Lucio Fulci: The Beyond (Liza and the Undead)

[Cyril Tourneur]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=U17MM05yYw4


After making a career directing Giallo films and Westerns, Italian director Lucio Fulci achieved worldwide recognition in 1979 with "Zombi 2", his very own take on the then popular horror film with zombies. Fulci would return to the horror genre the following year with "Paura Nella Città Dei Morti Viventi" ("City of the Living Dead"), where he would explore concepts such as Hell and Metaphisics, as well as Surrealism in film. What he started in "City of the Living Dead" would be further expanded in his next movie, "L'aldilà" ("The Beyond"), a movie that has achieved cult status and is now considered his masterpiece, and not without a reason.

The film opens in 1927 Louisiana. A gang of torch-bearing Angry Villagers in boats make their way across the boyou to the Seven Doors Hotel, where a wild-eyed artist and occultist named Schweick is putting the finishing touches on his latest painting - a desolate nightmare landscape. The mob break in, scourge Schweik with chains (tearing his flesh with that wonderful patented Fulci "SHRRRRRRIP!" sound effect) and drag him down to the hotel basement. "Be careful what you do," Schweik admonishes his assailants. "Because this hotel was built over one of the seven doors of evil. And only I can save you!" But do they heed him, this man they call a "warlock"? Hell no! They nail him to a wall with railroad spikes and melt his face off with some bubbling acid-like goo! And all this before the opening credits!

Welcome to the Fulci-zone: a sadistic universe where the Worst Death Imaginable is also the most likely for the characters who, like bowling pins, seem to be set up for the simple reason of being knocked down. Things like plot, structure and character are normally minor concerns, but the difference here in The Beyond is that they intentionally thrown out the window. Emulating his hero Antonin Artaud, Fulci intention here was to "...attempt a film without any real plot... just visions, sensations, nightmares." And his plan worked a peach.

Jump ahead to 1981. The Seven Doors Hotel, long since fallen into disrepair and reputed to be haunted, is inherited by a former New York fashion model named Liza Merril (MacColl) who sets about restoring it. Unfortunately the house is, as you'd expect, haunted as f**k and right away the local tradesmen start having some rather unfortunate accidents. One of them gets spooked by the apparition of a beautiful blind girl staring out a second story window and pitches off a ladder, busting his head open and spitting up blood while screaming, "The eyes! The eyes!" Poor Joe the plumber isn't quite so lucky - when he goes down the basement to fix a leak he has his eyeball squished out of his skull by a zombie for his troubles.

Liza soon finds herself befriending John McCabe (Warbeck), a square jawed, three-day beard sporting, cynical man's man and local physician. She also meets Emily (Keller), the same blind girl seen earlier spooking unsuspecting workmen, who lives in a house that is in perfect shape by night but is in an abandoned shambles by day. Emily warns Liza about the impending danger with prophecies from the dreaded "Book of Eibon" and the helpful information that her hotel sits over the gate to Hell. McCabe is expectedly reluctant to place the blame on these bizarre occurrences on the supernatural, but when the town streets are strangely empty and zombies are crawling all over his hospital like ####roaches in a Lower East Side tenement he reaches for the .38 he keeps in his desk drawer (next to a bottle of Wild Turkey) and it's ZOMBIE HEAD BLASTING TIME!

The wide-screen cinematography (by Sergio Leone veteran Sergio Salvati) is quite stunning at times, particularly the moody, evocative scene in which MacColl is driving across a long, straight bridge and finds the eerie blind girl Emily standing in the middle of the road. And then there's that ending. Fleeing from the hordes of undead, John and Liza mysteriously find themselves in the waterlogged basement of the Seven Doors Hotel. Having no other place to go, the two head straight into a mysterious mist and find themselves in Hell, an exact replica of the wasteland depicted in Schweik's painting. It is an astonishingly ballsy moment of heart-sinking despair. The audience I saw the film with during its 1998 New York City re-release premiere hooted, hollered, laughed and yelled at the screen during the entire film, but at that moment, even with that rowdy bunch, you could have heard a mouse fart.

As well made and atmospheric as it can be at times, the highlights of The Beyond are still those all-important gore money-shots (rendered by FX whiz Gianetto Di Rossi), and here Fulci gives 'em to ya in well-paced frequency, typically pornographic detail, and ever increasing intensity. In addition to more eyeball popping, face melting and a dog-attacks-master sequence stolen from Suspiria, there's a deliciously cheezy sequence in which a man has his face devoured by a horde of ridiculously fake-looking dime store spiders.

"The Beyond" received an unfairly cold reception when it was released in the U.S., mainly because in the film arrived with an awful dubbing, a new musical score and overall heavily censored (the version named "Seven Doors of Death"), resulting in a much different movie than what Fulci intended. While it is true that the film is not perfect, it's a terrific horror movie that attempts to go beyond the typical clichés of the genre and succeeds. Many have criticized the plot holes in the story, however, those plot holes were often created intentionally with the purpose of showing the logic bended by supernatural forces.

Certainly this film is not for everyone, as the extremely gory sequences and the strange and atypical way the plot is structured may turn off some viewers. However, "The Beyond" is a terrific masterpiece of horror that fans of the genre should not miss. It's really a beautiful, haunting and influential story of atmospheric horror.