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The Beyond (Limited Edition)

The Beyond (Limited Edition)

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: DO NOT B E FOOLED !!!!!!!!!!(this is the(...) verision)
Review: It is nice to see that now there are people releasing the cut and (...) verisons of great movies, like dimond distributors.
These guys and others like them are selling DVDs at low prices that are directly being copyed from VHS. These low priced firewood ripoffs do not have extras, not in widescreen and have not had the footage restored . This film is orginally called THE BEYOND and not seven doors of death. You can allways tell the (...) verisions by the price and the features they have. A little research goes a long way!!!! STAY CLEAR FORM THIS ONE!!!!AND BUY THE BEYOND , IF YOU DONT WANT TO PAY THAT MUCH FOR A MOVIE BUY IT USED!!!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Second Rate Argento
Review: Like Argento, Fulci makes horror movies filled with excellent cinematography and special fx, decent acting, lots of graphic gore, etc. Unfortunately, Fulci's plots tend to be messy and confused. In this case, as with many of his movies, the thin plot is just an excuse for zombies to go around killing people.

A woman buys a house in New Orleans that turns out to contain a gateway to "Hell" (actually, it is more like the original Greek conception of the afterlife which was created as a philosophical allegory: everyone winds up spending eternity lying around on a muddy, foggy plain no matter their station in life). Zombies from this hell kill anyone who hangs around the house, and everyone the zombies kill also become zombies. They don't kill people for food (they don't eat anyone after killing them), so at first it appears that they are guarding the gateway. But their ations aren't consistent since they go around killing everyone they come across, even when they have been nowhere near the gateway. Nor do they act like escapees. For example, they go after a blind woman who tries to warn others away from the house in order to take her back to hell (apparently people who enter hell alive go blind instead of turning into zombies), thus acting more like prison wardens. In other words, the zombies don't act with any sort of consistent motive, and there is just a lot of killing and ominous warnings with no logical consistency.

The deaths themselves tend to get ridiculous. It is never enough for someone to just die a horrible death. For example, a bottle of acid will fall down on an already dead body (talk about flogging a dead horse), or flesh eating spiders will appear out of nowhere and start eating a victim (whose flesh unrealistically tears like cotton candy). The cotton candy flesh is an another problem with Fulci: in order to make the scenes as graphic as possible, the victims sometimes stay conscious and alive longer than is realistic, or too much detail is shown (making the effects noticeable), etc. As a result, the effectiveness of these scenes actually decrease because of the director's attempts to make them more gory than necessary.

Adding to this film's problems is an often annoying soundtrack. But, hey, it is still more fun than most big hollywood horror movies if you don't take it too seriously.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The greatest horror film of all time!
Review: There is very little I can say about the film itself.

Quite simply, I think the film is extraordinary, a fine blend of horror and surrealism. I would go so far as to say it is the greatest horror film of all time!

The DVD does not disappoint. It provides a first-class transfer of the film. It also offers some interesting extras.

Essential viewing!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Effective gore and atmosphere
Review: Anyone who has seen a film from Lucio Fulci knows a few things to expect: 1) Gore is always the name of the game. 2) Eyeballs are wholesale items to be popped out, burned, cut open, eaten, and just plain demolished. 3) The plot's always as incoherent as one of those Saturday morning serials back in the day, but that proves to never matter. 4) Never eat before the film and never encourage others to eat. 5) This director isn't famous for keeping couples together, especially the ones where the guy has to force his girl to sit down for one of his movies.

