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Lucio Fulci’s masterpiece of face chewing spider action, milky eyed psychics, face melting embalming fluid and rotted, and flesh-crazed zombies returns in all its blood splattered, surreal and grossly disturbing glory for a new generation of horror kids!
If your new business venture is sited on the cursed gateway to the hell dimension of The Beyond, then maybe it’s time to move elsewhere, but Liza (Catriona MacColl) is determined to make her New Orleans hotel work, until strange things start happening. People vanish and her waking thoughts are haunted by a ghostly blind woman who seems to hold the answers to the whole bizarre fever-dream. As reality breaks down and the plot explodes, Liza must journey far from everything she understands and descend in The Beyond...
The Beyond is Fulci’s Zombie masterwork as he assaults his audience with shock after head spinning shock, all the while leading up to one of horror cinemas most heart stopping finales. The Beyond drives sane men mad and leads others to murder. Dare you step over to the other side?
This new edition includes a four option reversible sleeve, with original and newly commissioned artwork; a double-sided fold-out poster; and a collector’s booklet featuring an introduction to the film by Eli Roth, director of Cabin Fever, Hostel and Hostel Part II; ‘Beyond Bombast’; and an interview with Al Cliver by author and critic Calum Waddell. There are also reprints of the original Lobby Cards, stills and behind the scenes photographs from the collection of star David Warbeck.
Film: The Beyond
Release date: 14th March 2011
Certificate: 18
Running time: 88 mins
Director: Lucio Fulci
Starring: Catriona MacColl, David Warbeck, Cinzia Monreale, Antoine Saint-John, Veronica Lazar
Genre: Horror
Studio: Arrow
Format: DVD & Blu-ray
Country: Italy
Special Features:
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Introduction by star Cinzia Monreale
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Audio commentary with Antonella Fulci and Calum Waddell
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Audio commentary with David Warbeck and Catriona MacColl
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AKA Sarah Keller: Cinzia Monreale remembers The Beyond
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Catriona MacColl Q&A from the Glasgow Film Theatre
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Open Your Eyes Easter Egg
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One Step Beyond: Catriona MacColl Remembers a Spaghetti Splatter Classic
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Beyond Italy – Louis Fuller And The Seven Doors Of Death: Interview with US distributor and editor of The Beyond, Terry Levene
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Butcher, Baker And Zombiemaker: The Living Dead Legacy of special effects wizard Gianetto Di Rossi
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Fulci Flashbacks: Dario Argento, Daria Nicolodi, Sergio Stivaletti, Antonella Fulci and others remember ‘The Godfather of Gore’
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Alternative colour pre-credits sequence
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Original international trailer
Film: The Beyond
Release date: 13th October 2003
Certificate: 18
Running time: 83 mins
Director: Lucio Fulci
Starring: Katherine MacColl, David Warbeck, Sarah Keller, Antoine Saint John, Veronica Lazar
Genre: Horror
Studio: Vipco
Format: DVD
Country: Italy
This is an English-Language release.
In the early-80s, the Italians, and in particular Lucio Fulci took gore and exploitation to new levels, and The Beyond was one of the notorious ‘video nasties’ banned with the Video Recordings Act 1984. The film was released uncut by Vipco in 2003.
The Beyond tells the story of Liza, who inherits a hotel in Louisiana. The hotel harbours a dark secret in its basement. As Liza sets about renovating the hotel, there are a series of bizarre accidents, and she also has some crazy hallucinations.
As she searches for an explanation to the mysterious events, Liza joins forces with Dr John McCabe, a heroic doctor from the local hospital.
As they investigate the house and local folklore, Liza discovers that the hotel is actually built on one of the seven deadly gateways to hell. Liza spends the next 83 minutes trying to understand the horrific events as heaven and hell begin to merge…
Brought to you by the late great godfather of gore, Lucio Fulci, and widely regarded as being his finest work, The Beyond is a very difficult film to understand. It draws upon a Lovecraftian aesthetic and sensibility which defies many of the conventions of cinema and even narrative itself, and can easily be mistaken as video fodder by the lazy critic.
