The Beyond
Introduction
Introduction
I have a confession, brothers and sisters. I done had me another “try to kick the table over when I’m fast asleep” moments.
I’d fallen asleep on the couch and was dreaming that I was fighting a group of people. 5 or 6 of them, and we were in a random parking garage type space. I was moving, trying to get away from the bigger group, and as I tried to dart past a skinny kid- couldn’t be more than 14 or 15- he suddenly set himself in the classic “I’m gonna grab you” straight-forward hunch, and without stopping my run I steered into him and kicked him in the nuts with my lead foot. And I put a LOT into it.
Although I love fighting, I’m a martial arts instructor, so things are generally controlled and non-aggressive. In other words, we’re fighting for the love of the dance with people that we mean no actual ill will against, so we avoid doing things like trying to punt their scrotum to the dark side of the moon.
It’s one of those things that all fighters know they have if they need it- like the headbutt- that you generally don’t use unless you’re in trouble. I must have felt like I was in a lot of trouble, ‘cause once again I threw the kick out in the middle of my sleep but thank Jeebus, I didn’t break anything.
I feel like I’m batting .500 now, but not in any good way. Last time I tried to kick the table over in my sleep, I broke two bongs. I think. It’s hazy. But last night I broke no bongs. I’m proud of myself.
I’ve decided to reward myself, too, for nothing really in particular. I ate well today and went to the gym, but it’s not like I deserve a gold star or anything. But I do deserve better than The Asylum puking in my lap like an intoxicated freshman, so I went back to the lists of top number of zombie movies ever made and found something that not only have I never watched before, I never even knew this existed.
I might own it on DVD, since at one point I got a great deal on a pile of almost all of Lucio Fulci’s movies on DVD, but I haven’t looked at that pile in forever. I’m not sure what I’d ever stick a DVD into these days. But some guy in Portland was selling his whole collection and I cleaned up. I’m still kicking myself for not just buying the whole thing, but the point of the story is I own a crap-ton of Fulci’s movies in an outdated media and still think I just found something new. The Beyond.
Doesn’t that sound like a sequel to The Abyss? “Just when you thought you couldn’t go any deeper… you can go… beyond.” Or something like that. The sad reality is more of “In this gore classic, a woman inherits a hotel built over an entrance to hell.”
This is pretty standard late 70’s zombie mythos laziness, meaning, a bunch of Italians made a bunch of gory castle-movies (yes, this is from 1981, I know) back then that all used “’cause of HELL!” as the reason for whatever bloody mayhem was being inflicted upon correctly proportioned (IE: Actual humans!) and modestly undressed bikini models (IE: They were trying to be provocative yet Larry Flint hadn’t shown them how to yet).
This is the laziest plot device ever. But that’s ok, because it’s Fulci. I’m putting a lot of faith in him here- I don’t expect anything better than Zombie, but I hope he still had some tricks up his sleeve.
This coffee is good. The picture Amazon is showing me is a blonde woman with red on her cradling what appears to be a ginger, so I assume it’s a demon from down under the nethers of the netherworld.
I feel like there was something else I was going to include in this today. Ah. Yes. If you do nothing else, listen to N.W.O. by Ministry while watching footage of Russia invading the Ukraine. Hearing George Bush’s words over this twisted unfunny reality makes me wonder who to root for. Not in this fight- it’s obvious who the aggressor is- but rather in the concept of do I root for change, or do I root for stability?
I know the easy answer is “It depends on what’s going on. If it’s good, root for stability. If not…” No shit. This response is the mental equivalent of sleeping through an hour of Intro to Philosophy 101.
If you have to pick a team, but time itself isn’t a factor, do you root for change or stability? Do you root for chaos or order? Anarchy or discipline? It’s easy when it’s a flag or a fight or a political issue, because we can focus on the nouns and write them on signs and t-shirts, but there’s another question here that’s larger, one of actual participation or not.
Is it still possible to not participate? I’d like to believe that I still have the right, or maybe just the option, of leaving. I’ll hug Mos Def and Hitchhike out of here if I could, I’d press reset if I knew I got re-spawned, I’d like to know how many people are really living a truly isolated hermetic existence on the planet?
All I want is Walden lake. How fucked up is that? That’s like saying all I want is the Rockerfeller building. I assume that’s a thing, and that it’s quite grand. If it’s not, then my bad, it was a shit analogy. But what I mean is I know what I want.
I want to swim forever in Walden pond in the year 1998. I want to spend days idly swimming laps across it, or nights high on mushrooms, swimming out under the stars. We’d swim out with large rocks an use them to pull us deeper into the cold and dark, until you let go and roll over and see the moonlight so faint and diffused above you and you feel the water rushing past your body as you rise yet you never see the surface until you’ve burst through it with the warm summer air suddenly all around your face and in your mouth as you’re laughing and panting and inhaling the occasional mosquito.
