Lucio Fulci also known as the Godfather Of Gore dishes out this extremely graphic supernatural flick the same year as House By The Cemetery. While House By The Cemetery maybe very violent and disturbingly gory itself it can't quite compete with The Beyond as far as atmosphere, mood and overall film making goes.
The Beyond is considered by most Fulci fans to be the directors masterpiece and it is a hard statement to argue. Every aspect of the film right down to its elaborate sets is highly detailed and of course the same goes for the vicious murder scenes. On the other hand Lucio Fulci isn't exactly known for making movies that make much sense and The Beyond is no exception but then again the fans can defend this by saying "Its a supernatural movie. Its not supposed to make sense". I guess both parties would be right to a certain degree because The Beyond is full of zombies, ghosts, killer dogs, killer spiders and so forth and things seem to happen with no rhyme or reason.
The Beyond takes place in a hotel that contains a gateway to one of the seven doorways to hell. The gateway is opened with witchcraft and a very gory crucifixion that comes complete with violent chain beatings that rip through flesh and metal spikes that are hammered through the wrists of the victim. Next his face is burned off with some hot acid. Anyway, once the gateway is opened hell comes to earth and mankind is haunted by the living dead, animals running amok and any other way a director can jam a bunch of over the top gore into a film. We are treated to three graphic eyeball mutilation scenes, a women has her throat and ear ripped out by a dog, we have multiple gunshot wounds to the head including the most memorable and infamous scene in the movie where a little girl gets half her face blown off. This of course happens in gory detail and nothing is hidden from the audience. We also get to see a man eaten alive by tarantulas. The spiders eat his eyeballs out, rip his tongue to shreds and just really fuck him up.
Being lucky enough to catch this thing on the big screen at an all night horror festival, I really enjoyed listening to people who are new to this sort of cinema groaning as they struggled through the gore scenes. The girl next to me nearly lost her lunch as rivers of gore stained the screen red. Fans of this movie should also check out Gates Of Hell.
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