A Brilliant Conflict

A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

I saw this first on a VHS in the late 80s titled as Seven doors of death. The VHS guy told me that it was a rare copy. Revisited recently on a blu ray. The film may be frustrating to some viewers because it does not follow a linear path. The movie starts in 1927 Louisiana hotel where v get to see an angry mob, some arriving in boats while others in cars. Yeehaw! They torture n kill a painter, crucifying him on the wall. The blood which comes out from his hand resembles dirty muddy water. Fast forward, a girl from New York inherits this hotel n she starts renovation. How she inherits this hotel no explanation given. A painter falls off after he sees a girl with the creepiest contact lenses. Later we see the new owner of the hotel driving on a seemingly endless bridge to nowhere n the same creepy lenses blind girl standing with her dog on the bridge. A plumber goes to repair the mysterious flooding in the basement n there is the most nastiest eye popping scene. Later the bodies of the plumber n the painter (who's now a decayed n dead zombie) r moved to the morgue where the doc puts ECG machine on the zombie. Crazy science! The painters wife comes to dress the body for funeral n she sees something which we don't get to see n she screams n v get to c an open jar of acid (who keeps an open jar of acid) kept on top of a shelf which is shaking n slowly the acid is dropping on the mothers face, while the daughter who entered hearing the scream tries to escape the acidic froth which goes on like a wave. Cut back to the funeral n we get to see the daughter of the plumber too turned blind with similar creepy lenses. A contractor goes to the city hall to retrieve some old plans of the hotel n he falls down the ladder n is attacked by tarantulas n they do eat his eyeballs. Whats the eyeball obsession? Now the original blind girl who's been dismissed as a ghost or someone who doesn't exist, is attacked by her dog. Who was she is never explained. Do we care? Nope. In the end v get to c hordes of slow walking zombies. The doc keeps on firing, sometimes on the head n sometimes on other body parts. Maybe his aim wasn't that good or else how can he not know about shooting the zombies on the head. The best part is that without reloading the gun, he keeps on firing. One very good scene of a head-shot. Superb effects there. The ending is done surprisingly well and offers a nice little final touch of horror. The doc n the owner r trapped in the painting. Technically, Salvati did a good job with the cinematography. Germano Natali did some stunning special effects. All in all the director Lucio fulci did a terrific job with the lil resources he had to work with.

The Beyond is the middle chapter of Fulci's 'Death' trilogy (AKA 'Gates of Hell' trilogy). As I started watching this, I knew what to expect: Gallons of gore, lack of a coherent plot and a deeply cynical, downbeat tone. The movie is pretty much this and a wee bit more. What I didn't expect to see was a stunningly good cold open. Shot in rich sepia tone and with dazzling visual artistry, the scene showed Fulci could be every bit as artistic and flashy as Argento and Bava if he wanted to.Unfortunately, the movie went off the deep end with a lot of meandering punctuated with some brutal gore sequences. Fulci really likes to show us close-ups of his gore effects. During a scene of tarantulas biting off a man's face, I could almost taste the latex and fake blood. That said, the movie picks up during the last 15 minutes with a well-shot (pun unintended) zombie action sequence ultimately concluding with a brilliant display of the hell/purgatory/whatever-the-hell-it-was.MacColl is better here than in City of the Living Dead primarily because she is given more stuff to do. The male lead, David Warbeck lacks the class of Christopher George but makes up for it by looking the part of a doctor who is a crack-shot with a handgun. It was disappointing to not see Daniela Doria or Giovanni Lombardo Radice turn up after their wacky antics in City. Though we do get Mater Tenebrarum in an appropriately creepy role.Ultimately, at least to me, The Beyond, while watchable, is not the magnum opus of Dr. Lucio Fulci. Ah if only if the rest of the movie had been as good as the beginning...

The Beyond, Zombie film not like the others... The only bad point of The Beyond is having a lack of story and hard to understand. However, we pass through this lack easily because of the many quality that I'll mention below. The film is really gore and I think we have the right to the best special effect of the master : Lucio Fulci The two scenes with the eye are very impressive. The actress, who plays the role of Lisa, takes her role enough seriously, she's really good. The atmosphere is a strong point of the movie, it is very horrific!! The end is totally beautiful, I love the ending that leaves us in a questionement and it always makes me the same effect after SEVERAL listening. Fulci at his best!!

Whereas for many movies the charge of "style over substance" has always been a damning criticism, it has always been the very lifeblood of films in the Italian horror genre. One only needs to look at the masters of the genre, Bava and Argento, to see films which make so little sense they sometimes anger the viewer who is earnestly trying to find logic, but never fail to effortlessly craft disturbing atmospheres and elicit genuine horror for those ready to just go along for the ride…and Lucio Fulci's 'The Beyond' is no exception to this formula. Lovers of narrative and character should basically steer well clear of this one. Instead 'The Beyond' is totally about expressionistic menace and apocalyptic foreboding and it delivers both of these qualities in large doses. However, saying this, there is a plot which hangs together loosely around a hotel which sits atop a gate to Hell…and a young women called Liza (Catriona MacColl ) who inherits the hotel and plans to reopen it for business. She then meets a creepy looking blind girl who utters sinister portents regarding the hotel. After this all manner of oddness occurs and people start dying in a variety of over-the-top ways, some of which are so extreme they are funny while others are genuinely gross. Either way the kills are inventive set-pieces which, combined with the dodgy-yet-effective late seventies/early eighties soundtrack create a real sense of a disjointed lingering nightmare. Then the zombies attack! This requires the leads to seek refuge in the hotel basement except that while they find they may have escaped the zombies they have stumbled into something far more unsettling.All in all, for all of its many, many weak points, I have yet to come across a film which chilled me so much at the end. It could be argued that with a little narrative discipline and better acting/dubbing, this film could have been a bona-fide horror classic. However, it could also be argued that, if anything, it is the very lack of logic (as with most Italian Horror films) that accentuates the sense of oddness and menace. The film is what it is, does what it does very well, and rightfully belongs to a tradition of horror that wrong-foots logic and order and plunges us into much deeper and more unsettling waters. Enjoy.