That’s what I want. When I’m asked about happiness, that’s what I want. I believe that I honestly hated half of my social group at the time, but being accepted into the general tribe was important, so it was strange bedfellows moments for sure.
Wow. Just burned myself on the bucket. Thing is hot. Gonna leave a mark tomorrow. I’m gonna have some trouble focusing on this review tonight. Not only am I wired past the point of a squirrel with a crack-pipe, I’m also texting back and forth with some guy regarding a van of his that I want.
I do actually own a “I live in a van down by the river” t-shirt. I wear it at the gym. Every once in a while it gets a chuckle, but it’s discouraging how old the chucklers are getting. But anywhoo, there’s this beat to crap Chevy Astro extended body that I’m obsessing over and he’s playing coy, dammit.
I have the best wife ever. I can’t believe she’d letting me do this. Currently, we’ve got… her car- Blueberry. Then there’s our overlander Jeep, Jellybean. I also never got rid of my 5-speed chipped turbo Jetta wagon. Plus, we’ve still got the Beast, our old F250. And now I’m trying to buy a van.
Shit, only thing worse than a van would be an old Camaro on cinderblocks. She’s not exactly encouraging this insanity, in fact, she did encourage me to get rid of my old motorcycle- which I did- and hope that idiot kid hasn’t killed himself yet. Thing had more horsepower than most compact economy cars. Got worse gas milage, too. So I let it go.
I do miss it. I was gonna chop her into a bobber. But she DID try to kill me a couple times. It’s sort of like that old Guns and Roses song “I used to love her but I had to kill her…”. I guess it’s nothing like the sort.
Anyway, I’m fucking torn! Part of having a Cluster B mental disorder is that we’re not big on delaying gratification. It’s sort of why we always know we could headbutt the person we’re talking too.
Often, at least to me, it feels like I’d accomplish my goals faster if I did so. But I’m trying not to let that bleed too much into this texting convo with the van dude. I know it’s not ok to try to kill someone.
So with that completely off the table, how illegal is it to do what to frighten someone? I mean, I know you can’t open up in a mall with an AK-47 loaded with blanks. Which sucks, ‘cause blanks are actually wicked cheap. But… the more I think this through and finish my coffee the more I think that it’d actually start getting classified as intimidation, which I also know is bad.
No, I’m not really THAT much of an asshole most of the time. I couldn’t be if I wanted to. I’m even claiming the tiniest tad when I say I’m 5 ft 8. Shit, my Asian wife is taller than me. How’s that for demoralizing?
Plus, she looks fucking amazing in high heels but she never wears them ‘cause of the whole Nicole Kidman/Tom Cruise thing. I don’t care- I’ve told her over and over. She’s just such a classy lady that she’d rather wear flats than make it look like she had to settle for a guy that was bald AND short.
I’m taking a piss with all this shit though- I’m a bulletproof 3 and she’s an amazing woman with an incredible heart of gold. The fact that she’s willing to let me buy another project vehicle is so much more warming than the idea of actually acquiring the vehicle.
One makes me feel loved, the other will piss me off with faulty wiring and a never-ending smell of cigarettes and McDonalds French fries. It looks like a homeless van that evicted it’s most recent tenant. When our Jeep was stolen, back when it was just my fiancé’s commuter, we got it back after it’d been lived in by an obese transient transvestite. Yeah. Wrap your head around that while I get another coffee, take a smoke, and fire this new-found Fulci up. Whooot!
Ok. It’s, like, hours from when I wrote that. Just as I finished a huge hit my dog came up to snuggle on the couch, and she fell asleep and I didn’t want to wake her up, but then I thought of the perfect search term for a very specific product I’m looking for- Commercial strength steel deck supplies.
We’re building a house and there’s gonna be a huge (480sq feet) split level deck at roughly the 2nd and 3rd floor levels. We’re going to own the neighborhood- at least, if this turns into a shooting game. But yeah- I was lying there cuddled with my dog and it came to me unbidden… “Party Deck”.
It took about a YouTube search later and I found what we’re looking for. Sweet. But I’m, like, all side-wired from earlier coffee and my high has gone contemplative and mathematically inclined. Or dog based. She’s lying here next to me twitching like a rabbit undergoing electroshock therapy. I hope Lucio doesn’t wake her.
