The Beyond

Rating:
Summary: Gore, Brains, Zombies, Blood, What more could one ask for?
Review: Although The Beyond was nowhere near as well done as Fulci's horror masterpiece Zombie, with its vague plot intermixed with some grossly cheesy scenes, (the blonde blind girl, whom I assume was a ghost, playing that creepy tune on the piano whenever the main character had an epiphany, and the literal tearing apart of the face of a man by a gang of tarantulas, although well executed with much pus and blood, was a bit difficult to suspend my disbelief for)it was still highly enjoyable to watch, if only for the gore. And gore there was. Punctured eyeballs, nails driven through the back of skulls, crucified artists with deliciously large amounts of blood squirting from hammered wrists, a blood drenched, face mutilating, blood gushing mauling by a german shepard,stigmata,bullets from a revolver being blasted through the foreheads of bloodthirsting zombies,acid turning faces into bubbling bloody liquid, and more punctured eyeballs made for a gorehound holiday. In fact, this movie should be watched if only for the classic scene in which a little girl gets the entire top of her skull blown entirely off, creating one of the most shocking and expertly simulated deaths in the history of horror cinema. Yes, that vision will be with me for quite a long time.
If you are a horror fan of the likes which stand disgusted before the cinematic sycophantic Blockbuster jokes risibly attempting to pass themselves off as "horror," that has been vomited out by Hollywood in this modern day of artistic degeneracy, then you will no doubt appreciate the uncensored, boundary breaking audacity of Lucio Fulci's "piece de resistance."

Rating:
Summary: The most see for gore fans!
Review: The Beyond is sure the best of Fulci.This is a gory movie.If you like gory movies this is probably in the "must see" category.In the 50's 60's Fulci directed(or writed)a lot of Comedies,but in the 70's he took to us 'The Lizard in The Woman's Skin",and "Dont Turture the Duckling" that are thrillers if i know right.The people of Italy liked the style of Fulci and they liked Dawn of the dead too,so Fulci made a sequel titled as Zombie(AKA Zombie 2 in Italy),thats a big success again.Fulci made other horror movies like:Manhattan Baby and The Gates of Hell(City of the living dead),and Beyond.
In Beyond,Fulci made new heights on the "apocalypse feeling".
The Beyond's Story:
A painter in the hotel opens one of the 7 doors of HELL(not death!),but the basement(where it is)is walled up.60 years later,Lisa a young girl inherit the hotel,and the gate opens again!
This film has very graphic,and gory effects(spider scene)but if your a fan of this type of a movie,YOU MUST SEE THE BEYOND!

Rating:
Summary: Ha Ha Ha Ha
Review: Thats basically what happens when you watch a Feluci film. You laugh. Ocular-trauma is funny. Random Taranchulas devouring a man are funny. Zombies being killed by a stab wound to the kidney is not. Its shamefull. Any ways, it can't possably be that good of a movie if its cut and edited "Beyond" incoherency and released under a different title. If you want zombie movies with plot, watch and play Resident Evil, if you want zombie movies because of zombies, thats deffinently Romero's "Holy Trilogy". thats zombie movies with human behavior and the "what if" or "what would you do?" theme.

Feluci movies should be more like Baseball, Feluci is the starting pitcher and someone else should close the game/end the movie. His films are like most Japanese horror films, great endings that make no sense:

Zombie: how did the zombies make it to the main land?

City of the dead: what did they see? who cares

Zombie 3: did you even make it to the end of that movie?

the Beyond: i've erased that movie from my memory as i did with house by the cemetery

1. night of the living dead
2. dawn of the dead
3. dawn of the dead (2004) and its not even out yet
after that who cares, Day has to be in there somewhere, comon'! its a Savini masterpiece!

go watch your movies now.

