The Beyond: Fulci's Masterpiece?

After seeing Zombie and enjoying it for what it was, I was motivated to see The Beyond (1981) by various comments on the Internet Movie Database and other sites describing it as Lucio Fulci’s masterpiece, or at least one of his best.  Of course, other comments from Fulci fans charitably referenced the “slightly incoherent plot” and stated that the acting is “what you’d expect”, so I knew what I was getting in to.

Louisiana, 1927:  Instead of Randy Newman or any mention of flooding, we get a sepia-toned flashback with stern men bursting into a hotel to lynch a demented painter, Schweick.  First they tongue-lash him (“you ungodly warlock!”), then they lash him with a chain, nail him to a wall, and spatter him with bubbling lye, all in Fulci’s blood-spurting, flesh-rending detail. 

One hopes for a Lovecraftian slant, especially when the Book of Eibon comes into play, but it turns out that instead of a portal to the Great Old Ones, the hotel is built over one of the seven doors of Hell.

The scene switches to the present day (1981), as Liza (Catriona MacColl, who appeared in other Fulci films) inherits the rundown hotel.  Liza meets the caretakers, creepy Martha (Veronica Lazar) and her slow-witted son Arthur (Gianpaolo Saccarola), the sympathetic Dr. McCabe (David Warbeck), and the original Joe the Plumber (Giovanni De Nava), who quickly meets an eye-gouging fate (a Fulci trademark) in the basement which is somehow pronounced an “accident”.

In one of the more memorable scenes, Liza runs across the blind Emily (Cinzia Monreale) and her German shepherd, standing on an eerily deserted Lake Pontchartrain bridge.  “I’ve been waiting for you,” says Emily, so Liza takes them in, no questions asked.  Was Fulci going for the surreal or just too lazy to craft a plot that made sense?

Assuming the former makes the viewing experience more pleasant, since the plot is slightly more than incoherent.  It’s also fairly uninteresting.  If the premise is a hotel built atop a gateway to Hell, one really wants to see all Hell breaking loose at some point; but this is not a haunted hotel movie of the caliber of The Shining.  Fulci does try, with a spiked skull, ripped-off ear, torn throat, and exploding foreheads.  There’s an inventive bit in a bathtub, and at one point inexplicable tarantulas manifest to eat a man; only a few are live, and the ones in the background are models which are waggled unconvincingly back and forth.  The “Do Not Entry” sign in one scene is a classic.   

The acting is in fact what you’d expect, but there are some enjoyable lines:

“I’ve lived in New York all my life, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned not to believe in, it’s ghosts.”

“I’m a doctor and I want to accept the rational explanations!” 

“Somehow the basement’s flooded” (not entirely surprising in south Louisiana).

Overall, The Beyond just isn’t cohesive enough to be engaging.  I found Zombie to be much more interesting.

Naked SCUBA! Zombie vs. Shark! Splinter-in-eyeball! It's Lucio Fulci's "Zombie"

Hot on the shambling heels of Dawn of the Dead (1978) came Lucio Fulci in 1979 with the imaginatively titled Zombie (sometimes titled Zombie 2 to confuse European viewers into thinking they were seeing the sequel to Romero’s film, which was titled Zombie in European releases). 

An abandoned boat (or is it?) drifts into New York Harbor.  It belongs to the vanished father of Ann (Tisa Farrow, Mia’s sister).  A note (“due to my morbid curiosity, I have managed to contract a strange disease”) points to the Caribbean.  Soon, Ann is on her way, joined by reporter Peter (Ian McCulloch, who went on to star in a different role in 1980’s Zombie Holocaust, a film which is unrelated to Zombie other than being filmed on the same sets, and alternately titled Zombie 3, apparently to confuse viewers even more).

The two convince boat bums Brian and Susan (Al Cliver and Auretta Gay) to take them to the supposedly cursed island of Matul, the home of Dr. Menard (Richard Johnson).  A zombie outbreak is underway, with no explanation for the cause other than some mumbling about voodoo. 

The highlight of Zombie occurs before the protagonists reach the island, as Susan goes naked SCUBA diving and is witness to a zombie eating a shark.   

It’s difficult to top that.  Fulci tries to do so with gore, giving up on the scanty plot for face-eating, arm-rending, flesh-ripping, splinter-in-eyeball mayhem.  In general, the special effects are realistically stomach-turning.  Gallons of blood are spilled, bright 70’s movie blood like tomato sauce (maybe it was tomato sauce?).

It’s surprising more zombie films aren’t set in the Caribbean, where, after all, zombies originated.  Zombie has pretty island scenery and brightly-colored villages where the zombies roam, and the soundtrack includes both cheerful island music and voodoo drums.  The film even includes a sort of tropical recreation of the cemetery awakening scene from The Plague of the Zombies and many others.

Although more gross than frightening, and not the most intelligent zombie film ever made, Zombie is undeniably entertaining and well worth a look.

Horror of the 80s: Demons (1985)

A subway in West Berlin.  New Wave styles abound.  A young student, Cheryl (Natasha Hovey), is stalked by a mysterious figure (Michele Soavi) with a metallic half-mask (or is it – his face?).  It turns out that he is only handing out tickets to a movie at a recently renovated theater, the Metropol.  Cheryl and her friend Kathy (Paola Cozzo) cut class to go. 

“You don’t think it’s going to be a horror movie, do you?” asks Kathy.

The theater contains a creepy usherette (Nicoletta Elmi, of Dario Argento’s Deep Red  and several of Mario Bava’s films, in a cameo of sorts) and some odd audience members, including two young men, George (Urbano Barbarini) and Ken (Karl Zinny), who make friends with Cheryl and Kathy.  They begin to watch the horror movie-within-the-horror movie.  The characters on screen find an ancient book “something about- demons!” and a strange mask.  Whoever wears the mask will become a demon – oddly enough, such a mask was in the theater lobby, and one of the audience members tried it on before the show…

Soon the demonic infection is spreading, both onscreen and throughout the audience.  They realize they’ve been bricked in to the theater, and the body count begins to rise, to the tune of bouncy 80s synth-pop.

Co-written by director Lamberto Bava (son of Mario) and Dario Argento, who produced it, Demons  is a mixed bag.  The highlights include some good special effects, mostly demonic transformations in which long claws grow, air bladders are used effectively, and teeth pop out to be replaced with fangs.  There are a few inspired touches, most notably when the actress in the onscreen horror flick is being menaced by a knife making long gashes in her tent, and suddenly the theater screen itself gashes open and one of the infected audience members falls through.

There’s a lot of Argento-like playing around with lighting effects, some of which is quite nice – although sometimes you get the feeling that the filmmakers went through the script and randomly said “this scene will be blue.  This scene will be red.”

The theater setting is sometimes used to good effect (the darkened row of seats, the innumerable red curtains through which victims claw their way), but could be better utilized. 

The low points:  there’s a lot of primary color demon-vomit and cheesy makeup.  The demons themselves are rather generic monsters – basically zombies with fangs and glowing eyes.  The acting is miserable and the lousy English dubbing doesn’t help.  Wait for the laughable sequence in which the hero rides around the theater on a dirt bike which has mysteriously appeared from somewhere, swatting at demons with a samurai sword.  Things get even more random with a deus-ex-flying-machina towards the end.

Still, Demons was popular enough to spawn a sequel, Demons II, the following year.  For the most part it’s an average 80s horror flick, entertaining enough but easily forgettable.