Wild Wild Witches: "Pale Door" a not-great, not-unenjoyable horror-western hybrid

The Pale Door (2020)

96 min.

Release Date: August 21, 2020 (Digital & On Demand)

A horror-western hybrid, “The Pale Door” is what one might imagine if “From Dusk Till Dawn” traded in kill-happy criminal brothers and stripper vampires for Old West bandits and a brothel of witches. It’s also not as much fun as that 1996 Robert Rodriguez-Quentin Tarantino joint or even 1995’s “Tales from the Crypt Presents: Demon Knight” (which, for some reason, frequently came to mind). After an overly talky setup that earnestly wants to play like the oaters of yore but comes across as an amateurish History Channel reenactment, writer-director Aaron B. Koontz (2017’s “Camera Obscura”) and co-writers Cameron Burns and Keith Lansdale have a better handling halfway through once they embrace the horror portion of their genre mash-up. Enthusiastically made, “The Pale Door” is no-great-shakes, not-unenjoyable schlock that could have used a helping hand from Sam Raimi.

Since they witnessed their parents being attacked and murdered late one night, brothers Duncan (Zachary Knighton) and Jake (Devin Druid) have drifted apart. Duncan is now an outlaw member of the Dalton gang, while the more-innocent Jake earns himself an honest living sweeping at a local saloon. When Duncan finds Little Brother, he convinces him to join them for their next train robbery. Of course, the robbery does not go off without a hitch, leaving Duncan to take a bullet, literally, and become severely injured. On board, the gang finds a trunk, but when they open to find a young woman named Pearl (Natasha Bassett) locked in, they expected “a little more gold and a little less girl.” Pearl makes a deal with them; if they take her home, she promises them a doctor and a handsome reward. They all learn the hard way when Pearl leads them to a brothel in her ghost town, where the women make up a coven of 200-year-old witches, led by Pearl's mother Maria (Melora Walters). Maria has a particular eye on Jake for being uncorrupted and having never taken a life.

If anything, “The Pale Door” does offer an interestingly assembled cast of character actors, including Stan Shaw, Pat Healy, Noah Segan, and Bill Sage, who all play colorful sitting ducks. As the loyal Lester and the hard-ass Dodd, Shaw and Sage stand out the most, and Devin Druid (Netflix’s “13 Reasons Why”) is the film's unsoiled heart as Jake. Energetic day player Tina Parker gets sidelined all too quickly as Annie Oakley wannabe Brenda. Melora Walters also seems to be having a hoot of a time, vamping it up as the once-burnt-at-the-stake madam Maria. The practical make-up and gore effects are something, especially when the prostitutes begin morphing into hideous, crispy-skinned hags. Ultimately neither fish nor fowl, “The Pale Door” won’t be added to the Criterion Collection anytime soon. On occasion, however, when it has no apologies and doesn’t take itself so seriously as a tale of penance, there are traces of a not-bad B-movie in there somewhere. 

Grade: C