Line #32 Film/TheBeyond


1	[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_Beyond_8003.gif]]
2	[[caption-width-right:300: Making the Hellmouth a place of fear and terror long before Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer came along.]]
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4	''E tu vivrai nel terrore! L'aldilà '' (lit. ''And you will live in terror! The afterlife''), known in English as ''The Beyond'' or ''7 Doors of Death'', is a 1981 [[SurrealHorror surrealist]] [[ExploitationFilm exploitation]] horror film directed by Creator/LucioFulci, loosely based on the works of Creator/HPLovecraft and Creator/ClarkAshtonSmith.
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6	Set in [[TheBigEasy Louisiana]], the film opens in 1927 with a painter named Schweick painting a vision of Hell in the basement of the Seven Doors Hotel when a lynch mob breaks in and murders him with quicklime, believing him to be a warlock. Shifting to the "present day", a young woman from New York named Liza Merril (Catriona Maccoll) has inherited the hotel and is renovating it. The activities of the contractors open the [[HellGate Gate of Hell]] the hotel is built over. Mysterious deaths and incidents ensue, with Liza and a local doctor encountering a mysterious blind girl who wants them to leave the hotel, a mystic tome called the Book of Eibon that supposedly contains the answers to the nightmare at hand, [[SpidersAreScary face-eating tarantulas]], Schweick's ghoul, and eventually the rising dead. It ends with the two passing into the afterlife, which is [[TheNothingAfterDeath depicted as a blank gray wasteland littered with corpses]].
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8	The film is one of four films by Lucio Fulci involving zombies, and the second film in his unofficial Gates of Hell trilogy (the others being ''Film/CityOfTheLivingDead'' and ''Film/TheHouseByTheCemetery''). [[MindScrew The plot is quite muddled and incoherent, with little explanation offered for anything at the end]]. Fulci said himself that he did not intend for it to be coherent; it was merely supposed to be [[RandomEventsPlot a succession of surrealist images]].
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10	Though he originally intended it to be a HauntedHouse film, [[ExecutiveMeddling executives insisted he add zombies to make it more profitable]] due to zombie movies being the rage at the time. The film has since became a cult classic for its surrealist imagery, and for the {{Gorn}} that got it on Britain's infamous VideoNasties list.
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12	Not to be confused with ''Film/FromBeyond.''
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14	-----
15	!!"And you shall live in tropes...The Beyond":
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17	* AdaptationExpansion: The Blackest Heart Media graphic novel, released in 1999 expands upon the backstories of the characters. In particular, Plumber Joe is a child molester who was also carrying on an affair with Martha. Also, Liza's backstory is explained as well.
18	* BewareOfViciousDog: The haunted hotel manages to turn the blind woman's dog against her and tears her ear off and rips her throat open.
19	* BlindIdiotTranslation: There's a sign saying "DO NOT ENTRY."
20	* BMovie: Fulci, cheesy acting, zombies, and gore aplenty. Yup, it fits.
21	* TheBigEasy: The haunted hotel was built somewhere in Louisiana.
22	* BoomHeadshot: Dr. [=McCabe=] manages to get a couple of headshots at some zombies. And then he has to shoot a ghoul that grabbed Liza's face. Dear ''GOD'', the results. [[http://www.bloodygoodhorror.com/bgh/files/promos/fulci%20lives%201.jpg Click through with extreme caution...]]
23	* BottomlessMagazines: Subverted; knowing that people would question his character shooting what appeared to be unlimited ammo from his gun, David Warbeck stealthily did some improv during in one scene (in the elevator of the hospital) where he reloads his gun... [[ArtisticLicense by dropping ammunition straight down the barrel]] (a lateral move, so far as realism goes, but he was doing it as a gag).
24	* CosmicHorrorStory: Probably the best way to explain [[MindScrew what the heck's]] [[SurrealHorror going on]].
25	* CreatorCameo: Creator/LucioFulci appears as a librarian right before the spider kill.
26	* DownerEnding: [[spoiler:The entire town vanishes and is presumed dead. Liza and John try to flee the zombies, but a door in the hospital [[EldritchLocation leads them to the hotel basement]], thus entering the Gate, and being trapped in the Beyond forever.]]
27	* EldritchLocation: The hotel basement, which contains one of seven gates to hell. Gets even more eldritch in the final minutes, when [[spoiler: a door in the hospital leads to the hotel basement, miles away.]]
28	* EverythingsDeaderWithZombies: As the story goes, they were added solely due to Executive Meddling.
29	* ExploitationFilm: The only thing it's missing to be a proper video nasty is some gratuitous nudity for no reason.
30	* EyeScream: The film features three eye gouging scenes: a hand coming from a hole on a wall, a victim shoved into an embedded nail that impales her eye, and a tarantula that pulls off ''the top layer'' of the eye from somebody's face.
31	* FacialHorror: Joe's wife meets her end when corrosive acid falls on her face. In the usual Fulci fashion, it slowly shows off every detail of the acid's damage.
32	* GainaxEnding: Where exactly the two remaining survivors end up in is hard to say.
33	* {{Gorn}}: It's what's in front of the camera when Lucio Fulci's ''behind'' the camera.
34	* HellGate: One is accidentally opened, causing the house to slowly become cursed.
35	* LovecraftOnFilm: Actually, Creator/ClarkAshtonSmith on Film.
36	* MindScrew: Carnivorous spiders, walking ghouls, sudden noises, growing acid pools, a gateway to Hell... what kind of haunted hotel is this!?
37	* TheNothingAfterDeath: Fulci said the corpse-laden gray wasteland might be how the afterlife would appear to an atheist.
38	* OminousLatinChanting: The main theme has shades of this.
39	* ThePlace: The title refers to the afterlife in this setting.
40	* SickeningCrunch:
41	** Numerous, but they all sound like someone crunching potato chips.
42	** The foley work for the tarantulas deserves special mention- their every step sounds like grinding metal.
43	* SpidersAreScary: A bunch of demonic tarantulas appear out of nowhere and proceed to eat an unconscious man's face.
44	* SurrealHorror: Fulci himself said that he wanted the film to be a series of surreal happenings with little connection.
45	* TomeOfEldritchLore: Not the Necronomicon, for once, but instead Clark Ashton Smith's Book of Eibon.
46	* TrustMeImADoctor: Said word-for-word by Dr. John [=McCabe=].
47	* [[VideoNasties Video Nasty]]

Context Film / TheBeyond