To understand and appreciate Italian horror in general, it is necessary to understand how they differ from Hollywood in the way they are produced. There are no giant budgets, and filming is often done within a very tight schedule. Since the majority of Italian film audiences are non-domestic, they built their industry around dubbing.
This creates a unique filmmaking environment where no sound is used on set, so the cast would be speaking their lines in various languages. This environment developed to the point where actors wouldn’t even know the title, let alone see a script before the day of shooting. Therefore, we have a very improvisational and unrehearsed acting style. Fulci had great faith in his actors, and almost always allowed them to create their own roles. Therefore, it is impossible to regard the acting in such a film in the same way one would in a Hollywood movie.
Central to The Beyond is its ethereal aesthetic. As the film progresses, and the merge of hell and earth takes hold, the ethereal and confusing look becomes increasingly defined. This allows the viewer to learn the film’s own distinct logic before they are completely immersed in it.
Fulci creates this by an almost total abandonment of establishing shots: hazy lighting; off key colour grading (which the now archaic no frills film stock adds to implicitly) and both spatial and narrative distortion. In any other film, these elements would indeed create nothing other than confusion and discomfort for the viewer; however, in the context of The Beyond, this aesthetic is crucial to building on the film’s central themes.
As the hell portal is opened, the diegetic laws of physics cease to function. The character of Joe ‘the plumber’, who appears at the start of the film and dies, turns up next in the hospital morgue and then later he shows up back in the hotel. Most confusingly, there are scenes where the characters will leave the hotel and surface in the hospital, as if they are next door to each other.
This gives rise to a central theme of the inescapable. The characters are inexplicably trapped within the Seven Doors Hotel. Liza says early on that she is financially tied to the hotel and couldn’t leave if she wanted to. Whenever she ventures elsewhere to explore, she finds herself back at the hotel.
The very passive nature of the characters is also used to bring out their helplessness in set-piece after set-piece of foregrounded gore and abjection. At no point do we ever see someone runaway (although there are some heroics) from certain death. They are constantly paralysed, frozen with fear, trapped in a corner or just plain confused. It is as if the characters simply accept their horrific fates.
This idea of passivity is evident on several levels. For the most part, the characters’ actions are driven by the story. They never really do or achieve anything, but simply allow themselves to be ushered towards the ultimate conclusion.
The foregrounding of gore, for which the film is famous, works with the mise en scene to create as abject and disgusting an experience as possible. The Beyond is daring enough to portray a man’s face being eaten by tarantulas; a crucifixion; acid melting a corpse’s face - the list goes on. However, there is a constant emphasis on eyes. This is also coupled with inordinate amounts of gunk, ooze, brown water, dripping, and toilet sounds and bodily fluids.
The Beyond has an overall gothic feel to it, despite being set in 1981. There are several allusions to graveyards, tombs and fences that Poe would have loved the chance to describe. There is a mystic book which is centuries old and foretells doom and apocalypse. The hotel itself is an old Louisiana plantation house, echoing the sins of the past, and giving yet further darkness to an already bleak canvas. Most notably is the pseudo-MacGuffin of the painting, around which the plot constantly revolves. The painting depicts an otherworldly landscape littered with petrified human shapes, lying flat as if eternally helpless.
The Beyond could be considered more of an art film with a horror setting. It is a vision that has only partly translated to film, and, for the most part, is speaking a different visual language altogether. It defies many of our established notions of narrative cinema. It assaults its audience from all angles with revolting images, off and on camera, and all in a package that is so extreme, all one can do is laugh. DOB
Film: Lizard In A Woman’s Skin
Release date: 7th June 2010
Certificate: 18
Running time: 100 mins
Director: Lucio Fulci
Starring: Stanley Baker, Georges Rigaud, Penny Brown, Florinda Bolkan, Silvia Monti
Genre: Thriller/Mystery
Studio: Optimum
Format: DVD
Country: Italy
Hung over from the psychedelic ‘60s, Lizard In A Woman’s Skin winds itself around the feet of deceit and distrust in a shroud of sex, drugs and murder.
