More Fulci? More video nasties? More Surrealist horror? yes please
The Beyond is a 1981 Italian Southern Gothic supernatural horror film directed by Lucio Fulci, from an original story created by Dardano Sacchetti, and starring Catriona MacColl and David Warbeck. The cellar of an old hotel is built on top of the door to the beyond. Bloody zombies roam there. A young woman who is the heir of the hotel wants to restore it. She is confronted with strange events: a painter has a lethal fall, the plumber vanishes, and her friend breaks his neck. When she escapes to the hospital of a friendly doctor, she doesn't know that a nightmare is waiting there.
The special effects in The Beyond were achieved via practical methods, and have been noted by scholars as Fulci's "signature violent set pieces." The majority of the special effects-intensive scenes were filmed on sound stages in Italy. Monreale recalled her time spent on set during the effects preparation as the most "intense," due to elaborate setups and hours spent properly achieving Fulci's desired visual outcome.
i know i probably say this about every Fulci movie i have had the pleasure of covering so far, but the directing in this movie is gorgeous as fuck. this movie opens on an artist and warlock named Schweick, who is dragged from his room by a Lynch mob to the hotel basement and killed for practicing black magic. this whole opening is colorless except for a dirty yellow sepia tone, and it scratches my itch to see more beautiful black and white movies. not only does this movie look incredible, but our boy Fulci went extra hard on the music. Fulci commissioned composer Fabio Frizzi to complete a musical score for the on writing the score, Frizzi said...
"The distinctive aim of the film's soundtrack was to achieve an old goal of mine. I wanted to combine two different instrumental forms I had always loved: the band and the orchestra. When I started writing music some years before, I had learned to combine these two sounds; but for many reasons, the roles of strings and wind instruments were mainly created by keyboards. This time I decided to get serious."
this movies gore is above and beyond (hahaha) even for Fulci, and this movies effects have been noted by scholars as Fulci's "signature violent set pieces." before the opening credits even start we get a nasty crucifixion, i cant dive into all this movie amazing effects but lets chat a bit about how they pulled of this opening splatter fest. holes were cut for Saint-John to conceal his forearms behind the cross, while dummy forearms filled with fake blood reservoirs were attached to the front of the cross. Two additional holes were cut at the ends of the dummy forearms, through which DeRossi inserted his own hands. its all the behind the scenes stuff like that makes me love these movie as much as do, and this movies keeps the amazing practical gore coming. and i haven't even talked about this movies plot whatsoever.
after the credits we jump straight to Liza Merrill, who inherits the hotel and moves from New York City to refurbish and reopen it. the movie never directly explains who she is or how she wound up the new owner of the hotel, and it definitely took me a while to figure that all out for myself. According to De Angelis, much of the plot was devised based on vague ideas Fulci had for various death scenes, as well as several key words that he felt unified his vision. Some elements of the screenplay were derived in an arbitrary manner, such as the design of the Eibon symbol, which Fulci based on the shape of a trivial amateur tattoo his daughter had gotten on her arm. its plain to see that Fulci was far more interested in his "signature violent set pieces" to care to much about plot, and that's fine by me
this movie is full of asshole male character gaslighting Liza, a few scenes and plot threads that go nowhere, its rather boring at quite a few different parts, and nowhere near as surrealist as i had hoped.
and i still love it.
8/10
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