{"id":4412,"date":"2016-01-21T03:57:19","date_gmt":"2016-01-21T03:57:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/?p=4412"},"modified":"2016-01-21T06:33:38","modified_gmt":"2016-01-21T06:33:38","slug":"the-beyond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/?p=4412","title":{"rendered":"THE BEYOND!!!!"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Beyond<\/strong><\/a>~ 1981, Lucio Fulci, Italy<\/p>\n

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THE BEYOND!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The Beyond<\/strong><\/em> is the second film in Lucio Fulci’s<\/strong> semi-official “Seven Gates of Hell” Trilogy<\/strong>, which is the very definition of squandered opportunity. SEVEN<\/strong><\/span> gates of Hell\u00a0TRILOGY<\/strong><\/span>? Come on, dude. What’s the deal? We still got, like, four more gates of hell out there somewhere.<\/p>\n

\"the-beyond-2\"<\/p>\n

What kind of person tells us he has seven gates to hell, and then only shares three? Fucked up.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Regardless, The Beyond<\/em> is often thought of\u00a0as one of Fulci’s best films, and that’s a reputation that I think is well deserved. This is, indeed, a good movie.<\/p>\n

The plot really isn’t that impressive, though. It’s\u00a0basically just a straight line that connects our protagonist’s introduction, with her eternal damnation. In short, she inherits a hotel (that’s good!) and wouldn’t ya know it, it’s built over one of the Earth’s seven, hidden entrances to Hell (that’s bad). \u00a0Immediately everything is really, really horrible, and then she goes to hell forever. A lot of secondary characters die,\u00a0and that’s the movie.<\/p>\n

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Awesome.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Just like with Suspiria<\/em><\/a><\/strong>, the weak plot isn’t really an issue, we didn’t come to The Beyond<\/em> with high expectations for an engrossing narrative. What makes this film truly great\u00a0is it’s superb\u00a0execution. Like many of Fulci’s films, The Beyond<\/em> is straught up\u00a0dream like, and in fact, most of this shit just\u00a0flat out doesn’t make sense at all. Is this\u00a0a deliberate abuse of your suspension of disbelief, or evidence of\u00a0incompetence on the part of the director? I tend to believe it’s the former, but either way,\u00a0Fulci plays it straight, and when you experience the many frustrating lapses in basic\u00a0logic alongside\u00a0the film’s\u00a0near constant air of menace, the end result is a wildly effective movie for those who have the patience to invest in it. The Beyond<\/em> is scary for reasons that you can’t quite pin point, which seems to be a common goal amongst the Italian horror maestros of yesteryear. Fulci nailed it this time.<\/p>\n

Good ol’ Lucio’s eye for cinematography is here in full force as well,\u00a0this\u00a0is a film that probably has a lot more love and care put into it’s aesthetic than you may notice if you don’t know what to look for. When Fucli was\u00a0playing at the top of his game, he put out movies that got more beautiful the longer you picked at\u00a0them, and that certainly is the case here. It’s also extremely gory, which is great,\u00a0The Beyond<\/em>\u00a0is a full fledged Video Nasty<\/strong>, folks, and understandably so. The main jam here is lingering. Just lingering!\u00a0This movie likes to find really,\u00a0really\u00a0gross shit, and then\u00a0just rub\u00a0your face in it for much longer than is required to get the point across. For gorehounds, that makes this movie well worth the cost of admission alone. For fans of Italian splatter cinema, it’s hard to argue against The Beyond<\/em> as a must see.<\/p>\n

Small gripe; People often call The Beyond<\/em> a zombie film, which I think it ill-advised. Yes, there are zombies in this movie, but there’s also a whole lot of other stuff going on too. Calling this\u00a0a zombie movie is sorta like saying that\u00a0E.T<\/strong><\/em>.<\/strong> is a movie about bicycles. Even worse, if you’re looking for zombies specifically, this might leave you feeling underwhelmed, as they are most certainly not this film’s primary focus.\u00a0If it’s the undead you crave, have a gander at this list<\/strong><\/span><\/a> for recommendations, because The Beyond<\/i> really isn’t going to get you what you’re looking for.<\/p>\n

Additionally, the movie also bares\u00a0many traits which\u00a0are very much typical of European\u00a0productions of the\u00a0era, but which also tend to\u00a0turn off mainstream American horror fans, who expect a more accessible Hidden Gateway To Hell experience. Slow pacing,\u00a0obnoxious English dubbing, and a sometimes aggravatingly negligent narrative, these are all here, and in spades.\u00a0If you haven’t seen a lot of these films before, then you might have trouble with The Beyond<\/em>. You need to think of these films\u00a0like a hot tub; dip your toes in first to test the temperature, and then lower yourself in as your body adjusts to the warmth. If you just dive in, you’re gonna get burned.<\/p>\n

Otherwise, The Beyond<\/em><\/strong> is absolutely great, and a highlight of Fulci’s epic filmography.<\/p>\n

A+<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The Beyond~ 1981, Lucio Fulci, Italy THE BEYOND! The Beyond is the second film in Lucio Fulci’s semi-official “Seven Gates of Hell” Trilogy, which is the very definition of squandered opportunity. SEVEN gates of Hell\u00a0TRILOGY? Come on, dude. What’s the deal? We still got, like, four more gates of hell out there somewhere. What kind […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[393],"tags":[858,1465,370,1464,214,1463,1243,1462,1467,1466,1440,860,447,216,32],"class_list":["post-4412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-858","tag-acid-melting","tag-ghosts","tag-ginger-cranial-destruction","tag-gore","tag-head-explosions","tag-italy","tag-lucio-fulci","tag-seven-gates-of-hell","tag-spider-death","tag-suspiria","tag-the-beyond","tag-video-nasties","tag-video-nasty","tag-zombies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4412"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4821,"href":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4412\/revisions\/4821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}