Most of Fulci's films are for guys who moonlight as gorehounds; guys who are in love with George Romero for creating the kind of flick that gave birth to Fulci's ability to pop out eyeballs and burn people's faces off with sulfuric acid. With "The Beyond," Fulci fans get everything they want, without (shock) the gratuitous nudity you get in so many of his films (see my review for "The New York Ripper"). The plot is basic: This hotel down in Louisiana is home to one of the Seven Gateways of Hell, and when a man is tortured to death (and when I say tortured, you better believe it; I've never cringed at the sight of a horror film murder so much) the gate is loosened. When his body is discovered years later, the gate is opened. What happens next is a steadily increasing amount of the living dead coming out of the city morgue, all of which are as grotesque looking as my mom's meat loaf. The film has its moments of complete stupidity, like when the male lead obviously has figured out that you have to shoot the zombies in the head to kill them, but he just keeps wasting ammo on body shots. That's all forgivable, I guess, because the rest of the film, especially its haunting closing shot with creepy voiceover to accompany, is so atmospheric, and filmed with a passion for the craft. The opening scenes, despite the savagry, are my favorite because of the way Fulci colored the film to make it look like an old faded photograph in motion. The gore effects are professional and convincing, the zombies are plentiful and even scary, and the acting... well, the acting is as wooden as that puppet who wants to be a real boy. But that's Lucio Fulci, and this is his "masterpiece," as it is proclaimed. I wouldn't call it anything close to that, but as gory, Fulci fun, this is pretty darn good.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Two words--- BUY IT
Review: When I first heard of The Beyond I assumed that it would be comparable to the other works of Lucio Fulci such as House by the Cemetary and ZOMBIE(which is also a fantastic movie), but it wasn't....it exceeded my ultimate expectation....it was, in my opinion, superb. I sat down to watch this and it started out on the right note, exactly what any horror movie fanatic would want, a vicious beating which ultimately ended in the crucifixion of a radicalistic priest. Come on tell me thats not what you wanted as an opener. And as the movie progresses more and more unfolds to the effect of the seven gates of hell. I thought this movie had a great ending which I will not reveal was very unique in its own way. But the thing that got me was the zombie attack in the hospital,hich was added only because of the zombie carze in Germany(bless those germans), was spectacular. But this movie would have been nothing without the great acting of David Warbeck and Catriona MacColl. And if you look close the librarian is the one, the only...... Lucio Fulci. So don't even bother renting it just----- BUY IT!!!!!!!!!!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A work of horror art.
Review: The Beyond is what many horror fiends consider to be Lucio Fulci's crowning achievement, which is none too surprising. Mixing gore, a creepy story line, a great soundtrack, and images that stay in your head for weeks, The Beyond is truly a horror buff's film. Prior to and after his death, he's been often imitated, but never out done. I suggest any horror fan pick up ANY of Fulci's zombie movies as soon as possible for their eerie representations of the afterlife, amazing make-up work, and spine-chilling and often abstract endings. While much of the Italian horror genre is only scary while you're watching it and mainly get pops for their gore, Fulci's films have the ability to have you glancing over your shoulder for years to come. So pick this movie up..you won't regret it. FULCI LIVES!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: This may very well be the dumbest movie I've ever seen
Review: Gosh,where do I begin.
I know Fulci has a huge cult following, and this movie is supposed to be his magnum opus, but I honestly cannot say enough bad things about it. Those supposedly "in the know" exalt "The Beyond"'s lack of cohesive plot in favor of its surreal imagery, but I'm guessing that most of these people are just gorehounds who obviously have not seen a lot of movies. There are plenty of movie directors who do this well (ever hear of David Lynch? Cronenberg? Argento? Kubrick's "2001"?), and, hate to break it to ya, folks, but Fulci ain't one of 'em. For one thing, it's not even original -- Fulci's pretty much doing his inferior version of Dario Argento's "Inferno" (which is far from Argento's best -- it starts to fall apart in the third act -- but it's still twice as good as this junk.) Oh yeah, and Fulci's still stuck on copying Romero's shoot-em-in-the-head walking zombies (not that the idiotic hero can figure that out -- right up to the end, he keeps shooting them three times in the chest before trying the head -- man, that kinda stuff ticks me off!)
More than anything else, this movie's been applauded for its gratuitous gore scenes, including spiders eating a face, acid eating a face (yawn) and so on. I'm not a prude -- I don't have a problem with good gore scenes if the entire movie has more to offer and is not built around them. Well, "The Beyond" is built entirely around its gore scenes -- and if anything's gratuitous, it's how stupidly these scenes are set up. For example, the guy's up on a ladder -- Fulci can't think of any other way to get him to fall off so he can be slooooowly eaten alive by spiders, so he has a FLASH OF LIGHTNING come OUT OF THE FREAKING BLUE and startle him into falling to the ground where, apparently, he becomes paralyzed as spiders eat his face in a laughably fake, rubbery FX scene. Dumb. Also, the acid scene -- the chic turns around and shrieks -- NOT because there's a hideously-grotesque monster lying on the bed behind her, but because, I guess, a jar of acid is somehow tipping over on a high shelf and she somehow gets under it??? HUH?!?! No one else felt cheated by the utter stupidity of this scene? I get the impression Fulci had all this makeup and fake blood and goo and rubber heads and junk to work with, so he just threw a bunch of wretchedly prolonged, gooey death scenes together and hardly bothered to link them with some contrived storyline -- sort of a "gee, what weird, gross death can we cook up for this scene" mentality. You want to see a bunch of fake death scenes? Rent "Faces of Death" -- you don't even have to sit through ludicrous "plot development" -- (and, for this movie, I use that phrase very loosely.)
Oh -- the acting's atrocious, too. Ex.: a lady discovers a body in the cellar spitting up its guts and its eyes gouged out and her expression DOES NOT CHANGE AN INCH! Sorry, but that sucks. Didn't Fulci want some kind of reaction? Who is he -- Ed Wood? He can only do one take? I know all you fans are saying, "Man, you just don't understand, dude" -- well, maybe you're right. I don't understand how something so obviously idiotic could achieve cult status PLUS an endorsement from Quentin Tarantino! Guess he's not as cool as I thought.
To sum up, I haven't seen a lot of Fulci's movies, but if they're all like this one and his Romero wannabe, "Zombie" (which, granted, is the tiniest bit better than this one), then I'll pass. Judging from these, I get the impression he couldn't direct himself out of a cardboard box.
I'm done.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: An overrated mess
Review: The consensus seems to be that The Beyond is a stylish film wihout much in the way of plot. I agree with the lack of plot, but I wonder how anyone -- even the most devoted of Fulci fans -- could call this film stylish, that is, unless style is by definition that which contains an infinity of bad special effects. I can't stop thinking about the spider scene -- spider marionettes eating latex. And then there's the acid scene . . . and the dog scene. Fulci seems to construct these death scenes for the purpose of showing excessive gore. I have no issue with excess, it's just that the effects in this film are so amateurish and laughable that they try to add a "camp" value to this work, a value that is undermined by Fulci's serious tone.

