The Beyond
(aka E tu vivrai nel terrore - L'aldilà)

Lucio Fulci (1981, Italy)

Cast: Catriona MacColl, David Warbeck, Cinzia Monreale, Antoine St-John, Veronica Lazar

Plot:
Liza, a young woman (MacColl), inherits an old hotel in Louisiana which happens to be one of the "Seven Doors of Death" which is a gateway in and out of hell. Strange events occur (deaths for one). At one point she encounters a fake blind girl (with weird contact lenses) standing in the middle of a highway bridge, apparently waiting for her. Why on a highway bridge? God only knows, it doesn’t make any sense, but who cares, it’s an italian horror, right? The girl tries to warn her of the danger, but this doesn’t discourage Liza from wanting to run the hotel anyways, despite the fact that she starts having (gruesome) hallucinations. With the help of doctor McCabe (Warbeck) she tries to find out what this is all about, only to find out the horrifying truth: The dead are rising and killing!! Somehow they end up in hell, which grants them the right to wear the weird contact lenses.

Appreciation: 9/10
Wow this is a treat for any italian horror fan. Better (imho) than the more widely known "Gates of hell" or even "Zombie". A big 2 eyes up.
Blood is squirting in rivers. You have multiple deaths by eye popping, a crucifixion, endless faces melting and a bunch of others. It’s wonderfully gory and the fakeness of certain scenes is hilarious, though there are some truly well done gore sequences (for exemple the crucifixion). There are countless unintentionally funny moments as well, like some obviously fake tarantulas (they couldn’t afford enough real ones??) making some weird noises worthy of Nine Inch Nails, the fake (way beyond over-acting) blind girl, the main characters fearing what I would describe as the least menacing zombies to ever walk the earth. I mean, if you could give valium to zombies, that would be the end result. But at least Dr. McCabe is not nearly as wise as a turnip, so even after shooting a zillion times at zombies, he still hasn’t figured out that the zombies die only from a shot in the head. Or maybe he figured out but perhaps he want to keep a suspense just for the sake of it.. As if this wasn’t enough, earlier in the movie a doctor decides to keep a 60 years rotten corpse in the autopsy room, just for the sake of it. AND, to top it all, another doctor (probably a retarded cousin of McCabe) plugs an electrocardiogram on the corpse TO SEE IF IT’S STILL ALIVE!! WTF? (!!?!?!???)
And did I forget to mention that all people being killed don’t even try to move, even less run away, they just stand there and scream until they’re dead. How funny eh..
The whole thing makes as much sense as Celine Dion opening for Craddle of filth, and the dialogues could have been written by Ed Wood. The quality of camerawork is by far better than most horror movies.
And the end (last 15-20 minutes) is just superb, the way hell is portrayed is really a beautiful scene.
This movie has all you could hope for, as long as you don’t take it seriously of course.

Other suggestions: Day of the dead, Gates of Hell