72 films were placed on the infamous video nasty list by the UK director of public prosecutions between 1983 and 1985 but only 39 of them were actually prosecuted for obscenity. The Beyond is the first of the unprosecuted 33 and it's probably the best of the bunch. Hmmm. Well, top 3 anyway. Lucio Fulci's most famous film is always going to be (what else) Zombie Flesh Eaters but The Beyond is his masterpiece. His beautiful, nonsensical masterpiece.
Also know as L'Aldila and 7 Doors Of Death, it wasn't well received during it's general release in 1981 but it's reputation grows yearly, especially amongst genre fans who can look past the ropey acting and dubbing and see the chaotic madness at it's heart, it's surreal evocation of Deep South life and an ending that is absolutely unforgiving and truly horrific. In places it veers close to full on arthouse horror but it's brutal set-pieces keep the pretension at bay. Set-pieces that put the film in the BBFC's crosshairs but more on that later.
Liz has come from New York to New Orleans after inheriting an old hotel and her plan is to renovate it and reopen it but from the start it's plagued with violence and death. A painter has a fatal fall from scaffolding after seeing something horrifying through a window and a plumber has his eyes gouged out (in close up of course) while investigating a basement leak. The bell for room 36 keeps ringing even though it's unoccupied while a blind woman in town tells Lisa some foreboding truths about the place she wants to make her future. 56 years in the past something hideous (shown in close up of course) happened in the basement and now the hotel is forever cursed.
Gore aside Lucio Fulci was a hell of a dab hand at creating atmosphere and that combined with Goblin's creepy as hell score made even the cut to ribbons version of The Beyond a fan fave. Vast swathes of the film make no sense but you won't care when it's this unsettling and visually interesting. Fulci and his collaborator's admitted themselves that the film originated from a handful of death scenes Fulci had thought up of which they then had to write a story around to connect them up. For example late in the film Liz goes to visit a local architect to look at the plans of the hotel and when she leaves his building he has a tumble and paralyses himself and is slowly attacked by an army of tarantulas. For an arachnophobe it's a traumatic watch but it's an undeniably unique scene as his face is torn asunder (in close up once again). There's no point in questioning it. You just have to go with the flow. And maybe wonder about the psychology of a director obsessed with destroying eyeballs. Tarantulas do it, fingers, nails, glimpsing evil does it. It's the stuff of college theses.
It's this ocular carnage that got The Beyond thrown right into the middle of the video nasties scare. Well that and Fulci's previous work. Throughout the 70's his work was extensively snipped and his latest was no different losing 1 minute and 39 seconds of the gooey stuff before it was deemed suitable for public consumption. A year later the cut version got released into the unregulated video market and it was of course a hit when fans of Fulci's previous films like Zombie Flesh Eaters and City of The Living Dead descended on it to enjoy it at home, even in it's censored form. In 1983 the cops swooped in and it landed on the nasty list only to be removed 2 years later after an unsuccessful obscenity prosecution. How the hell could it be considered obscene when every bit of gore was missing? The damage was done though and it's infamy was guaranteed. It took a further 17 years before it finally got an uncut, legal release in the UK and Ireland but in those years hardcore horror fans had turned it into a bootleg hit, sourcing uncut VHS copies in Amsterdam and selling piss poor copies all over the UK.
Is it worth a watch? Yes. Gory moments aside there's imagery here you'll remember forever. Fulci may not have made a particularly coherent film but he made an astounding looking one.
Did it deserve it's notoriety? No, there's nothing here that would disturb a horror fan but that's looking at it from a 2022 perspective.
What's up next? The Boogeyman. A duffer.
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