Review Notes
Review Notes
Strange- Amazon is saying I’ve already watched this? I don’t remember it at all. It’d be funny in a sad way- like, watching a loved elderly relative slip and fall from afar- if I’ve already done a review of it and forgotten. It’s that kinda night.
Ach! Hit that last one a little too hot!
Louisiana 1927. I think. My wife came from there. Not then, though.
Couple boatloads of dudes rowing around.
This is black and white?
I can barely see the woman with the candle.
EIBON.
Thunder is over and now we’re painting?
That painter guy looks like the villain in The First Power. You remember that one? Lou Diamond Phillips?
These boat-guys have torches and what appears to be bad intentions.
It’s a hotel!
I think…. No, not cops. Cars with guys with torches.
She’s got a prophesy book. Walken gonna dance his way in I hope?
This is some Sergio Leone level sweaty eye filming.
Looks like they’re gonna lynch the painter guy.
Or rather… beat him to death with a chain while cursing him and accusing him of being a warlock? These people are jerks.
Something about the seven doors of evil.
Well, I see why this is considered a gore classic.
Step 1: Beat him with a chain
Step 2: use huge nails to crucify him against a cement wall
Step 3: Douse him with… boiling acid?
Not that I mind, but this is starting to sound like an Alkaline Trio song.
Lots of close-up of a face melting. To bad disco tunes.
More gateways to hell crap…
Oh! The book burst forth into flames, granting color to the motion picture.
And… all the credits are in Italian.
“e con” I assume means “featuring” or something?
The song is sort of like Gregorian chants from the early eighties with lyrics re-written to simply “ooga booga” over and over. I *think* it’s supposed to be creepy?
Louisiana 1981. They had Trans Ams, ladies and gentlemen! I mean, not in the movie. But times had changed.
I really like cars.
Oh. Uh… So, she’s fixing up the house, and I hope that contractor has insurance. Lotta good gore, plus a little bit of a startle.
It’s all about filming the eyes. Close-ups on the eyes. Like he was saying.
I’m gonna call that guy Scruffy, in honor of Bender coming back, as well as the fact that he looks really scruffy.
He found the painting…
She’s worried.
Joe’s Plumbing. That’s quite the license plate.
Back in the days when everyone was smoking everywhere.
The old “Basement is flooded” story.
Room 36 is bad. Got it.
Who the FUCK is Martha? I’m… shit. I’m way too high.
I worry, Martha… I worry.
Joe, where’d you go to plumbing school? Beer?
Ought to turn off the water first.
But… Joe found the catacomb! Dope!
I wish I had one of those. A catacomb. Not a plumber.
Don’t you think he should have asked before removing a wall?
What’s that sigil?
Aurther looks every bit the sweaty perv.
She’s sending him up on the roof. I bet he’s gonna have an accident.
Ok, so Joe’s wall is melting. I get it. They wanted to use the melting special effect a lot
Fuck!! Didn’t expect!
Yey! Eye! You know what I’m saying!
I’m pretty sure those bridges are in Florida. Not Louisiana.
A woman and her German Shepard? I’d probably have been so confused I’d forget to stop.
Oh, that’s creepy!
Blind lady… wish your contacts were better.
Her dog’s name is Dicky.
Very dated but still kinda effective piano scary notes. Like they had in the Nightmare on Elm Street series.
Martha can’t find Joe.
She found him. He’s… red stuff.
Is THAT joe?
Is that girl playing those notes?
Cryptic.
Crypt.
Yuck. I hate autopsy shit.
Hella cool morgue though. I’d expect a rave to break out.
They’ve got the machine that goes “Ping!”
And one wants to read the brain of the rotted corpse? But not the fresh one? Is that too easy a challenge?
I love cars. And this is… well, in need of a tune. But purty.
I keep hitting the pause button on my notes laptop instead of the movie laptop.
I figured it out though, and the dude frozen on the screen at 25:37 looks so fucking high!
I don’t believe that that’s an elevator. Why fuck up something like that? It’s a pointless special effect that they botched. Maybe they should have made it melt.
Like an abandoned red-headed stepchild.
What the fuck is this lady planning on doing to the corpse? Dressing it? Is this her job? Does she often take her kid to work?
SCREEEECH!!!! Jesus, I get it.! I get it! That was fucking obnoxious! Mop Fuck you Fulci!
Ok, she got the dude dressed…somewhat.
And now she’s screaming?
Water is dumping out?
The kid… what the fuck??
Well, they had the budget to answer the question “What would it look like to pour caustic acid on a mannequin full of red paint.”
I’m still not sure why mom fainted or whatever.
That floor is disgusting. The white foam is the worst though. I’ve walked through a puddle of blood like that- a pool of blood. My bare feet stuck to the floor.