R.I.P. Joe the plummer, he was a pimp

"i,ve built a path.....for Joe"

Rating:
Summary: best fulci movie i've ever seen!
Review: "I can't see why people would badmouth this movie."I said to my self as I scrolled over the liner notes on the back of the Anchor bay copy of The Beyond.Although I did not spend much time doing this,on account of the fact that I wasted almost no time to get myself up to my room $ pop it into my tv/vcr combonation.I found the picture to be pretty damn good! & I would like to thank Anchor Bay & Grindhouse Releasing for distributing it.I strongly suggest you pick up a copy ( vhs or dvd ).The Trailer makes for a pretty good video.And even if your not a hardcore Fulci fan, you should be able to respect this horror classic.And to all the fulci fans out there, keep fighting the good fight against censorship,I have been fighting that very same fight ever scince I became a Fulci fan when I saw his imortal classic Zombie. & to all you only new horror disciples, in the great words of another reveiwer on this site "Stop badmouthing movies you no nothing about, go to blockbuster, rent Freddy.vs.Jason & leave us the hell alone!"

Rating:
Summary: I finally "got" it
Review: Like many of the bad reviews here I was extremely disappointed when I first saw this. After years of reading blabberings from magazines and things like Blackest Heart Media calling it the greatest horror film ever and a lost masterpiece I couldn't wait to see this. Well I bought that big tin box edition and I threw the thing in my DVD player. I expected the Fulci standards of bad music, a story that doesn't make much sense, bad dubbing with equally bad lines and loads of gore and that's what I got. But I was let down! It seemed so half done and lazy, just an excuse to show some gore effects and cool camera work, I couldn't hardly stand it, I wanted to like it but couldn't.
Then a year later I sat down to watch it again and something just clicked. It is hard to explain why this movie is becoming one of my all time favorites. As other reviewers say the film throws one horror experience at you after another with no explanation as to why its happening and nothing logical following it. It's almost like one of those old Warner Bros Looney Tunes cartoon where Daffy Duck is being tormented by a pencil changing his surroundings every two seconds and drawing cannons in front of his face or erasing bridges under his feet. The characters are in the hands of Fulci, and he's going to throw tons of zombies at them, killer dogs, flesh eating spiders, jars of acid that are able to knock people down and tip themselves over, more zombies, then toss them into an apocalyptic landscape where every direction is the same scene, they run in one direction and end up at the same point, that's a nightmare!
If you're going in expecting the usual movie experience of characters, a plot, and a story that wraps itself up you will not only be letdown but leave the film very confused. Know that this is Fulci doing an exercise in pure horror and just that!
Now that out of the way I must say the effects are brutal and great! The zombies are Fulci's zombies; they actually look like corpses and walk probably how a corpse would, fantastic zombies! This has everything that Romero/Savini got you crazily obsessed over in the genre and delivers it in splattery loads. The soundtrack, while some people love these soundtracks, I think they're absolutely the cheesiest things ever, but that's why I like them so much. Also a big player in this film is the lighting and camera; this is probably the most beautiful confusing zombie/apocalypse/gore film you'll ever see. Some shots of the zombies in the hospital morgue are so beautiful I'd like to have giant stills of them on my wall, same with one scene where the blind girl is sitting in the dark, her eyes appear to be glowing (with many thanks to contact lenses, but hey now, it's a good shot). Anyways, enough blabbering, go ahead and buy this already.
Oh yeah death metal pioneers Necrophagia (yes that is Phil Anselmo playing guitar) have an ancient cheesy video on here, death metal 80s style, an entire genre of music inspired by films like these, whether you think that's good or bad (I love death metal myself) its a pretty fitting tribute. Also if you want to search out for some more underrated horror check out the Coffin Joe trilogy, buy the box set, those films are great!

Rating:
Summary: Yes, it IS a classic.
Review: The assessment of The Beyond on the part of its most ardent admirers as the greatest of Italian horror films may be an exaggeration; but if it is, it is not an exaggeration by much. In my view, it deserves place in the same general company as the other surreal masterpieces of Italian horror: Lisa and the Devil, Inferno, and Suspiria. In fact, I would place it ahead of Suspiria. I don't understand why anyone would prefer Fulci's Zombi to The Beyond, unless one is watching these films for so-called "camp" value (how I hate that word). Zombi is entertaining and memorable, but is not comparable to Fulci's simultaneously fluid and disjointed, oneiric masterpiece.