Fulci could never be accused of not letting the audience know where they stand with the film’s opening. Perhaps not as shocking as his other efforts, the film still manages to kick off with brunette beauty Carol Hammond (Florinda Bolkan) amidst an orgy. She pushes her way through the naked, writhing bodies, apparently distressed and uninterested - that is, until she reaches the gold at end of the corridor (her blonde bombshell next door neighbour, Julia). Cue fantasy lesbian sex scene. But even for Carol, it is just that: a fantastical dream.
Carol lives a typical upper middle-class life in which she seems to have a healthy relationship with her supportive father, whilst successfully maintaining her own family of a husband and his daughter. But all is not quite so idyllic: her husband is unfaithful, and she has turned to frequent sessions with a psychotherapist, who is intently interested in her vivid nocturnal adventures. Her dreams have recently revisited that opening scene with increasing frequency, and it is Dr Kerr’s job to unravel the meaning behind her infatuation.
The implication of these dreams is suddenly blasted to new heights when the object of Carol’s passion is stabbed to death. She is in fact murdered exactly as Carol dreams, her body is left exactly as Carol saw her, and she is killed with Carol’s letter opener. The aspiring psychic’s fragile mental state is sent spiralling even further into doubt when she begins to suspect herself of murder. As her family members dismiss her frets, she sinks further into uncertainty, and drags the viewer with her until her true role in the crime is finally revealed…
Hedonism and self-indulgence prevail in Fulci’s take on the murder mystery, which only adds to an already challenging plot. Whilst the film begins simply enough, it soon twists and turns down the intricate path of detection, whilst its surreal scenes of the macabre and grotesque convolute it even more. Fulci followers will realise that compared to the likes of Zombi 2, this production races miles ahead where storyline is concerned, but that is not always a good thing. Thankfully, these spectacular dream scenes offer a little respite from the marathon plot and they will remain with the viewer for much longer than the details of who did what, when and why. True to Fulci’s usual form, one particularly grisly scene of vivisection sent him and his crew to court under suspicion of cruelty to animals. It may seem unlikely to anyone watching now, but the props department had to produce models to prove their innocence. Although the effects used in the dream sequences are inevitably rather dated by today’s standards, they are nevertheless impressive feats for the time.
Fulci does not shy away from clichés amongst his cast of characters. The reckless bohemians who party all night next door are nothing original, and come 1971 had already been committed to film, most notably Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg’s Performance, released a year earlier. The lack of a cockney accent is all that distinguishes Inspector Corvin, with his air of unorthodox efficiency, from a cop in a ‘70s’ British police drama series, and his elder, wiser superior only reinforces this. The only character who dodges clichés is Carol, whose somewhat dual-nature does not always work.
Bolkan’s dark allure sets her apart from the rest of the cast, who faithfully represent the languid rich. The hint of otherworldliness appointed to her early on in the film is therefore well suited, and Carol becomes a personality that the viewer wants to know more about. Such is her mystery, it comes as quite a surprise to learn that Frank is betraying her and not the other way around, and perhaps this is why audiences may successfully come to care about Bolkan’s character. However, her charming enigma is quite often compromised by moments of hackneyed femininity; for such a strong woman, she faints an awful lot, and finds reassurance in her adulterous husband far too much. Viewers may be left feeling a little frustrated at her slippery persona, and realise that they are not so concerned for her after all. Instead, their fascination may lie with Jenny, the hippie, or revert back to the free-spirited Julia; characters who may be much flatter than Carol, but who are also easier to grasp and understand.
For anyone looking to broaden their film horizons, don’t be afraid to give this one a go, but casual film fans may want to give it a miss. RS
