BEWARE- There are spoilers herein.

This 1981 Lucio Fulci film centres around a young woman called Lisa Merril who arrives in Louisiana from New York as she has been left a hotel as part of an inheritance and which she hopes to renovate. Several unexplained events happen however. She then learns that the hotel is built on one of the seven doors to Hell (!)

I remember seeing stills from The Beyond in a horror magazine in the mid-80s and wishing I could see it. This was in the midst of the Video Nasties furore however, and so I knew I’d just have to bind my time. The cut version that was released in the early 90’s was a good stopgap, but I wanted the uncut version, godammit!

It would be several years before I could see the uncensored version, but it was worth the wait. The Beyond has a scope and grandeur that isn’t on this scale in any other Fulci movie.

It’s also a film that you should immerse yourself in . There are plot elements that don’t make sense and aren’t supposed to. I firmly believe that Fulci wanted the audience to interpret the movie in their own way and for mystery and the unexplained to play a major part. The opposite of this would be the dirge of Hollywood, big-budget prequels of horror classics where mystery is stripped away and inadequate, very orthodox explainations are given. Who cares what made Leatherface the way he is?

In fact, think of all of the horror greats wherein mystery plays a part- Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Phantasm, the first Halloween are but a few examples. These films, like The Beyond, demand that the audience interprets certain elements of the narrative themselves rather than the filmmakers treating the audience like 7 year olds and spoon-feeding them what is happening and why.

The visuals presented in The Beyond are also breathtaking. The blind character, Lucy with her guide dog and cataract eyes, the character who is shot in the head with the scenery behind her being able to be seen through the gunshot wound, the barren parallel universe the surviving characters find themselves in at the film’s conclusion (with both of them now having Emily’s clouded eyes), the acid eating away at a character’s face in the morgue…

I also loved the sleazy soundtrack resplendent with flute motif.

The BBFC must have wondered what had hit them when The Beyond was presented for classification. They cut it for cinema release and must have remembered the film when they thought about films to ban for home video.

The Beyond is one of Fulci’s finest films.

4.5 out of 5 stars