Ultimately, what holds the film back somewhat is its refusal to create a situation (a la Inferno and Lisa and the Devil) that raises an interconnected series of questions whose answers are slightly glimpsed and tantalizingly unanswered. If done successfully, this strengthens the haunting, enigmatic aura rather than undermines it. That said, its weakness is also its strength: Fulci's bizarre magnum opus flows with its own avant-garde narrative consciousness, seemingly desultory and yet assured and seamless and inarguable in its illogical correctness.

The Beyond is the film that won me over to Fulci's oeuvre. Fulci lives!

Rating:
Summary: Super gory, even for Fulci
Review: No figure in the horror film genre is as divisive as Lucio Fulci. After watching one or two of his films, viewers tend to move into one of two camps. One side hails Fulci as a master of terror, a man who upped the gore quotient in his films while creating wonderfully atmospheric pictures. For these people, Fulci is right up there with the likes of Dario Argento as one of the best filmmakers ever to emerge from Italy. The other camp sneers at these claims, pointing to the plodding pace of his films, the use of extreme gore to camouflage plot holes, and the director's inability to draw good performances out of his cast as evidence of mediocrity. Initially, I enjoyed Fulci's films, specifically "Zombie," "City of the Living Dead," and "The New York Ripper" because I did not know any better. When I came on the scene, you went to Fulci to feed your craving for gore. What a difference a few years exploring the genre makes! While I will not go so far as to remove Lucio from my play list altogether, I have seen enough of his films to realize he is not a cinematic genius. He is at best a competent director, at worst an abysmal one, and there are plenty of examples of bad filmmaking in this director's filmography. Fortunately, "The Beyond" ranks as one of Fulci's better efforts.

The film opens in 1927 New Orleans at the Seven Doors Inn located out in some bayou. Strange things have been going on in this rickety looking motel, and the local townspeople plan to do something about it. A painter in room 36, as it turns out, found a key to one of the seven doorways to the underworld and has since made paintings of what he found inside the gateway. While a young girl reads about the pathways to Hades in the Book of Eibon, a lynch mob bursts through the door of the painter's room and promptly carries out a grisly execution using chains and what appears to be quicklime. The mob leaves the painter nailed to a wall in a basement as Fulci treats the viewer to a new definition of the term "pudding head" (watch and see). Meanwhile, the young lady reading the book goes blind when the tome explodes into flame. Confused yet? That's a perfectly acceptable condition to find yourself in during a Fulci film. Don't worry, understanding will come to you soon enough. Even if it doesn't, don't fret too much. This is Fulci, man! Lighten up!

Flash forward to 1981. Liza (Catriona MacColl) inherits the run down Seven Doors Inn from her rich uncle. Deciding to abandon life in New York City, Liza heads into the swamp to fix and reopen the motel. Almost immediately problems emerge of a most sinister nature. One of the workmen falls of a scaffold and seriously injures himself. A plumber looking for a way to fix the water filled basement dies horribly when he uncovers a nasty little secret tucked away in one of the walls. Things become so touchy at the inn that local doctor/forensic pathologist John McCabe (David Warbeck) arrives on the scene to investigate. The good doctor becomes intrigued when Liza tells him she has met and talked with three people who really shouldn't be living anymore. The most important of these people is Emily, the aforementioned blind girl who pops up occasionally to warn the new inn owner about the dangers emanating from room 36. According to Emily, the painter who died painfully in that room--he didn't; he died in the basement but Fulci's script fails to remember this fact--has now returned to the world of the living. In fact, soon all of the dead shall walk the earth because the gate to hell is now open. And hey! Emily is right. The dead arise and attack the living in glorious Technicolor. McCabe and Liza attempt to escape the wrath of these zombies and discover what is going on at the inn. How does one close a pathway to the underworld? Watch and see.

