated to the Italian director who is referred to as the Godfather of Gore.

This is the lone directorial effort from G.D. Marcum, who worked on the camera crew for films like Interface and the Fred Williamson movies South Beach, Steele's Law, Thee Days to a Kill and Night Vision.

After some mysterious disappearances in Fort Worth, Texas, Sandra Curtis - the sister of one of the victims - hires Nick Berkley to find her lost sibling. They soon learn that a cult that worships Moloch - so they're going to Bohemian Grove? - is behind everything and that there's an amulet that can stop them. Also - a cat gets killed and put inside Sandra's refrigerator at one point.

Tamara Hext, who played Sandra, also appeared in the TV movie Frequent Flyer and was on Dallas for one episode. She was Miss Texas and the fourth runner up to the 1985 Miss America pageant. Since Texas is pretty much the pageant capital of the world, she had to have been pretty tough. She's also the mother of Colorado Rockies outfielder Sam Hilliard.

There's plenty of cool artwork for this movie, but I love that some of the VHS boxes ripped off the artwork from Funeral Home.

Don't bother

[Leofwine_draca · 3/10 · 15 May 2019]

THROUGH THE FIRE is a muddled, independent horror flick from 1990, one that plays out more as a detective story than a proper supernatural terror tale. The story is about a magical medallion which is the only defence against a demon up from the depths of hell, but most of this is shady stuff with a cop and a woman teaming up to investigate a mysterious cult. It's slow and meandering, poorly-shot and with bad audio quality so you'll be straining to make out the words. There are a few shots of monster makeup which isn't too shabby given the budgetary constraints, but overall this isn't one to bother with.

Barely worthwhile and not all together good

[kannibalcorpsegrinder · 1/10 · 21 April 2011]

A woman's search for her missing sister results in the discovery of a strange cult of demon-worshippers who accidentally unleashed a monstrous creature and must fight it off in order to survive.

This here was just utterly pitiful and plain bad. The detective investigation angle makes for absolutely nothing at all of any interest as the two go around and basically come away with nothing, taking up nearly half of the running time to wind up right back at the starting point and leaves it entirely useless since it's suddenly interrupted by a third party hunting the group all-along, making it unsure why that was introduced so late into the film. That makes it completely lack anything in terms of action, being restricted to a paltry gunfight in the house and the final encounter in the abandoned warehouse, which admittedly does have some good points as its dark, dank location, forever-expanded hallways and numerous rooms provides a nice battleground for a few suspenseful moments here and there, which is mixed with some energy and enthusiasm to provide some fun that way. Even still, the criminal lack of gore, either through off-screen attack/on-screen splatter thrown onto the walls, rapid-fire editing or obstructive angles makes for very little that will invite gorehounds in, and the fact that the creature is relegated to the final ten minutes makes it a non-factor in its own film and looks ridiculous when it appears. Really only has the finale to be watchable, the rest is just worthless.

Rated R: Adult Language, Graphic Violence and Brief Nudity

"The whole idea of this is totally insane." Rubbish, awful, terrible, crap, tripe etc. etc.

[poolandrews · 1/10 · 21 February 2006]

Through the Fire starts one dark night on a lonely road where Marilyn Curtis has a flat tyre on her car, no-one is about so she decides to change it herself but she is far from alone as someone or something attacks her... Five weeks later & Marilyn's sister Sandra (Tamara Hext) has hit the bottle pretty hard since her sister's disappearance, a good-natured cop named Nick Berkley (Tom Campitelli) shows a bit of kindness by taking her home one night after she has had far too much to drink. Sandra phones Nick the next day & ask's if she can hire him to investigate Marilyn's disappearance, it's not the sort of thing Nick would normally do but he books a week off work & agrees to spend it searching for Marilyn. While at Marilyn's house a delivery boy (Greg Cagle) hands Sandra & Nick a package addressed to Marilyn, inside is an amulet belonging to Marilyn which has some strange markings on it. Upon further investigation the marks point to the fact that Marilyn was in fact a 'destroyer', someone who wanders the world killing any disciple's of an evil demon or something like that. This amulet has immense power & other sinister character's want it & there's meant to be some sort of demon running around & I really don't want to think about Through the Fire anymore so I'll leave it there not that much actually happens to talk about you understand.

