A masterpiece of atmosphere, gore, and surrealism, Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond celebrated its thirty-ninth birthday last week and is a personal favorite. Eventually released in the US as 7 Doors of Death in 1983 with an alternate score and missing some of the more gruesome scenes, the original Italian title is …E tu vivrai nel terrore! L'aldilà, which translates to “…And You Will Live in Terror! The Afterlife” and it’s also known as The Ghost Town of Zombies in Germany. The second entry of the director’s “Gates of Hell” trilogy, this is not a film for those who value narrative coherence above all else. Its strengths lie at more subconscious or visceral levels.
Taking place in rural Louisiana, the film begins with a sepia-toned prolog set in 1927. A lynch mob congregates at the Seven Doors Hotel and brutally executes a man suspected of being a warlock. After a nice transition to the title sequence where the films bursts into color, we are introduced to our lead in the present day, Liza (Catriona MacColl, billed as “Katherine MacColl). A native New Yorker, Liza has recently moved to the New Orleans area as she has unexpectedly inherited the now dilapidated hotel and she intends on reopening it. Almost immediately, strange occurrences begin to plague the ornate but rundown lodge. The blind and mysterious Emily (Cinzia Monreale, billed as “Sarah Keller”) warns Liza against reopening the hotel as she senses the malevolent supernatural forces gathering around the location, but skeptical Dr. McCabe (David Warbeck) foolishly dismisses the hopeful proprietor’s concerns. Eventually, though, it’s revealed that the hotel literally exists as a gateway to Hell and it is unleashing evil onto the mortal plane. Ghastly mayhem ensues.
Our lead and her two costars deliver fine performances for this type of production. I particularly like Monreale who conveys just the right notes of knowing fright. Keep in mind that, as was typical for many Italian films of that era that featured international casts, the dialog was recorded after principal photography and dubbed in later. Fulci and cowriters Dardano Sacchetti and Giorgio Mariuzzo craft an effective script, though, as I said, it’s not particularly concerned with traditional storytelling. An underappreciated visual stylist, Fulci is more concerned with mood and visually disturbing set-pieces. Conjuring a suffocating atmosphere of dread and fatalism from the start, the stilted dialog and lapses in logic are easily eclipsed by Fulci’s knack for inventing nightmarish sequences, Sergio Salvati’s gorgeously garish lensing, and Giannetto De Rossi’s gooey makeup effects. Violence is focused upon, with Fulci often shooting the various melting faces, gouged eyeballs, and seeping wounds in closeup for maximum effect. I’d hesitate to call the effects “realistic” but they nonetheless squirm-inducing. I’d say only the tarantula sequence comes off as a little hokey. Composer Fabio Frizzi’s score is almost operatic, slathering the visuals in anxiety and portent. The finale of the film, which features some of my favorite imagery of the effort, is bizarre and unnerving. As an aside, Fulci reportedly recruited vagrants off the street to fill out the final unsettling tableaux.
With each subsequent viewing, I love Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond more and more. It is my favorite of his films, though Zombi 2 is right there. Eschewing traditional logic, the film works better as an insanely gory and lurid ‘80s grindhouse version of an art film. It is splatter par excellence. Highly recommended for fans of practical makeup effects, atmospheric filmmaking, and surrealism.
Michael Cavender