Fulci wants to make a great film, but doesn't have the budget to do so. Rather than restraining himself to protect the project's greatest weakness, that being its meager budget, Fulci insists on going as far as possible, even if that means putting on film effects that would be laughed out of film school. To Fulci's credit, The Beyond is clearly the work of someone who can't be bothered with dissenting opinions. I suppose that I admire his courgage.

I am not a Fulci hater. In fact, Zombie, New York Ripper and Don't Torture a Duckling are good horror films, in my opinion. Beyond, in my humble opinion, is a piece of amateurish trash that you ought to avoid like the plague. If you are a fan of Fulci, however, and especially of this overrated film, you will appreciate the disc, which is of admirable quality.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: I Dare You to Watch This in the Dark!
Review: From the opening frames of this film, i knew that I was in for a real treat! The sounds coming from all over my living room was so disturbing that my wife went to bed because of it! the picture is absolutely breathtaking! it's too bad that these movies aren't made anymore, there's way too much politically correctness out there that would prevent such a film. I hope that more filmmakers have the guts to show guts on screen because there is such a drought that i'm gonna die! however, films such as this are finally available uncut (!) and that's the best thing to ever happen with dvd! one could only hope that paramount will someday release uncut versions of their friday the 13th films.
the sound and picture was the main focus on the release and anchor bay did a wonderful job! i highly recommend this title to all horror fans. i dare you to watch this one in the dark with the sound turned all the way up!

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: One of Fulci's Worst.
Review: After viewing this film a number of times I was still asking "what?". Shaky plot, lack of charecter development, poor acting make this film one of Lucio Fulci's worst. The only good thing about this film is that it ends.


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