BaronWolfgangVonSchreck Reviews

The Beyond (1981)

One of the most wildly entertaining "giallo" films of the 80's.

[21 January 2000]

You might say that 1981 was a banner year for Italian splatter movie maestro Fulci, as it saw the release of what can easily be considered his two best films, The Beyond and The House by the Cemetery. While House is a modest, lurid little fable told from a child's perspective, The Beyond is a glossier, big budget (for Fulci, that is, at $460,000 bucks) production more along the lines of Argento's Suspiria in terms of its ambitiousness and visual audacity. While I feel that House is the better film of the two, there's no denying that when it comes to straight out splatter and cheap horror comic book thrills it's virtually impossible to beat The Beyond.

The film opens in 1927 Louisiana. A gang of torch-bearing Angry Villagers in boats make their way across the boyou to the Seven Doors Hotel, where a wild-eyed artist and occultist named Schweick is putting the finishing touches on his latest painting - a desolate nightmare landscape. The mob break in, scourge Schweik with chains (tearing his flesh with that wonderful patented Fulci "SHRRRRRRIP!" sound effect) and drag him down to the hotel basement. "Be careful what you do," Schweik admonishes his assailants. "Because this hotel was built over one of the seven doors of evil. And only I can save you!" But do they heed him, this man they call a "warlock"? Hell no! They nail him to a wall with railroad spikes and melt his face off with some bubbling acid-like goo! And all this before the opening credits!

Welcome to the Fulci-zone: a sadistic universe where the Worst Death Imaginable is also the most likely for the characters who, like bowling pins, seem to be set up for the simple reason of being knocked down. Things like plot, structure and character are normally minor concerns, but the difference here in The Beyond is that they intentionally thrown out the window. Emulating his hero Antonin Artaud, Fulci intention here was to "...attempt a film without any real plot... just visions, sensations, nightmares." And his plan worked a peach.

Jump ahead to 1981. The Seven Doors Hotel, long since fallen into disrepair and reputed to be haunted, is inherited by a former New York fashion model named Liza Merril (MacColl) who sets about restoring it. Unfortunately the house is, as you'd expect, haunted as f**k and right away the local tradesmen start having some rather unfortunate accidents. One of them gets spooked by the apparition of a beautiful blind girl staring out a second story window and pitches off a ladder, busting his head open and spitting up blood while screaming, "The eyes! The eyes!" Poor Joe the plumber isn't quite so lucky - when he goes down the basement to fix a leak he has his eyeball squished out of his skull by a zombie for his troubles.

Liza soon finds herself befriending John McCabe (Warbeck), a square jawed, three-day beard sporting, cynical man's man and local physician. She also meets Emily (Keller), the same blind girl seen earlier spooking unsuspecting workmen, who lives in a house that is in perfect shape by night but is in an abandoned shambles by day. Emily warns Liza about the impending danger with prophecies from the dreaded "Book of Eibon" and the helpful information that her hotel sits over the gate to Hell. McCabe is expectedly reluctant to place the blame on these bizarre occurrences on the supernatural, but when the town streets are strangely empty and zombies are crawling all over his hospital like cockroaches in a Lower East Side tenement he reaches for the .38 he keeps in his desk drawer (next to a bottle of Wild Turkey) and it's ZOMBIE HEAD BLASTING TIME!

The wide-screen cinematography (by Sergio Leone veteran Sergio Salvati) is quite stunning at times, particularly the moody, evocative scene in which MacColl is driving across a long, straight bridge and finds the eerie blind girl Emily standing in the middle of the road. And then there's that ending. Fleeing from the hordes of undead, John and Liza mysteriously find themselves in the waterlogged basement of the Seven Doors Hotel. Having no other place to go, the two head straight into a mysterious mist and find themselves in Hell, an exact replica of the wasteland depicted in Schweik's painting. It is an astonishingly ballsy moment of heart-sinking despair. The audience I saw the film with during its 1998 New York City re-release premiere hooted, hollered, laughed and yelled at the screen during the entire film, but at that moment, even with that rowdy bunch, you could have heard a mouse fart.

