This is the second film in the trilogy of films that Lucio Fulci did dealing with opening the gates of hell. The First being The Gates Of Hell (aka: City Of The Living Dead) and the last one being House By The Cemetery. Each film brings you closer into the demented and sick mind that was Fulci. As a diehard fan of his i'm partial to The Beyond simply because it's horror film-making at it's best. Now onto the Review.
The film starts out eerily enough as there are two boatloads of touch baring people paddling towards a remote house in Louisiana circa 1927. The men reach land and burst into the hotel looking for someone in particular, they find this man in his room painting a very abstract and disturbing painting, they call him an "ungodly dreaded warlock" and beat him with chains before dragging him to the hotel's basement to crucify him. We are then switched to 1981 Louisiana with a young woman inheriting the hotel. A accident right away puts doubt in the new owners mind if she can even get this place fixed up.
Lizza The young woman finds that odd oil painting that the man from 1927 was painting before he was murdered. Through out the entire movie you keep seeing the number "36" pop up. There is a bad water leak in the hotels basement and Lizza calls on a plumber to fix it, as he goes downstairs and starts to trace the leak he accidently opens one of the Gates To Hell, and is killed by the now zombie painter from the beginning- cool little eye gag if you ask me. Next we see the mysterious blind woman Emily with her German Shepherd.
Arthors Mother goes looking for Joe our plumber and finds him dead and his face just completely melting off as tho' acid had been spilled on him (another great effect done by Effects master Salvati De Rossi). Our next scene of importance is of Joe in the morgue, he is there with the Zombiefied body that's been hooked up to a brain wave machine. His wife and daughter show up to bring him a rosary and a suit he'll be buried in. The wife keeps the daughter outside as she dresses him, she turns to see the zombiefied corpse and bumps into a table containing acid and her face is melted off is nice gory detail as the daughter runs in after hearing her screams, the floating mess of acid and body fluid chase her till she reaches the freezer and she opens it only to see reanimated corpses standing there, she screams and the film cuts to Lizza with the Doctor drinking.
As the film progresses Emily finally warns Lizza of the true evil behind the hotel and room 36. Lizza doesn't adhere to her advice and goes into the cursed room. Lizza finds the book EIBON and sees the man that was crucified to the wall there, she runs out screaming into the arms of the doctor. Ahhh everyone's favorite spider kill is due up next after a quick talk between Martin and Lizza and a stop off at an old odd book store. Martin is looking up the hotel's original floor plans when all of a sudden lightning flashes startling him and causing him to fall of the ladder he is using to look up the old plans, he seems to have broken his neck, he can't move and that's when those spidey friends of ours come out to play. Dozens of Tarantulas come out to attack Martin as he lay helpless on the ground, they start biting him on the face and soon after he's dead.
Our next scene shows the doctor breaking in the abandoned house that Lizza thinks is where Emily lives, he walks inside to find cobwebs and turned over furniture but as he progresses in the house he finds that missing book Lizza was talking about. Arthors mother goes into room 36 to dust and clean it, as she goes into the bathroom she drains the tub only to shocked to see a zombie Joe sitting up, horrified she starts to slowly walk back and nears a wall where there are two metal nails, i won't say the cool scene here but lets just say it's a classic Fulci gore setpiece. Emily meets her maker in the form of the painter, her German Shepherd attacks him but it turns on Emily and she is killed instead.
The doctor and Lizza read from the book downstairs in the basement of the hotel and it opens the gates of hell, blood starts to pool up in the already water logged basement, that creepy ass painting from the beginning starts to bleed blood and the two run for safety and get in the doctors car to get the fuck outta there. They reach the hospital looking for Harris the doctors friend, nobody is insight. All of a sudden zombies break through the glass door of the doctors office and there off to the races to the morgue. I won't give away the last 10 minutes of film but trust me it's one of the creeper moments in a Fulci film, it's classic southern gothic. I give this film *****5stars
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