For born-to-be-wild entertainment that rolls in on two wheels, check out the remarkable biker horror western The Iron Door, directed by Garrett Patten and written by Bentley Britton, Dustin Little, Aaron Sauerland, and Tiziano Tucci. Zach (Casey Deidrick) is a biker who runs a repair shop with his fellow biker buddy Chris (Brock O’Hurn). Zach has acquired his dead dad’s journal, which chronicled his father’s terrible obsession with trying to find a lost family fortune in the desert. Long ago, Zach’s great-grandfather, Johnny Lang (John D. Michaels), had come out west with his pregnant wife, Alice (Sarah Lieving), to find gold. Due to a tragic event involving Johnny’s golden skull rings, the Lang family ends up being put under a witch’s curse by a vengeful Bruja (Clara Rodriguez).
Alice gives birth to a hideous monster baby, which Johnny eventually abandons to die. Johnny’s gold claim ends up being stolen out from under him, so he secretly mines the gold from it and squirrels it away in a hidden cave. All the gold he stole is somewhere in one of the huge rocky outcroppings in the desert, locked behind an iron door. Zach and Chris jump on their bikes to head out into the desert, with Chris bringing along his old lady, Layla (Brooke Chamberlain). All three start their search for the iron door, not knowing of the horrors that await on the way…
Director Patten hits the right notes right away with how his old-west storyline segues into the modern biker world of the main narrative. While morally and professionally opposite, cowboys and bikers fit oddly together in American pop culture. Starting with the outlaw label, bikers tend to embody the lawless “wild west” style that captured the American imagination as a cowboy archetype. Patten knows how to direct both, as The Iron Door excels as both a western and a biker movie. There are some great motorcycle riding sequences that harken back to the best of Easy Rider. The western scenes ring true to the gritty desperation that fuels the freedom of living on the fringes of civilization.
“…the Lang family end up being put under a curse by a vengeful Bruja.”
It is the biker/western hybrid structure that elevates the horror elements of The Iron Door to greater heights. The witchcraft angle works perfectly, generating an omnipresent dread that slithers throughout the picture. The great thing about witchcraft in movies is that there is no way to measure the boundaries of the horror threat. You literally never know what can be coming at you. Rodriguez steals the show with her turn as the ultimate desert witch; she is one scary actress. She has the classic spark of terror that in the last century would have landed her on the cover of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine.
There is also a Treasure of the Sierra Madre feel in The Iron Door, with the gold representing obsession and death more than riches and prosperity. The door itself is a great film visual, as that iron door sitting on the side of a mountain is a magnet for mysteriousness. The only missteps that keep The Iron Door from being an instant classic are too much of the horror ingredient in the soup. The mutant offspring part of the western storyline was unneeded and should have been left out. It diluted the excellent witch resonance that spanned both time periods in the film. It is also irrelevant, as all the mutant monster stuff happened in the Old West.
The worst part of the desert mutant offspring element is that it is overly familiar to audiences. With all the countless versions and rip-offs of The Hills Have Eyes that have come out, everyone knows all about that desert mutant jazz. It bleeds away some of the biggest appeal of The Iron Door: its uniqueness. There is also the unfortunate prop choices of the gold skull rings belonging to Michael’s gold prospector character. It is impossible to believe the two swap-meet biker skull rings were crafted back in the old west. Also, the mid-credit sequence is a misfire and doesn’t add anything. None of these faults is a deal breaker, though. The Iron Door is an excellent indie ride into the darkness of the New West. It is well worth catching, even if you need to saddle up and look for it.