As well made and atmospheric as it can be at times, the highlights of The Beyond are still those all-important gore money-shots (rendered by FX whiz Gianetto Di Rossi), and here Fulci gives 'em to ya in well-paced frequency, typically pornographic detail, and ever increasing intensity. In addition to more eyeball popping, face melting and a dog-attacks-master sequence stolen from Suspiria, there's a deliciously cheezy sequence in which a man has his face devoured by a horde of ridiculously fake-looking dime store spiders.

Writer and comic book artist Stephan R. Bisette summed it up perfectly when he described The Beyond as capturing the feel, not the old E.C. comics or the old Warren black and white Magazines like "Creepy" and "Eerie", but of the much tawdrier Eerie Publications comics like "Weird" and "Horror Tales". Like those crude, sleazy, sickeningly tasteless strips, The Beyond leaves you with a skin-crawling sensation of doom and despair that is hard to shake. If you're like me, when it's over you're going to want to check your fingertips for the blackened smudge of cheap newsprint. And you won't want to wash it off. }:)

Kwaidan (1964)

A high-class horror anthology laced with unforgettable imagery..

[10/10 · 20 January 2000]

The words "beautiful", "lyrical" and "evocative" aren't ones that you would normally attribute to a horror movie, but they are precisely the ones that best describe Kwaidan, a quintet of Samurai Gothics based (interestingly enough) on the writings of an American author by the name of Lafcadio Hearn. Shot in gorgeous, sumptuous color way back in 1964 by director Masaki Kobayashi, Kwaidan is an unusual, unique and quite extraordinary entry in the old horror anthology genre best represented by 1945's Dead of Night and Milton Subotsky's Amicus anthology series (i.e. Dr. Terror's House of Horrors, Tales From the Crypt & Asylum).

Kwaidan differentiates itself from the pack in a number of significant ways. To begin with, all of the episodes eschew the usual O. Henry "twist" endings and deliberately telegraph their punches, case in point being "Hoichi the Earless", which gives away its climax with its very title! This film is also missing the compulsory "wrap-around" story normally employed by anthology films to tie all the stories together, and the horror elements are far more low-key than most horror aficianados are used to. Kwaidan is far less concerned with springing shocks and fraying nerves than it is in exploring the whirlwind of conflicting emotions that swirl in the dark night of the human soul.

"The Black Hair" is the tale of an impoverished samurai who abandons his loyal and loving wife to marry the daughter of a wealthy lord in another province, only to discover many years later that he is still in love with his first spouse. He returns to their decaying old house to find her exactly as he left her, affectionate and forgiving as could be. You know something in this household just ain't right. "The Woman in the Snow" concerns an apprentice woodcutter who encounters an eerily beautiful female ice-vampire - called a "Yuki-Onna - who spares his life on the condition that he never tell a soul about their encounter. (If you saw the last episode of the flaccid Tales From the Darkside movie, on which this was based, you have an idea of how this one ends).

"Hoichi the Earless", easily the most powerful of the bunch, regards a blind biwa (a stringed instrument resembling a guitar) player renowned for his moving rendition of the tragic tale of the battle between the Genji and Heiki clans. Each night he is summoned to the nearby graveyard to chant the epic tale for the ghosts of the warriors who fell in that battle, duped by the spirits into believing that he's performing in the home of a wealthy lord. When Hoichi disocvers that he has been decieved by the dead and refuses to perform for them again, the ghosts exact a terrible revenge.

A note of warning to those deterred by long foreign films: this shimmering jewel in Japanese cinema's crown clocks in at nearly three hours of length and is, of course, fully subtitled. Visually bold, rich and color and texture, and atmospherically photographed with a spine-tingling elegance, I can't guarantee that you'll like Kwaidan, but I think that I can safely assure you'll never forget it. Highly recommended, especially for Japanophiles and those with a taste for high class horror.

The Eternal (1998)

A clever cross between mummy movie and witchcraft thriller that didn't get the theatrical release and critical attention it deserved.

