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The Beyond (Lucio Fulci, 1981)
79 Jeremy Heilman
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Some movies seem so certain of their
place in the world that although they might be conventionally bad, they fill a
chosen niche better than any film with aspirations of mainstream acceptance
could every possibly hope to. The Beyond, a splatter film directed by
Lucio Fulci, a hack Italian horror director who consistently comes off like a
poor man’s Argento, certainly qualifies. Nominally a tale about the opening of
one of seven mysterious, and rather unexplained, gates to hell, the film offers
a phantasmagoric parade of horrors, most of which make next to no sense. For
example, though there are living dead present in the film, no one dies as a
result of their presence. They exist not to advance the plot so much as to add
to the sense of unease that permeates throughout every one of the film’s
incoherent edits and possibly intentional continuity gaffes. Every flaw that the
film might have seems to fade away when the viewer is faced with the fact that
they’d be hard pressed to find a film that more efficiently sets up its
gruesome set pieces.
Fulci cranks up the gore spectacularly,
sacrificing things like coherent plot and character development to better
present an unmitigated flow of repulsively imaginative masterstrokes. Some
characters may or may not be imagined. Even those that we are sure exist are
drawn so thinly that the viewer can’t help but place himself in their shoes as
they die horrible deaths. As a director, Fulci isn’t much of a stylist. His
calling card is that each of his major works includes a scene where an eye is
violently gouged out. The Beyond graciously includes several such scenes.
For those who want to see this sort of thing there are few better opportunities,
and on those terms the film is triumphant. It’s not for the squeamish by any
means, but several scenes such as a revolting tarantula attack or one that
features a girl whose life is threatened by her other’s melting face are truly
memorable. A shot in which that same girl (who serves no apparent purpose in the
plot beyond her victimization) is shot squarely in the face is shocking, yet
amazingly satisfying for gorehounds. Whatever strikes one could cast against it,
The Beyond certainly knows its purpose (the Anchor Bay DVD knows the
film’s purpose as well, cueing many of the chapters to start just as the
goriest sequences begin), and that makes it refreshing in the face of so many
movies that overreach what should be modest ambitions.