Hello everyone and welcome to my blog. For those who know me you know about my love for horror films so once a month I’m going to review and discuss a scary flick. We’ll look at the classics, some new films, and I want your suggestions on what I should review. I’ll do my best to cover all the different genres within the genre – slashers, ghosts, monsters, etc.
SPOILER ALERT! – These will be reviews so if you haven’t seen the movie you’ll want to watch it first before you read this. Let’s do this.
THE BEYOND review
…E tu vivrai nel terrore! L’aldilà! Or, for those speaking English – And you will live in terror! The afterlife. Either way, it spells The Beyond! in the second film of Lucio Fulci’s Gates of Hell trilogy! I like putting exclamation points at the end of every sentence!!
Anyway, I have to say I like this film better than City of the Living Dead even though it is certainly not known for its plot. Let’s be honest – if there is one – it isn’t memorable, so we won’t spend a ton of time on it and just get to the gore!! In New Orleans, a man is killed in the basement of a home for painting and practicing black magic. Fast forward to a woman who inherits said mansion/hotel that happens to be wait for it, right on top of a portal to hell!! The owner of the hotel, Liza, has her first odd experience when a house painter sees a scary figure on scaffolding and falls. A doctor named John takes him to the hospital where Liza later visits. She later meets a blind woman named Emily with a guide dog who continually shows up telling her to get rid of the property. She has a plumber come to fix the flooded basement only to re-open the gate. After seeing terrible things, Liza is trapped in a hospital with John. Loving this hospital scene with the patients, or undead, or whatever the heck they are. Anyone else get the Resident Evil vibe from this scene? After finally escaping – and killing an undead little girl – they wind up back in the basement of the hotel and then enter the beyond, only to disappear forever.
Not the most intense synopsis ever but that’s okay. We need to get to the good stuff. There are some seriously nasty death scenes in this film. A woman who visits a morgue is killed by an accident where a bottle of acid is poured on her face. Totally melts her skin away. A woman is plunged into a wall spike in the back of her head, and it pops out the other end through her eye. It’s great because you see the object it the background the whole time while she is fighting with the zombie, and you know exactly what’s coming. In one scene the character Emily has her loyal guide dog attack some zombies/humanoids/whatever they are and then the dog turns on her and rips out her neck and then takes a bite out of her head. What is going on here?! But nothing compares to the spider scene. A man doing research on the house is in a library on top of one of those rolling ladders and loses his balance only to fall and is severely injured but alive. Too bad for him because tarantulas show up and start eating this dude. It’s gross. They bite his face, around his moth, and then his eye. Oh man, they dig on and start stretching and tearing his eyeball out. I’ve seen a lot of movie deaths but this one was tough to watch.
Every review just kills the film because of the plot, but I don’t think people are looking at it in every aspect. The shot composition and lighting are much better in this film than City of the Living Dead. Most of the film was actually shot in New Orleans so we have this great scenery and set pieces. I’ve seen arguments for this being about religion referencing the actual Beyond at the end of the film – which I thought was a really beautiful and very spooky set design – as a form of purgatory. The Book of Eibon comes up in this film which is referenced in a few of H.P. Lovecraft’s works as well. Movies always borrow from other movies or literature. I definitely can’t praise this film for its script but I don’t need to. I like it’s feel and emotion. Right from the first few scenes of old New Orleans with the swamps and old houses I was in. Fulci knows how to make horror and as a horror fan, I appreciate his work. The gates of hell aren’t closed yet though. Next, we dig into The House by the Cemetery!
Enjoy the trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9asxICiFPlY