[29 December 1999]

You might say that 1998 was the Year of the Mummy. Decades went by like desert sands in an hourglass without seeing so much as a single atrophied undead Egyptian dragging his moldy bones and rotting cerements out of the tomb and across the silver screen. Then, all of a sudden, there were not one but three mummy projects in the works. The most high profile and successful was Universal's bone-headed, big budget re-make of "The Mummy". The competition, Russell Mulcahey's "Talos the Mummy", was retitled "Tale of the Mummy" and downgraded to a DTV (Direct-To-Video) release. Likewise, Michael Almereyda's "Trance" - the tale not of an Egyptian mummy, but an Irish one - was re-titled "The Eternal: Kiss of the Mummy" and by-passed movie theatres in favor of a video release. And that's a shame, because Almereyda (who made his mark with the arty "Dracula's Daughter" remake "Nadja") crafted an eerie little Gothic fairytale that is far more interesting and inspired than its boring and bloated competition.

The plot concerns Nora (Elliott), a young American woman of Irish origin who, well, lives up the stereotype of her people and is a bit of a lush. She and her equally inebriated husband Jeff (Harris, who played Dracula's son in "Nadja") are coming home from their latest drunken binge one night when Nora takes a tumble down the stairs of their New York apartment building. Nora survives the fall, but is soon visited by headaches, nosebleeds and hallucinations for her trouble.

Determined to dry out for the sake of their young son, the couple head to Ireland (not *exactly* the best place to give up the sauce) where they pay a visit her grandmother and Uncle Bill (a typically gaunt and creepy Chris Walken) in their huge, labrynthinian mansion. Uncle Bill harbors a dark and fascinating secret in the basement: the perfectly preserved, mummified remains of a Druid witch; one of those fascinating "bog-men" you might have read about in National Geographic or seen on the Discovery Channel. Only this one is considerably livelier than your average bog-person and, as it happens, turns out to be a distant ancestor of Nora's.

Poor old Uncle Bill quietly explains to her that the druid witch was neither good not evil in her life, but more like a force of nature. But he and we learn different when the mummy gets her groove on and sets out to steal the body, soul and identity of her hapless descendant.

One of the things I like about Almereyda's neo-Gothic-monster movies is the fact he doesn't shy away from the kitschier and pulpier elements inherent to the genre. On the contrary, he rushes to embrace them for his own purposes. During the last reel, our heroes try to burn, break, stake, and even ELECTROCUTE the Druid bitch in an orgy of retro mayhem reminiscent of old 50's Sci-Fi horror epics like "The Thing".

It's a damn shame this clever cross between a mummy movie and a witchcraft thriller didn't get the theatrical release and critical attention it deserved. Like Stuart Gordon's ghastly gem "Castle Freak", this is a DTV release well worth the rental. It has all of the atmospherics and snappy dialog of "Nadja" without any of the annoying and pretentious Pixelvision crap. Here's hoping Alemereyda takes a shot of re-vamping werewolves next! The boy got game.

Black Sunday (1960)

Not only the definitive "giallo", but one of the most striking horror movies ever made.

[10/10 · 29 December 1999]

We open with a tight shot of a flaming brazier, slowly pulling out to see a muscular, shirtless, black-hooded executioner stirring the blaze with a branding iron as two other executioners, exact clones of himself, watch on with their arms folded. The first executioner carries the branding iron over to a clearing in an eerie wood, where a raven-haired woman in a white dress is tied to a stake, facing it with her back exposed. The "Brand of Satan" is pressed into her back - accompanied with a hellish scream and the delightful sizzle of searing flesh - and held there in loving close-up for what seems like half a minute.

The woman turns her head to face us... and what a face it is. Those high, arching cheekbones. Those big, luminous, cat-like eyes. That wide, sensuous mouth. It is a face of otherwordly, preturnatural beauty. It is the unforgettable face of Barbara Steele.

