Editorials
The 3D Remake of ‘The Gate’ That Was Never Made
Today, May 15th, 2017, marks the 30th anniversary of The Gate!
Horror films centered on and geared towards young kids aren’t very common here in the present day, but they were all the rage back in the 1980s – and one of the very best “kids vs. monsters” films of them all is director Tibor Takacs’ The Gate, released in 1987. The film, which starred a young Stephen Dorff, told the story of young friends Glen and Terry, who accidentally unleash a horde of tiny demons from deep beneath a suburban backyard. If you’ve never seen it, we strongly encourage you to pick up Vestron Video’s Blu-ray, released earlier this year.
What you may not know about The Gate is that a 3D remake was at one point in the works from director Alex Winter. Does that name sound familiar? Yes, we’re talking about the very same Alex Winter who played beloved character William “Bill” S. Preston Esq. in the Bill & Ted films! It was announced back in 2009 that Winter would be directing The Gate 3D, a passion project that had been penned by Kerric Macdonald. Winter, who directed 1993’s Freaked, was set to begin the shoot for H20 Motion Pictures in either late 2009 or early 2010, and if you look back through the BD archives you’ll see that we were incredibly excited about the project.
Like the ’87 original, Winter’s remake of The Gate was to revolve around two kids, “Miles and Terry, who live in a typical suburban tract. One day, they discover a mysterious crystalline rock in Miles’ backyard, and they quickly dig up the lawn in search of more. But instead, they unearth The Gate – the opening to an underground chamber containing terrifying evil. The boys soon realize what they have unleashed, as one dire event follows another. With supernatural fiends invading suburbia, it’s up to the kids to find the secret that will forever lock THE GATE… if it is not too late.”
A more detailed plot rundown also hit the net back in 2009, revealing that it’s Miles who inadvertently opens up the gate to Hell with a makeshift rocket that was originally intended to blow up a Barbie doll. Like in the original, Miles and Terry are tasked with cleaning up the hellish mess while Miles’ dad is away for the weekend – the two boys are left in the hands of Al, Miles’ “emo-clad elder sister.” In addition to the tiny Minions, the original film’s “dead workman” and “Demon Lord” were going to make appearances, along with all kinds of other monsters – including a possessed garden gnome!
From the lengthier plot synopsis…
The ground heaves and stretches before exploding with thousands of minions that rain down onto the earth. They are not alone: a rotting skeletal monstrosity bursts through the wall. It’s the Dead Workman! But this is just a taste of the pure evil that is to come…
The earth cleaves in two as the Demon Lord rises to the surface: a fossilized nightmare come to life. Its tentacles slither across the ground as all manner of evil beasts are disgorged from the hole and run howling into the night.
Essentially, Winter hoped to channel the spirit of the 1980s for his remake, which was at the time described as “a PG-13 children’s fantasy that will provide the emotional rollercoaster ride of a horror film, without the blood and guts.” And get this. The remake’s newly-updated creatures were set to be designed by Academy Award winner Randall William Cook and H.R. Giger! Giger, who unfortunately passed away back in 2014, was of course the artist who designed the titular villain in 1979’s Alien.
A press release further described the project as “a children’s fantasy with soul, humor, and excitement, with the underlying tension of great danger, like THE GOONIES and GREMLINS, where the kids almost get bitten, almost get swallowed by the Gate, and almost get killed by the Demon Lord, but ultimately escape with the help of ingenuity, imagination, innocence, and teamwork.”
So what happened? Despite some early concept art (seen throughout this article) being done on the project, The Gate 3D never ended up getting off the ground. And it’s a bummer, because Winter seemed to be a huge fan of the original film and incredibly passionate about bringing kid-friendly horror back to the big screen. He even expressed a desire to use the remake as the jumping off point for an entire franchise, which could’ve been a really fun way to get a whole new generation of kids into monster movies.
After all, The Gate did just that for many of us back in 1987.
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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