She’s trapped in the room? She’s being… menaced… by the pink foam? I’m having a hard time…
Never expected to find a corpse in a locker!
Some sort of jazz place. I know who she is. With a cherry on top.
I think that this is the British version. Nothing sounds like Louisiana. Who the fuck says- in a British accent- “Or I go on relief?” No. It’s welfare. That’s what it’s called.
Arthur and Martha. Ok. I know who they are.
Dr. Mkay?
Scary music, then we’re at a funeral.
I expected that, but it was still unnerving.
I have no idea what it’s supposed to mean, though.
The red-haired girl’s eyes went white when a frozen one-eyed corpse fell on her?
Basement still flooded.
The blind… uh… Emily…
Scary shit, then more chanting stuff…
Evil breathing
Room 36! How can that building have that many rooms?
A gateway to hell key?
Emily says some scary shit.
The buzzer startled me!
I think she’s telling the ghost that she doesn’t believe in ghosts.
Is that stigmata?
We watched Emily run out 47 times from different angles, including “I want to see dog testicles” vision.
Why did she try the hatchet before the key?
Looks like the set of a Cheech and Chong movie there’s so much crap in the air.
No one likes a squeaky door moving by itself.
Why are the suits rustling?
That was one hell of a freakout. Did she time-travel?
My wife peeled me a bunch of grapefruit. That’s love.
The corpse left his nails behind.
Just hit wrong computer’s space bar again.
Emily doesn’t exist unless she’s sitting in the living room playing the piano.
There’s crap about restoring a house
She sees the book
That dude has a giggling problem.
Guys- look. If you have long, obvious hairs growing out of the pores of your nose, pluck them. It’s impossible to look at anything else when they’re that prominent.
I know this guy! His name is Aurther. Is that how you spell it?
Scruffy shaved! That’s why I didn’t recognize him.
And now he’s in the town planning hall and getting locked in. Suspicious!
Climbing a ladder to the third floor while locked…
Yeah. I thought that would happen.
Spiders? Really?
And some of them are fake??
Are they making those chirping sounds? And what’s all that crunching?
This is just spiders crawling around on a guy to a synth beat. It’s not anything really worth watching or listening to.
There is nothing convincing about these spiders eating the man’s face.
Or the pulling out of his eye.
This is filmed in mouth-o-vision? So we can get the special close-up of… his tongue getting ripped out?
And then the plans to the hotel all disappeared off the paper?
I thought this hotel was, like, a shabby POS house on the bayou. The set and scale of this is all wrong.
Have pruning shears, will break and enter!
Now he found the book?
This book… The Evil Dead… nah, total coincidence.
Back to Martha! Room 36! Yes! I was wondering when it’d get… mopped.
Yuck tub. And no, my first move would not be to stick my hand in that.
Oh fuck. It was hair
Dude! It’s Joe the plumber!
She has zero “run” instinct.
More chanting.
Joe’s face is zombie but his chest is spry and youthful.
Another eye popping out scene. I think this makes 6?
Yeah, there’s no way in hell that building holds 36 rooms.
Back in the morgue? Why?
The sigil. Again.
Back to Emily.
The piano begins playing on it’s own!
Wind rustles!
I thought this person was a ghost, so I’m not going to be too distraught when she dies. It’ll just be “catching up to expectations”
The swamp thing corpse is there. I think it’s the one from the morgue? With the sigil on it’s wrist?
She can sense it? I’m shocked she can’t smell it!
She seems to have to familiarity with all these events and characters.
Shike?
She doesn’t want to go back. To where?
She’s standing in a room with three spread out motionless corpses standing around, shrieking stuff that makes no sense.
She did what she was asked?
Where is back?
We’ve got a dog fighting a zombie.
Stop yelling at the dog!
I’m glad that silliness didn’t go on for long.
The dog won!
But then… ripped out her jugular.
There’s so much red. So much red.
Phone’s ringing.
Still ringing.
Phone’s not ringing anymore.
Now we return to the basement flooding issue and, like, cement walls and shit.
Whoah! Oi! Ah!
Very, very startled!
She’s flipped her lid.
Hasn’t this guy been killed yet?
The doctor guy *already* said that.
He read the book! It sort of turned him Pierce Brosnan by it.
“Who are you really?”
Ok, we’re back on 7 gateways to hell, and we’ve summoned Big Trouble in Little China’s final battle special effects.
The painting is bleeding.
More chanting.
Oh, what’s nice. That’s nice. That’s nice. I like that.
They used the sound effect of a jumbo jet landing for the car parking
Everyone is not here.
That’s not a fucking elevator! Such bullshit!
And everyone has disappeared?