Standing before her are a row of accusers in hoods and cloaks, chief among whom is the Grand Inquisitor, who happens to be her own brother. He renounces his sister, the Princess Asa Vajda, as a devil-worshiping witch and passes the death sentence. Nearby is the body of her servant in sin, the evil Javutich, tied to a stake with a macabre mask over his face - the "Mask of Satan". Before being put to the torch Asa is given a Mask of Satan of her own, which we see has a set of nasty six-inch spikes on the inside. As it is placed over her face, Asa places a curse upon her persecutors.

"My revenge will strike down you and your accursed house, she vows. "I shall return to torment you and to destroy throughout the nights of time!"

The executioner lifts a giant wooden sledgehammer and swings it. WHAM! The mask is driven into Asa's face. We hear a piercing scream and see a copious gush of blood. (This image of Sadean savagery was later co-opted by Clive Barker for his film Lord of Illusions.)

So begins Black Sunday, a benchmark film that ushered in a new style incinematic horror - known as the giallo - that was equal parts ghostly Gothic and gruesome Grand Guignol. ("Giallo" is the Italian word for the color yellow, which happened to be the color of covers of the lurid pulp horror magazines that were popular in Italy at the time.) No director defined this sub-genre more than the great Mario Bava, a cinematographer turned director who became one of the most influential horror filmmakers of all-time with his jaw-dropping imagery and his subtle-as-a-sledgehammer approach.

After the opening credits roll, we see the attempt to consign Asa and Javutich's bodies to the flames aborted by a sudden, freak rainstorm. Asa's corpse is placed in the family crypt, while Javutich's remains are burried in unhallowed ground. The story proper begins 200 years later to the day. Two Moldavian doctors - the middle-aged Dr. Kubayan (Richardson) and the youthful Dr. Andreus (Checchi) - are travelling to a medical convention when they pass through Asa's old turf. The two doctors come across the Princess Katia (also played by Steele, in the first of what were to be her many famous dual roles).

In his explorations of the immediate vicinity, Dr. Kubayan comes across the tomb of Princess Asa. Can he just leave well enough alone? Of course not! He simply must get a better look at the corpse, so he reaches through shattered remains of the tiny glass window in the stone casket-lid and removes Asa's mask to be rewarded with the heart-warming sight of insects scuttling out her empty eye-sockets. But dumbs**t has to go and cut his hand on the glass, dripping blood on the vampire witch and accidentally ressurecting her spooky (but oh-so-squeezable) ass. In a spectacularly over-the-top effect, Asa's coffin EXPLODES, revealing her in all her ghastly glory, bosom heaving with life, her hungry eyes fixed on her prey, the wide puncture wounds from the Mask of Satan still in her flesh. Later on, she bids her satanic servant Javutich rise from the grave(which he does in another spectacularly spooky set-piece) and the two set out fulfil Asa's vendetta against her family's descendants.

Black Sunday is nothing less than a hardcore Gothic tour-de-force. From start to finish it bombards the viewer with an unrelentingly powerful dark atmosphere and just about every great Gothic cliche' imaginable. You've got your dark and scary nights, the ground carpeted with fog, shambling revenants rising from the tomb, trap doors, dark pits, blood-hungry vampires on the prowl, a handsome hero, and a beautiful, imperilled maiden. The viewer is plunged into a moody nightmare world from which there seems to be no escape and no relief. Bava's masterful visual style is in full effect here, with lots of slow tracking shots of Gothic fairytale sets. (Films shot entirely on indoor sets usually have a more dream-like feel than those with on-location exteriors, and this one is a fine example of that sublime phenomenon at work.)

Justifiably, this is the film that made Barbare Steele a horror movie legend. In her dual role as the All-Destroying Bitch Goddess and the Virtuous Maiden, Steele rocks the senses with a seductive dance of attraction and revulsion. As the wicked Asa she makes your skin crawl, as Katia she makes you swoon. In either incarnation - as Madonna or Whore - the mere sight of Steele can't help but make your pulse quicken, your heart pound in your chest. The light and dark sides of her otherworldly beauty were never captured better. It is Steele's performance, every bit as much as the genius of Mario Bava, that make this not only the definitive giallo, but one of the most striking horror movies ever made.