I generally liked "The Beyond" and consider it one of Fulci's better efforts although it is not as good as "Zombie." This movie primarily serves as a vehicle for various gore effects. You get faces covered in acid, a messy tracheotomy and severed ear incident, nails hammered through wrists and heads, bullets to numerous foreheads, and a nasty looking spider attack that is sure to turn a few stomachs. The real capper consists of three separate eye sequences, particularly notable since many consider Fulci the king of eyeball violence. I don't think these scenes hold a candle to the memorable splinter rendezvous in "Zombie," but to each his own. The gore works better than the acting (wooden) or the pacing (better but still slow). I got a few unintentional laughs out of McCabe's shootouts with the shambling zombies. Even I realized immediately that shooting the creatures in the head polishes them off, but McCabe wastes a lot of ammo plugging bullets into stomachs and chests to little effect. I did, however, enjoy watching the actress who plays the blind Emily; she's a real cutie who steals a bit of thunder from Catriona MacColl's Liza character.

"The Beyond" DVD bursts at the seams with extras. You get a commentary with MacColl and Warbeck, colorized versions of the opening sequence, trailers, stills, interviews with Fulci, a short interview with MacColl and Warbeck, a lame video from some thrash/death metal band, and a nice widescreen format for the movie. Trying to read meaning into a Lucio Fulci film is an exercise in futility practiced mostly by people who spend their entire waking hours watching Lucio Fulci films. "The Beyond" is a gorefest, plain and simple, and viewers should enjoy it as such.

Rating:
Summary: "Gore"geous Looking Horror Movie.
Review: Fulci's The Beyond is probably the most beautiful gore movie ever made. The film simply looks astonishing especially this DVD transfer. You will not see a better looking horror film than The Beyond. With that said The Beyond has a terrible premise and an awful plot to boot that does not make sense. The story is about a woman who buys a hotel that looks like something out of hell and ends up being just that. The basement is flooded to such a degree that shots done down there just might as well have been filmed in Venice. The house has a history of an old sorcerer who fell on the wrong side of the locals in a Dr. Frankenstein sort of way and who continues to haunt the hotel. A doctor shows up to help the woman come to terms with a strange number of deaths that have taken place in the hotel. There are several eye ripping/popping scenes that all stand out as classic scenes in cinema. The doctor here will have you laughing, mostly unintentionally, when he deems the cause of death of a number of eyeball ripped victims as "accidental". Later on in the movie he pulls a gun from his own GPs desk and starts to shoot some zombies only to run out of bullets and then suddenly begins shooting again. He also shoots out a door across the room and manages to kill someone in a very unbelievable way that will have you scratching your head. A young redhead girl defines the term "redhead" in one of the most shocking scenes of them all. A number of spiders eat a guy to pieces, a mom has her face covered in acid and a blind woman runs out of a house at top speed with her guide dog running after her. The film is inadvertently side-splitting because of all the crazy bad plots and their bungling execution by Fulci but this all adds up to make it a classic horror movie. If you have not seen The Beyond then you should, not matter what anyone else tells you. The ending is fantastic, not because it makes any sense, but because it is the best cinematic rendition of hell that you will ever see. The cinematography blasts away most of what Hollywood has to offer and the set-design is A+. The look of this film is outstanding for the genre and is nothing short of a modern cinematic masterpiece apart from some visual effects problems along the way (however this was made in 1983 and so all can be forgiven there). Twenty years later The Beyond looks better than most mainstream horror movies and in the opinion of this reviewer it is the best looking horror film ever made. In short there is enough dazzling cinematic material here to even get mainstream non-horror moviegoers to take a look, even if they are squeamish.

The Beyond is vastly superior to another movie by Fulci called "The House by the Cemetery" which came out a few months after this one and is almost identical in terms of story. If you have a choice between the two then this is one to get by a long shot. The Beyond is also one of Fulci's best movies and many fans of that director will list this as the "numero uno" horror film of all time. It is hard not to see why horror fans worship The Beyond.

