Movie review | The Italian director’s bloody and messy horror classic is funny in its own way

Horror film

The Beyond (…e tu vivrai nel terrore! L’aldilá), directed by Lucio Fulci. 91 min. K18.

★★★

In the year 1996 Died at the age of 68 Lucio Fulci was Dario Argento and Mario Bavan along with key Italian horror film directors of past decades. Fulci was a controversial figure due to both the elements of some of his films criticizing the Catholic faith and the extreme violence of the films.

He initially studied medicine, but nevertheless chose film as his career, first as a screenwriter and then as a director. Fulci directed comedies and three spaghetti westerns, but above all horror thrillers, in which he did not spare blood or sadism.

Fulci’s only Jack London’s the two who followed the novel White tooth-film from the mid-1970s premiered in our cinemas. Otherwise, we have only had his works on video, DVD and one western on Yle Teema.

Now premiering on Finnish screens in 4K restored The Beyond from 1981 is one of Fulci’s most respected horror films.

The film begins in 1927 Louisiana. A group of local men break into the hotel, kidnap the painter and brutally kill him. Before he dies, the artist tells the men that he is the only one who can protect them from the horrors of the hell gate below the hotel.

Then we move to 1981. Liza Merrill (Katherine McColl) has inherited the dilapidated hotel in question and plans to renovate it. The repair work has barely started before strange and creepy things start happening.

However, Liza does not back down from her intentions. He gets support from doctor John McCabe (David Warbeck), who does not believe in the supernatural. No, even though all kinds of blind ghosts and hellish monsters haunt the hotel and kill the film’s characters in the most gruesome ways, in as clear close-ups as possible.

They create the effects of the film, because Fulci doesn’t waste time on its more atmospheric structure in his fast-paced film narration.

If Dario Argento’s movies sometimes feel messy, that’s okay To The Beyond compared to. It’s pointless to look for any other consistency in a film that follows the logic of a nightmare.

Fulci only uses the script as a string on which to hang one after the other more bloody and gruesome and, in its own way, also funnier horror scenes. Clumsy acting and an even clumsier Italian dubbing add a period patina to the film.

Eventually From The Beyond there will be a kind of zombie movie, i.e. one more of the basic ingredients of horror is added to ghost and slasher horror.

Composed by the film’s typical Italogiallo music Fabio Frizzi hardly says anything to the Finnish viewer, but his handprint is one of the most popular Finnish jokes. I will fight once recorded Mombasa is an instrumental piece originally composed by Frizzi Ibo lelè.

Written by Dardano Sacchetti, Giorgio Mariuzzo and Lucio Fulci, starring Katherine McColl, David Warbeck, Veronica Lazar.