Executive produced, co-written & directed by Gary Marcum Through the Fire is a throughly wretched piece of film-making, it has no redeeming features whatsoever & is total crap from start to finish. I'm sorry to be so blunt but the basic fact of the matter is that I have been on a really bad run of films lately, sure you expect a few stinkers in there but it seems almost every film I've taken a chance on recently has been complete & utter crap while Through the Fire is no exception & in fact is as bad as any film I've endured this year, or any year thinking about it. The script by Marcum & Brad Potter is an absolute mess, it's as slow as you can imagine, it's a great deal less exciting than watching paint dry or grass grow, the narrative & story are all over the place & worst of all it's boring, now I can forgive bad effects, dodgy acting & the like but when a film bores me to tears there's simply no excuse. I hate this film, I hate everything about it & I want the 90 excruciating minutes of my life back I wasted watching this piece of pond scum. The story makes no sense, what the hell is this demon all about? It NEVER does anything until the end, why is it after those guys? What did they do? What on Earth did that security guard & the woman he was on the phone too have to do with it? Sandra Curtis, mild mannered housewife by day & tough action hero with a skill for making homemade tripwire operated grenades in the space of two minutes by night! There are so many things wrong, muddled, unexplained & just downright rubbishy that I could fill two reviews up.

Through the Fire was director Marcum's first & thankfully last film to date, there is a god after all then. He should never be allowed anywhere near a camera ever again, it's as simple & straight forward as that it really is. Forget about any sort of gore, even though the opening credits list not one but two special make-up effect guys there's barely a drop of blood in the thing & nothing anyone's going to get upset about, a cut hand, a few gunshot wounds & the old standby of someone merely drooling some fake blood. Even though Sandra takes a shower everything is kept as clean as a whistle so forget about any nudity either.

Technically Through the Fire is awful, it's really bland, flat, forgettable & totally lifeless. The demon takes over someones body at the end & it looks OK but it's kept mainly in the shadows & is nothing more than a latex mask anyway. The acting is of a predictably low standard, don't give up your day jobs guys (then again that could apply to anyone involved with this sorry production).

Through the Fire was apparently retitled as The Gates of Hell Part II: Dead Awakening, for a start The Gates of Hell itself was a retitling of Lucio Fulci's City of the Living Dead (1980) & Through the Fire has absolutely NOTHING in common with & has absolutely no connection with Fulci's film whatsoever. Do yourself a favour & avoid this at all costs, no thanks is necessary.

A great movie where nothing happens

[kaefab · 2/10 · 15 August 2021]

This movie had nothing going for it... its boring, nothing happens until the last 5 minutes or so and its still very confusing.

Through the Fire; - the Incredibly Forgettable Fire...

[Coventry · 2/10 · 8 November 2023]

The weirdest things happened during the process of me trying to watch "Through the Fire". It was as if my brain, and all my five senses, continuously tried to reject this film from getting registered. Started watching once on a Saturday night, but then paused because an unforeseen drinking-with-buddies opportunity presented itself. For months I forgot I began watching this, and accidentally found out because the tape was still in the (seldomly used anymore) VCR-player. Then, a few days ago, I started over but fell asleep because it gets quite boring around the half hour mark. The next evening, I once again didn't remember much. Even during my final and alert viewing, my mind constantly wandered off and could hardly recall the events that happened just a few minutes before.

My takeout of "Through the Fire"? An incredibly tedious and uninvolving mishmash of satanic horror, buddy-movie, and supernatural mystery with bland lead characters and an unforgivable shortage of action. I read in the trivia-section the film was completed in 1988 but released only a decade later. Well, they had good reasons to let this uninspired rubbish linger on a shelf. And then still, when "Through the Fire" eventually got released, the distributor stole the "Gates of Hell 2" title from a genuine Fulci classic ("City of the Living Dead", aka "Gates of Hell") and the cover-art from the unrelated "Funeral Home". All in vain, since the film righteously went into oblivion.

