Real estate agent Melvin Devereaux (John Savage, THE DEER HUNTER) takes a business trip after his father's funeral. When he discovers the turn-off to the highway blocked, he decides to take the backroads. After an encounter with a mysterious young woman (Sandi Schultz, STAGEFRIGHT) who seems to know him, Melvin starts having strange visions from his childhood as well as a series of strange and violent encounters involving a hearse driver (Richard Castleman) - whose vehicle houses a coffin that appears to have Melvin's name on it - a comely hitchhiker (Jennifer Loeb), his palm-reading aunt (Mary Coulson, BEYOND DARKNESS), sinister Southern law enforcement, and strange backwater locals. If you haven't figured out where the protracted scenario is taking you, you must have fallen asleep... The only collaboration between Lucio Fulci and director/producer/cinematographer Joe D'Amato (aka Aristide Massacessi) of the BLACK EMANUELLE series, who had been producing features shot in both Italy and the East coast of the United States from the mid-eighties to the nineties (before moving onto a prolific latter day career directing 35mm hardcore features until his death), DOOR INTO SILENCE is not one of the better efforts of either genre craftsman (the photography is mostly flat and the diffusing scrim in front of the lens is prominently visible in several shots). The main problem is not the predictability of the shopworn scenario; rather, it is the lengths to which the writing goes to try to make it less obvious. Based on a short story by Fulci, the vignette is a padded out roadtrip, but the journey is scarcely more interesting than the obvious destination. The final image isn't really that much of a stunning revelation, nor is it particularly funny. One assumes that Fulci was completely uninterested in the project despite the fact that it was based on one of his published short stories (which is rumored to have been augmented by D'Amato). Savage looks bloated and sickly here (in startling contrast to how he looked before and how he looks more recently) but takes his role seriously and holds audience attention. Schultz, who married Savage two years later, isn't given much to do but be ambiguous (most of the more overtly sinister behavior is handled by Castleman and a number of backwater locals). Franco Piana's largely brassy jazz score doesn't really fit the Louisiana setting and seems more appropriate to a breezy seventies thriller (the brief score was issued in its entirety on the Fulci compilation CD LUCIO FULCI'S HORROR & THRILLER from Beat Records).