Oh no!
She FUCK!
Got me again!
Hands through the glass!
That… That’s a good zombie.
Lots of zombies.
I like this.
THERE she is! I’d wondered where her plot line wandered off to. She even has a name?
Yeah. We know. She’s gone blind.
Uh… No. Gunshots do NOT do that to glass. What the fuck?
Back into the pretend elevator.
He has NOT learned to make head shots.
For a doctor, he’s pretty stupid.
Oh, that’s a good zombie-!
Shit! Startled again!
Oh!
Uh… The girl went evil, he shot her head off, it all happened quickly!
Wait. Are they in the hotel? Or…
This is genuinely a bit scary. I like it.
Into the glowing fog portal they go…
And that… is a surreal and gross ending.
Or is it not over?
We close out with a quote that really misses the mark.
————End Transmission——————–
Plot Autopsy
Plot Autopsy
- I spent a good chunk of time snuggling my dog
- I started this movie and instantly had no idea what was going on
- I finally established that a leaky basement was causing all sorts of issues
- Fulci kinda embarrassed himself through fetishism, repetition, and half-assedness.
- There’s a KICK-ASS 10 minute zombie short at the end that MUST BE SEEN.
Zombie Description
Zombie Description
Think about The Evil Dead. Remember that book? This is, like, that book. So damn near everything that Ash had to deal with occurs in some form or another. But in Italian. 95% of this movie is really lacking in zombies, but the final 10 minutes are pure zombie gold. Or maybe silver. This isn’t Fulci’s best work. But it’s good. The zombie parts. The 10 minutes of them.
Where the money went
Where the money went
The money went for Alka-Seltzer and anything else that could be used to make a melting effect. Everything in this movie either melted or had one of it’s eyes ripped out. Fulci, you’re a bit limited in your imagination and quite fixated on the showing the same thing over and over. It’s like if in Robocop, they kept showing different guys melting over and over in close up slow motion. You’d be like, “Ok, I got it. Then what happened?” but then the next thing that happened was that something else got a reason to melt. For F’s sake, they showed a moldy wall melting. Who cares? And when they weren’t melting shit, they were embarrassing themselves with spiders.
Best Weapon
Best Weapon
Imagination. Lots of it. The guy had a pistol and he shot a bunch of zombies with it, but he intentionally chose to shoot them in the belly and stuff, so he didn’t kill that many. He did use the pistol to shoot open a door, which exploded all eight panes of glass in slow motion and then hurled them twelve feet and into the face of the guy standing next to him though. Dicky was a pretty lethal weapon, but once again… if you can’t do the special effects well, and they’re not necessary, leave that part out.
That was new!
That was new!
*This section intentionally left blank in protest of the time wasted prior to the final 10 minutes of the movie. Wasn’t shit new of value.*
Can I get a hand?
Can I get a hand?
There were a couple really good moments here, but only a couple, since the vast majority of the movie had more to do with flipping an old home than horror. (They are actually one and the same, ask anyone who’s done it.) But there were great hands smashing through glass and grabbing, and the zombie tearing open the bag slowly as it sat up was great. I feel like there was another good moment, but this really wasn’t about the reverence for the genre. This was about melting shit.
Overall Recommendation
Recommendation?
Look. You have to watch it. To begin with, it’s Fulci, so to really call yourself a lover of the genre, you have to collect a couple sets. Fulci’s and Romero’s, to name a few. Oh. And like, 18 Resident Evil movies. But it’s not just that- this thing actually closes out STRONG. Essentially, from the “Finally there’s zombies!” point to the end, this is a great movie and what the entire time should have been. But instead? The sink is leaking and the help is weird and room 36 really needs cleaning. But there’s also a blind piano player and her dog, and a red-haired girl with pigtails, as well as a hospital with the funkiest morgue this side of Cincinnati. Watch from 1:15 to 1:25 for the actual zombie movie though! The rest is just ridiculous garbage. It’s laughable in it’s earnest dedication to showing the same two gory images over and over- an eye being pulled out, and shit melting. But not all of these make any sense, and not all of them actually look convincing. At one point, it looks like they’re using a Michael Meyers Halloween mask as the base layer of a prop. It’s silly, and then when the spiders show up, it’s embarrassing. I need to share something about myself though. I do not like happy endings. I like desperate, doomed endings. And this movie… it gave me a wonderful sense of that through the last bit. There were some moments where my toes were wiggling. The actual ending? Fuck, go read some Lovecraft if you want my opinion… and the whole premise and movie itself? Regrettable. But the movie as a whole? Mandatory watching. Sort of like Bad Taste. It’s not really… right. But it’s a must-see.