A woman desperately seeks for her missing sister, together with a police officer who took her home without abusing her after she got drunk and aggressive in a bar. They come in possession of an amulet, and then find themselves pursued by the most boring and anti-charismatic Satanic cult I have ever seen. Oh, there also might be a demonic creature roaming around in a basement, but the screen was too dark to actually see it.

The only involved person who deserves some praising words is the sexy "actress" Peggy Preston, who is credited as "Girl in Nick's bed" and made the courageous career choice of appearing completely and gratuitously naked at the beginning. Hers is the only remotely memorable moment, in fact.

A Texas farrago of zombies, possessions, noir, and, yes: even buddy humor

[drownsoda90 · 7/10 · 13 February 2022]

"Through the Fire" follows a young Texan woman who teams up with a police officer to locate her missing sister. The two uncover a cabal of amateur Satanists who have conjured a powerful demon.

Filmed in the mid-1980s and not made available until 1997 (on VHS, when it was branded under an alternate title as a sequel to Lucio Fulci's "The Gates of Hell"), this regional horror flick is a mashup of monster movies, possession flicks, and hard-boiled Texas noir. Running just under 90 minutes, "Through the Fire" is jam-packed, and has a fun, zany energy about it. The dark material is undercut with buddy humor between the female lead and the hunky, handsome cop as they attempt to unravel the mystery behind her sister's disappearance.

The film at times resembles something of a slasher, with brief, arbitrary sequences such as a nighttime garage murder and a jarring rock-climbing sequence, both of which could fit perfectly in any number of backwoods '80s slasher movies. The occult theme is rather ridiculous, and attempts at explaining it via a professor character seem hamfisted, as do the silly sequences in which the dilettante cultists are chastised for their dabbling by an apparent self-proclaimed witch who looks like she could have been plucked from a Bauhaus concert.

The funny thing about "Through the Fire" is that all of these things wash over the viewer in waves with little clarity; the characters (aside from the two leads) often seem to go nameless, and the editing decisions further contribute to a general narrative fogginess, but the film possesses enough intrigue to hold your attention, boasting effective uses of location and enough atmosphere (those '80s interiors!) and weirdness to leave you hanging on. The film seems to move past its amateur fumbling in the final act, which takes place in a truly spooky abandoned skyscraper hotel--here, the film really shines, and for a fleeting moment, feels like a George Romero zombie epic.

All in all, "Through the Fire" is a strange mix of genres and plot devices that technically shouldn't work, but, in the end, there is something oddly charming about it. For fans of B-horror movies from this era, it will more than likely prove an entertaining viewing experience. It also offers a time-capsule view of mid-'80s greater Dallas, which, as the film largely takes place at night, makes for an effective backdrop for all the shenanigans to unfold. Hold out for the explosive "Rambo-meets-Dawn of the Dead" finale. 7/10.

A hodge podge of B-movie fun

[tdeladeriere · 8/10 · 1 April 2011]

There's a cast of thousands in the first 20 minutes, which leads the way to an indeed confusing (or should we say senseless ?) plot. To sum it up, a few mysterious disappearances happen in smalltown, USA (New Jersey ?). The sister of one the victims hires a cop to investigate her disappearance. They discover that an evil cult is involved.

The muffled audio does not help to make sense of this lost little gem. This begins as a slasher, then turns to evil cult, then monster movie with a small detour into action. Overall, there's never a dull moment in this oddity, regardless of the lack of gore or nudity. You will need a HUGE suspension of disbelief to make it through, but the two leads are surprisingly capable and endearing. The special f/x, if cheap, are not ridiculous and everything is done with its heart in the right place. Enjoy at midnight, with a martini.