{"id":3703,"date":"2024-08-28T22:03:49","date_gmt":"2024-08-28T22:03:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=3703"},"modified":"2024-10-14T14:47:59","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T18:47:59","slug":"the-beyond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/08\/28\/the-beyond\/","title":{"rendered":"The Beyond"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Beyond<\/strong> (1981)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Grindhouse Releasing\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 87 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No MPAA rating (extreme graphic violence and gore)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Lucio Fulci\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Dardano Sacchetti, Giorgio Mariuzzo and Lucio Fulci\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Fabio Frizzi\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Sergio Salvati\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: December 1, 1983 (US)\/June 12, 1998 (US re-release)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Katherine MacColl, David Warbeck, Cinzia Monreale (as Sarah Keller), Antoine Saint-John, Veronica Lazar, Larry Ray (as Anthony Flees), Tonino Pulci, Al Cliver, Michele Mirabella, Giampaolo Saccarola, Maria Pia Marsala, Laura De Marchi, Lucio Fulci (uncredited).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $123,843 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Body Count: 22 (12 people + 10 zombies)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 AKA: 7 Doors of Death<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ****<\/p>\n

\u00a0I first saw Lucio Fulci\u2019s horror masterpiece The Beyond<\/strong> in December \u201983 under the title 7 Doors of Death. It was a truncated version with most of the gore edited out, a different music score and a shorter running time (82 minutes). I liked it just fine at the time even though I instinctively knew something was missing. About 15 years later, the original uncut version found its way to US audiences thanks to Quentin Tarantino\u2019s now-defunct distribution company Rolling Thunder and Grindhouse Releasing. It played the midnight movie circuit for a short while before hitting video which is how I saw it. It absolutely floored me. I never realized what a tour de force (or should I say \u201cgore de force<\/em>\u201d) it was until I saw it in its intended form. It\u2019s my favorite installment of Fulci\u2019s \u201cGates of Hell\u201d trilogy.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The Beyond<\/strong> opens with a sepia-toned prologue set at an old hotel in Louisiana circa 1927. Torch-bearing vigilantes show up in rowboats and cars to deal with a mysterious guest, artist Schweick (John of Duck, You Sucker), they deem an \u201cungodly warlock\u201d. They drag him from his room as he puts the finishing touches on his latest painting, a depiction of hell or \u201cthe Beyond\u201d. He tries to warn the lynch mob of impending evil coming from the hotel being built over one of the \u201cSeven Doors of Evil\u201d, but they don\u2019t listen. Instead, they beat him with heavy chains that rip the flesh from his body, crucify him to the basement wall with rusty spikes and dissolve his flesh with quicklime. We see it all close-up in graphic detail. It\u2019s easily one of the coolest horror movie openings EVER!<\/p>\n

\u00a0Fulci then takes us to present-day 1981 where Liza (MacColl, City of the Living Dead) plans to reopen the cursed hotel after inheriting it from an uncle. Altogether now, let\u2019s say it. BAD IDEA! She should know this by the series of accidents and horrible deaths that occur during renovation. A painter is badly injured falling off a scaffold after seeing a pair of glowing eyes staring at him from one of the rooms. Next, Joe the Plumber (Pulci) dies while trying to deal with the flooding situation in the basement. A grotesque hand reaches out from behind a wall and gouges out his eye (again, in graphic close-up). This is followed by a series of confusing events that culminates in a zombie invasion at the local hospital.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Perhaps this would be a good time to discuss the roles of hero and heroine in a horror movie. The \u201chero\u201d in The Beyond<\/strong> is local doctor John McCabe (Warbeck, The Black Cat) who\u2019s just as baffled as the \u201cheroine\u201d Liza. Their character types generally have two jobs. The first is to figure out exactly what the hell is going on. In this particular case, it\u2019s an exercise in futility. Try as they might, they cannot attach a rational explanation to the strange events going on around them. This would include the mysterious blind woman, Emily (Keller\/Monreale, Beyond the Darkness), who keeps showing up to warn Liza of the grave mistake she\u2019s making in reopening the hotel. Their second job is to put a stop to what\u2019s going on. I refer you back to their first job. How can they stop what\u2019s going on if they don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on until it\u2019s too late? The doctor comes up with this brilliant solution: \u201cI\u2019m gonna call the FBI.\u201d I didn\u2019t know they had a department dealing with supernatural phenomena. It\u2019s true, you do learn something new every day.