The Beyond (Italian: L'aldilà) is a 1981 Italian horror film directed by Lucio Fulci. It has gained a cult following over the years, in part because of the film's gore-filled murder sequences.
A young woman from New York named Liza (Katherine MacColl) inherits a Louisiana motel that has been unoccupied for nearly 60 years. While restoring the old building, many of the workers meet mysterious and untimely deaths, each more ill-fated than the next.
The Beyond is at once the quintessential Lucio Fulci film and a staple in the overall Italian horror genre. The director's epic masterpiece is a blend of atmospheric surrealism and nightmarish visions that are definitely unsuitable for those with weak stomachs.
Cinema Cult series. English dubbed.
Special Features
- CINZIA MONREALE REMEMBERS ‘THE BEYOND’
- ‘THE BEYOND’ Q & A WITH CATRIONA MACCOLL
- DAVID WARBECK & CATRIONA MACCOLL COMMENTARY
- COMMENTARY WITH ANTONELLA FULCI & CALUM WADDELL
The Beyond Movie Reviews
“Best known for directing Zombie, the Italian answer to Dawn Of The Dead and the inspiration for numerous Italian horror films, Lucio Fulci has also been cited by Quentin Tarantino as a key influence…Set in Louisiana, the 1981 film stars Cationa MacColl as the inheritor of a hotel rumored to contain one of the seven gates to hell (shades of the then-recent The Shining and The Amityville Horror). Some convoluted problems ensue involving a possibly imaginary blind woman, flesh-eating spiders, a hapless plumber, a zombie child, a frightening cellar, and ways to injure an eyeball that you've probably never thought of in your worst nightmares. The Beyond's first half-hour or so is extremely entertaining, alternating between genuinely frightening, gory shocks and hilariously awkward, atonal acting. After a while, however, it becomes as dull as its repetitive Italian prog-rock soundtrack, neither good nor bad enough to hold your attention for long. Still, for a crowd with its defenses lowered either by the late hour or other factors, it should be plenty entertaining. If nothing else, The Beyond imparts the important lesson that sometimes signs marked "Do Not Entry” mean business." The Onion AV Club
“The Beyond is a Sick and Twisted Film Without Plot or Logic. This is the second part of the Seven Gates trilogy…For any fan of Lucio Fulci, the culmination of everything that he wanted to do was made evident with the filming of The Beyond and it should be a mandatory piece in your movie collection.” best-horror-movies.com
“..so bad it's good is Lucio Fulci's The Beyond, aka, Seven Doors of Death (1981). I recently caught a scratchy print on the big screen, and it was fun to see all the blood-n-guts 20-feet tall. Known as the Godfather of Gore, Italian filmmaker Fulci doesn't have the stylish polish of a Dario Argento or the suspenseful creepiness of a Mario Bava, but he holds his own and is certainly deserving of a place in, at least, the cult-classic chronicles. In The Beyond, the "eyes” have it: glassy eyeballs stare blindly, eyes are melted, eyes are extracted, and even a seeing-eye dog goes bad…Some reviews of The Beyond cite that the film's plot, such as it is, is confusing. Actually, if you pay attention, it isn't. That's not to say that some scenes seem to have been edited with a hatchet, and it's not to say that the characters do puzzling things, but the story itself is not difficult to follow: A bad thing happens in the house in the 20s; A woman moves in in the 80s and disturbs the sealed-off gateway to Hell; Zombies and ghosts come into our world; A grand-gugnal time is had by all. The over-the-top, zombie-soap opera musical cues are hilarious. The pained expressions on the actors' faces, even when nothing actually painful is happening to their characters, are terrific. When a woman sees a jar of acid fall from a shelf, she travels across the room and (I presume “accidentally”) places her face directly under the flow. And when Dickie the Dog finally decides he can't bear hearing his mistress play the piano one more time, I guarantee you'll get all choked-up. The special makeup effects are often quite fake-looking but Fulci does a good job of milking them for all they're worth, going for the gory, lingering close-up (the tarantula death sequence and the throat-tearing scene are good examples of his talent for being able to successfully place shock over substance)…Look for a cameo by the director (he's the librarian who goes out to lunch right before the architect is attacked by a team of tarantulas)." horror.com