***When first released The Beyond was heavily cut before receiving the classic X rating. It received further cuts for its video release. The Beyond is also known by the title "7 Doors of Death" but avoid this version of the film like the plague as it is generally heavily cut. Eighteen seconds where cut from the start of the film featuring a man getting whipped by chains. There was also cuts made to this same crucifixion scene and the acid to the face scene was also cut heavily. The eye-popping plumber scene was cut, the spider attack scene was cut, the cleaning lady death scene was cut, the dog attack scene was cut and the redhead scene was cut. In total 1 minute and 39 seconds where cut from the original release of this movie which is quite a lot of cutting. It has all been restored for this DVD release from Anchor Bay Entertainment.***

Rating:
Summary: Not for everyone
Review: "The Beyond" is a gory film about the gateway to hell residing in the basement of a Louisana hotel. Thats really all the plot synopsis you are going to need. While there is some depth and development to be sure(far more than some of Fulci's other pictures) the plot is almost consequential to the gore effects on the screen. Italian horror is one of my favorite genres and to be honest there are certain expectations that one should have before watching this film or any other Italian horror film.

A. If you don't like horror films... Don't buy this, don't rent it find something else to watch.

B. If you like horror films but don't like gore... Keep looking this is not the movie for you.

C. If you like horror films and a friend recommended this to you...try to remember whether you have anything in common with said friend after all we wouldn't want you questioning his "inteligency"

D. If you have never watched a Italian horror film...I urge you RENT THIS FIRST, don't buy it or any other Italian horror film. I know people that love Freddy, Jason, and even Romero's dead trilogy but can't stand Italian horror.

E. If you like horror, gore, have cool friends, and have watched an Italian horror film before...by all means pick this up.

In my opinion only "Suspiria" rivals "The Beyond" for the best horror film to come out of Italy. Of course, it has bad acting, of course its gory, of course its derivative, because almost all horror films from Italy share these qualities. You either love it or its not for you and it never will be.

That said try to remember these aspects when determining whether you want to watch this or not.

Rating:
Summary: An Apocalyptic nightmare. Haunting, Surreal & Mesmerizing.
Review: A beautiful young woman inherits a spooky hotel only to find out it's a portal to another dimension- namely HELL. Within only minutes (screen time that is) zombies, hungry tarantulas, possesed dogs, and acid ( yes, you heard right, ACID!!) all begin attacking the living - FULCI style. You know what that means folks, in the most gruesome ways imaginable.

I recently purchased THE BEYOND from AMAZON.CA to add to my ever growing HORROR DVD collection and I must state that I'm EXTREMELY glad I did. This is probably the only FULCI film that rightfully deserves praise. While the so called GODFATHER OF GORE has a devoted following, his films are indeed an acquired taste- even for horror film fans. And while many of his films (ZOMBIE, CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD, HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY) all have their loyal worshipper's, many mainstream critics have nothing positive to say about any of FULCI'S blood-soaked films. This movie is the exception.

THE BEYOND is beautifully filmed. The Louisianna setting is lovely; the 2 lead actors (David Warbeck & Catriona MacColl) are very attractive; the make-up effects are quite grotesque and effective. But of course, the star attraction is the GORE. I must say that the gore effects surprised me, especially when you take into consideration the films budget and the time period. There are throat rippings, facial mutilations, 2 very unpleasant scenes involving eyeball removal, all to great effect.

THE BEYOND has entered MY TOP 10 LIST of FAVOURITE HORROR movies. Unlike FULCI'S other films that only HARDCORE B-MOVIE GOREHOUNDS can actually love, THE BEYOND stands above all of them because it actually qualifies as a WELL MADE HORROR movie. From the disturbing sepia-toned prologue to the haunting finale, THE BEYOND is a horror masterpiece that is beautifully filmed and executed. Gripping from start to finish, the BEYOND will disturb you the way ALL GOOD horror movies should but most importantly, it will keep you entertained for the full duration of it's blood-drenched 90 minutes. ENJOY.