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The plot of The Beyond<\/strong> doesn\u2019t make a lick of sense, yet it\u2019s brilliant at the same time. Fulci typically doesn\u2019t rely on narrative coherence to tell his tales of terror. His movies tend to play out like bizarre nightmares. That\u2019s how he finds his way under the collective skin of the audience. The Beyond<\/strong> is easy enough to follow, but hard to explain. Things happen without rhyme or reason. For instance, what\u2019s up with hotel employees Martha (Lazar, Inferno) and Arthur (Saccarola, The House by the Cemetery)? Who are they? Where did they come from? All we get in the way of an explanation is when Liza says that they came with the hotel. Fulci never offers more than a very basic explanation of what\u2019s behind the supernatural goings-on. In this case, one of the Seven Doors of Evil has been opened. It says in the ancient evil book of Eibon, \u201cWoe be unto him who opens one of the seven gateways to Hell, because through that gateway, evil will invade the world.\u201d Basically, it means all hell will break loose with grisly deaths, people suddenly going blind and the dead rising to attack the living.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Fulci isn\u2019t one to skimp on gore, a fact evident in The Beyond<\/strong>. There\u2019s plenty of it on hand here. In one scene, Joe\u2019s widow (De Marchi) shows up at the morgue with her young daughter Jill (Marsala) in tow. Something happens while she\u2019s dressing her husband and she ends up on the floor where she gets a face full of corrosive acid from a self-spilling jar while Jill looks on in silent terror. This is one of several gory highlights. Another shows tarantulas eating the eyes, lips and tongue of architect Martin (Mirabella) after he falls from a ladder in the local library. We get to see somebody\u2019s head slammed onto a spike which exits through the victim\u2019s eye poking it out from behind. Somebody has their throat ripped open and face torn off by the blind girl\u2019s seeing-eye dog. A girl gets her head blown off (in graphic close-up, of course). A guy gets it via shards of broken glass to the face. Many zombies are shot. Most, if not all, of this is absent from the R-rated 1983 cut.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Like most Italian-made horror movies, the acting and dialogue in The Beyond <\/strong>are bad. I\u2019ll grant that MacColl is easy on the eyes, but it doesn\u2019t even begin to cover up her tendency to overact to a ridiculous degree. In a movie filled with howlers, she gets the second best worst line (the first is the FBI line) when she tells Martin, \u201cYou have carte blanche, but not a black check.\u201d Here\u2019s another. Emily actually says to Liza \u201cWe blind see things more clearly.\u201d Okay, just one more. In the opening scene, Schweick says, \u201cBe careful what you do… because this hotel was built over one of the Seven Doors of Evil- and only I can save you.\u201d Oh, PLEASE! More than once, The Beyond<\/strong> spills over into unintentional comedy due to dopey dialogue. The funniest scene, however, doesn\u2019t involve spoken dialogue. Look at the scene where Joe\u2019s widow and Jill arrive at the hospital morgue. A sign on the wall reads \u201cDO NOT ENTRY\u201d. LOL! Goofy stuff like this adds to its appeal.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The Beyond<\/strong> is, in the vernacular of 15YO Movie Guy 24\/7, AWESOME! It\u2019s so screwy and surreal; I can\u2019t help but love it. I love Fulci\u2019s style. He relies heavily on giallo motifs while borrowing heavily from Sergio Leone with his frequent close-ups of characters\u2019 eyes.\u00a0 There are some incredible shots courtesy of Sergio Salvati\u2019s beautiful cinematography. The score by Fabio Frizzi, along with the piano piece played by Emily, gives The Beyond<\/strong> a haunting quality. The ending is freaking FREAKY! It still blows my mind. One look at The Beyond<\/strong> is all you need to understand what\u2019s wrong with today\u2019s horror movies. They employ too much restraint whereas Fulci employs none at all. I think he\u2019s brilliant and so is this movie. I\u2019d even say it\u2019s the late filmmaker\u2019s finest work.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Beyond (1981)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Grindhouse Releasing\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 87 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No MPAA rating (extreme graphic violence and gore)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Lucio Fulci\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Dardano Sacchetti, Giorgio Mariuzzo and Lucio Fulci\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Fabio Frizzi\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Sergio Salvati\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: December 1, 1983 (US)\/June 12, 1998 (US re-release)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Katherine MacColl, David Warbeck, Cinzia Monreale (as Sarah Keller), Antoine Saint-John, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5372,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scary-gory-wild-i-love-it"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/The-Beyond-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3703"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5373,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3703\/revisions\/5373"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}