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‘The Beyond,’ a classic Italian schlock shocker, showing its ageBy Dann GireDaily Herald Film CriticSee! One of the seven doorways to hell lurking under a Louisiana hotel'Witness! Man’s inhumanity to man as an angry mob nails a painter to a wall and douses him with flesh-eating acid!Thrill! To the sight of tarantulas eating the face off a helpless man by chewing out his eyeballs and tongue!Marvel! At the creative English on signs at a Louisiana hospital that say “DO NOT ENTRY.” Starting today, Chicagoans can eyeball Italian schlockmeister Lucio Fulci’s white zombie trash tale “The Beyond” on the big screen when it becomes a midnight movie program at the Music Box Theatre.Since its Initial release in 1981, “The Beyond” has been heralded as Fulci’s masterpiece of terror hailing from a tradition of stylishly visceral, low-budget Italian horror movies spawned in the 1970s by such directors as Dario Argento (“Suspiria”).But now, the high shock and gross-out quotients the film once possessed have long ago evaporated, leaving behind a pungent essence of unintentional camp and laughably bad special effects. “The Beyond” even exceeds Fulci’s 1979 opus “Zombie,” in which a woman’s eye gets slowly impaled on a wooden shard in close-up.In “The Beyond,” a string of non sequiturs masquerading as a plot, a woman named Liza Merrill (Catriona MacColl) inherits an old hotel where back in 1927, the aforementioned mob did to a painter what conservatives once wanted to do to Robert Mapplethorpe.She doesn’t know about the hotel sitting on a doorway to hell, but when dead people start walking around like lobotomized cannibals at a class reunion, she realizes something must be up.David Warbeck plays Dr. John McCabe, a physician who never has patients. But he keeps a revolver in a desk drawer just in case of a sudden zombie attack. (You can tell he’s a doctor. He parks his car right outside the hospital door and drives cm the sidewalk.)MOVIE REVIEW“The Beyond”* VsWritten by Dardano Sacchetti, Giorgio Msriuzzo and Lucio rulci. Produced by Fabrizio Dc Angelis. Directed by lucio fulci. A RoLirg Thunder Pictures release. At the Music Box T.neaLre. Chicago. No MPAA rating. Running time: 38 minutes.Cast:Liza Merrill.............Catriona MacCollDr. John McCabe David WarbeckEmily............................Sarah KeflerThe high shock and gross-out quotients the film once possessed have long ago evaporated, leaving behind a pungent essence of unintentional campand laughably bad special effects.Liza also receives assistance from a strange blind woman named Emily (Italian actress Cinzia Monreale, using the stage name Sarah Keller). Emily plays scaiy music on the piano whileIn Italian horrormeister Lucio Fulci’s “The Beyond, a doorway to hell causes zombie problems in Louisiana.looking like a model in a Wild Eyes contact-lens commercial.“The Beyond” has about as much plot structure as a TV commercial, too. Fulci followed Argento’s knack for letting flashy, upsetting visuals cany the story. This one regurgitates the now-stale genre formula established by George Romero’s classic 1968 zombie thriller “Night of the Living Dead.”As slow-moving zombies chow down on the living, Dr. McCabe never quite catches on that only a blow or bullet to the head can destroy these creatures.But that’s why “The Beyond” has had a successful run as amidnight movie in seven cities so far. The Ed Wood effects, shameless shock tactics.dumb dialogue, wooden acting and Fulci’s obsession with mutilating eyeballs couldn’t be a better draw for nocturnal moviegoers in searchof a condescending laugh.Movie note: Fulci, who died in 1996, can be seen twice in “Beyond” — as a librarian who talks about labor issues, and as a reflection in a mirror when Dr, McCabe uses a bar telephone.See It As You’ve Never Seen It Before.Catch Gone With The Wind in a dazzling, digitally remastered version.”Km li.tv, ft. Ill i| I IM, MUM‘T.vervone should see Gone With The Wind at least once on a big screen.”I'l“ ITte best print you’ve ever seen of one ot the best movies you’ve ever seen.”|o*l 'i gel.lt;iOi i| \flt;’UM Vr Wfl UK AGone With lie Wind looks better thanit has in years,”
Newspaper Details
Arlington Heights Daily Herald Suburban Chicago
Arlington Heights, Illinois, US
Fri, Jul 03, 1998
Page 90
Full Page
Clipped by
Rotten T.
USA 06 Feb 2023
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