The Beyond (1981)

Although one of my pieces of advice to anyone watching a Lucio Fulci horror film is not to look for much sense or plot, but just to go with what happens, I understand why his movies became increasingly surreal.  Much of his output before the 1980s was pretty straightforward, with even his gialli being logically put together.  Zombie was also pretty much what the title said despite some aspects being a bit muddled. 

The Beyond is the second in his "death" trilogy.  Like some other so-called Italian horror trilogies this has more to do with fans connecting similar films than anything Fulci intended.  What he did intend was to try to get away from the zombie films and get more creative control, which he ended up getting for a good part of The Beyond with the trade-off that he had to agree to zombies in the finale.  The result is what should be a standard haunted house story turning into a bizarre series of events that is more of a series of visceral set pieces than traditional storytelling. 

Liza Merrill (Catriona MacColl) inherits the Seven Doors Hotel in a town in Louisiana.  In the 1920s it was the home of a warlock named Schweick (Antoine Saint-John) who built the hotel over one of the seven entrances to hell.  His attempts to gain power as well as guard the gate went awry and he was murdered by the locals, leaving the hotel abandoned until the 1980s.

Liza is confronted by a blind woman named Emily (Cinzia Monreale) after a series of accidents leave workers renovating the hotel dead and is told to abandon the project.  The corpse of Schweick is found and brought in to be autopsied by Dr. John McCabe (David Warbeck), who soon becomes curious about both Liza and the hotel.  As the deaths continue and Liza starts to fall victim to its influence McCabe tries to find a rational explanation, only to be confronted with the recent dead returning and taking over the hospital and the town. 

The Beyond was released in the United States under the title The 7 Doors of Hell and, to get an R rating, was heavily edited and a new soundtrack added.  Like many Italian horror films of the time it was presented in a way to try to trick audiences into thinking it was an American film, even giving Fulci the pseudonym Louis Fuller.  It is filmed in Louisiana and takes advantage of locations and some local actors, but there is no mistaking this for anything but an Italian production, as a good portion of the cast is European and the dubbing is obvious.  It is, unfortunately, the poor dubbing that brings the movie down, along with some obvious fake spiders among the real ones during what is otherwise a clever death sequence. 

We have Quentin Tarantino to thank for getting the original cut restored.  I have seen it in some form before, but the newer version is cleaner, which like many remasters of older horror films is both good and bad, as it's harder to hide some of the prosthetics and models.  Despite that The Beyond is not short on imagination, coming up with many ways of doing away with its cast of characters, even if they are never around nor developed enough to create any kind of connection so that the deaths have an emotional impact.  Like most movies of its type the visuals and soundtrack are what make the film.

This is often considered Fulci's masterpiece, although I still think I enjoy The House by the Cemetery a bit more when it comes to his horror films.  When it comes to Fulci, though, his gialli are where it's at.  He was a talented director who had his own unique visual flare, and The Beyond is a work of demented art in itself, but it still feels like too much of an effort to copy Dario Argento's style at the time, just with some zombies thrown in. 

The Beyond (1981)

Time: 87 minutes

Starring: Catriona MacColl, David Warbeck, Cinzia Monreale

Director: Lucio Fulci