It’s here! A glorious 6-disc box set of Lucio Fulci’s unforgettable 1981 supernatural chiller- The Beyond– from Grindhouse Releasing and it even comes with an eyeball (which, after recently going through cataract surgery seemed like fitting irony).
Lucio Fulci, who died in 1996, directed comedies, westerns, even musicals, but really found his groove when he directed stylish thrillers like A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (1971) Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972) and ultra-gruesome horror films like Zombie (1978), Gates of Hell (aka City of the Living Dead) (1980), The House by the Cemetery (1981), The New York Ripper (1982) and Nightmare Concert (aka Cat in the Brain) (1990).
But The Beyond is his triumph. It stars beautiful Catriona MacColl as Liza Merril, a New Yorker who inherits a spooky old hotel in Louisiana, unaware that it was built over one of the seven gateways to hell. When a workman accidentally breaks through a basement wall, unimaginable horrors are released. When the film opened on 42nd Street in 1981- a heavily cut version retitled 7 Doors of Death– I was struck by the surreal imagery and shocking gore, but also the film’s loony lyricism.
The film is memorable more for the grisly set pieces rather than logic or plot. Tarantulas rip open the face of a man lying on a library floor. A woman in the hospital is splashed with acid. The dead rise in a morgue and chomp on the living. A cleaning woman finds more than hair clogging the bathtub drain in the dreaded room 36. And then there’s that nasty rust-covered spike on the wall!
In describing the film, Fulci said, “What I wanted to get across was the idea that life is often really a terrible nightmare and that our only refuge is to remain in this world.” Author Stephen Thrower, in his seminal book about the films of Lucio Fulci “Beyond Terror,” calls this the quintessential Lucio Fulci film. “Gorgeous and vile like a dream about a nightmare, it’s a magical, elusive experience. Fulci’s career had already scaled heights that merged beauty, horror and excitement, but for those who could appreciate its macabre poetry, The Beyond seduced the imagination in a way that transcended comparison.”
Included in this incredible “deluxe edition” box set from Grindhouse Releasing is even the truncated 7 Doors of Death with extras that include interviews with Terry Levene, of Aquarius Releasing, who picked up the film from Italy and the editor Jim Markovic, who cut the film for an R rating, and, who was responsible for those memorably lurid exploitation trailers for Aquarius films. But mercifully, we also have the full uncut film, restored from the negative in 4K UHD for the first time and it looks, well, “beyond” beautiful. The box set also has many audio commentaries and interviews with the stars of the film- Catriona MacColl and actor David Warbeck, who look back on the making of the film and working with the, often, volatile director. It also includes a stunning book written by Martin Beine and Jesper Morch on the film, and a separate soundtrack CD by Fabio Frizzi.
I cannot tell you how thrilled I was to get this staggering box set in the mail. It has to be one of the truly outstanding releases on Blu-ray this year. It brought to mind something author Stephen Thrower said about The Beyond, “No matter how often I watch this film, thinking I’ll never return after so many visits, I still find myself returning once again: The Beyond, a magical epic of sensuous decay, is Fulci’s masterpiece.”
