Review #34: 'The Beyond' (1981)

Often described and referred to as a 'master of horror', I've never fully taken to the work of Lucio Fulci. The City Of The Living Dead (1980) aside, which I found lots of fun and often appallingly violent, I usually find his films slow and plodding. The New York Ripper (1982) and Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979), both banned when they were first released up until not so long ago, were unimpressive and sometimes distastefully exploitative. The Beyond, the second film in Fulci's 'Gates Of Hell' trilogy (in between City Of The Living Dead and The House By The Cemetery (1981)), exceeded all my expectations. For me this is Fulci's crowning achievement - a colossal beast full of eye-gouging, human-eating tarantulas, possessed children, and most surprisingly, genuine beauty.

The film begins in 1927 in the Deep South of America, where a lynch mob arrive at the hotel door of a painter who they believe to be a sort of demon. They crucify and murder him, causing a door to hell to be opened that the hotel sits upon. These doors lie all across the world, one of which was opened and caused a city to be overflowing with the undead in the first part of the trilogy. Fast-forward several decades and the hotel is inherited by a young woman named Liza (Katherine MacColl) who is oblivious to the supernatural influence that surrounds it. Despite several warnings by a mysterious blind woman, she continues to renovate the hotel and unwittingly re-opens the door to hell. Soon, the town is in chaos, with the dead in the morgue re-awakening to tear the flesh of the townsfolk.

If this all sounds rather silly and unremarkable, it really isn't. Unlike his lesser films, The Beyond looks stunning. The prologue is filmed in an old-photograph style sepia, and it really helps give the film a sort of dignity. Dario Argento has always had the ability to shoot horror in a way that helps elevate the genre, and learned his trade alongside the great Sergio Leone, and here Fulci is on a similar level. The hotel interiors are shot in dark shadows and feels extremely claustrophobic, and helps create an atmosphere where you can feel the suffocation of Liza. And when the gore starts, all logic gets kicked out the window as eyeball after eyeball is gouged out of their sockets, and tarantulas emerge from a bookshelf to devour an unfortunately paralysed man investigating the hotel's history.

A lot of scenes are just confusing or plain ridiculous. Certain things don't have any continuation, such as a little girl seen earlier in the film being attacked by the dead is rescued, and after a while suddenly turns into one of them with only the colour of her eyes symbolising the fact she is one the undead. Yet the other living dead can't communicate, and are half-rotting, brainless animals. But with a film this bizarre, over-the-top, and so inventively horrific, who cares? It's worth seeing for the final scene alone, which is staggeringly filmed, and hauntingly realised. Just sit back, enjoy, and ponder as to why Fulci has such a fetishistic love of people's eyes being removed from their skulls.


Directed by: Lucio Fulci
Starring: Katherine MacColl, David Warbeck, Sarah Keller
Country: Italy

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie