Another Lucio Fulci movie, another entry on the "Video Nasties" list. Whatever else you might think of the man, you have to admit that he had a real talent for pissing off the British censors. The Beyond was also part of Fulci's "Death Trilogy" as well - the other two parts being the previously-reviewed The House By The Cemetery and City Of The Living Dead.
In New Orleans, Liza Merril is renovating the dilapidated hotel she has just inherited - a hotel which we see in a prologue was home to an artist and warlock named Shvyke who was killed by a lynch mob in 1927. This lynch mob was a particularly zealous one - they whip Shvyke with chains, nail him to a wall and then apply some quick lime to his face to finish him off. In the present day, the renovations are running into a few problems - bells keep ringing in empty rooms, a ghost causes one of the workmen to fall from the scaffolding and seriously injure himself, and the plumber who comes to fix a leak in the basement gets killed by a zombie instead. It turns out that the hotel is actually built on one of the seven gateways to Hell; Shvyke had been guarding it before his untimely demise and now Hell is escaping into our world. With the help of a local doctor, Liza tries to solve the mystery of what is going on with the hotel and close the gate to Hell before it is too late...
Also known as Seven Doors of Death (for obvious plot-related reasons), The Beyond continues with the three-related coincidences by also being Fulci's third entry on the DPP list, as well as being his third film starring Catriona MacColl (who was in all three of the "Death" trilogy movies). The film most likely ended up on the video nasties list because of the scenes where Shvyke is tortured and killed during the prologue, and possibly a later scene involving a tarantula attack (which would have had me clinging to the ceiling except that closeups reveal the spiders to be obviously and laughably animatronic). Those scenes are far from the only scenes of gore in the film, of course - disfigured zombies stumble about, heads explode like they're made of porcelain and pools of foaming acid dissolve faces as they expand across the floor.
Now, I have something of a soft spot for The Beyond, as it was one of the first Fulci films I ever saw, plus it's got zombies which is always a win for me. However, even I can't deny that the film has problems. Its biggest problem is that its plot seems hastily stitched together, and feels in parts that it was thought up as an afterthought after they came up with the gory setpieces mentioned above - the tarantula scene is a primary example of that. The whole scenario is ridiculously contrived, it makes even less sense than the average horror death scene, and it isn't even referenced in the film afterwards. There's also a Cthulhu reference from out of nowhere - the book of Eibon is featured throughout the film as being a key to everything that is going on. Eibon was a sorcerer created by author Clark Ashton Smith as part of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos - but nothing else in the film can really be seen as Cthulhu-related. The big zombie scene was also added to the film because of the craze for zombies at the time, rather than for any plot-related purposes.
However, I think the film is still good. The ending in particular is both surprising and bleak, as Liza and Dr. McCabe find themselves trapped in hell, which turns out to be the painting that Shvyke was working on at the start of the film - Chekov's painting in action. There's also a lot of creepiness and shock moments throughout, such as Liza's realisation that one mysterious character doesn't make any noise when she runs, or the scene where a young girl has to try to escape the foaming acid puddle of death in the morgue. The film contains several of Fulci's trademarks, such as his fascination with extreme close-ups of eyes and sudden exaggerated sound effects, and for fans of Fulci's work it's definitely a must-see. However, it's also not on the same par as some of Fulci's previous works, and a lot of its modern notoriety comes more from its status as "previously banned" rather than its own merits.
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