Synopsis

The cellar of an old hotel is built on top of the door to the beyond. Bloody zombies roam there. A young woman who is heir of the hotel wants to restaurate it. She is confronted with strange events. A painter has a lethal fall, the plumber vanishes and her friend breaks his neck. When she escapes to the hospital of a friendly doctor she doesn't know what a nightmare is waiting there...

Official Review

I can’t remember the first time I saw SEVEN DOORS OF DEATH (the US title that THE BEYOND was first released under). It was a while ago, when I first delved into the wasteland that was Italian horror cinema. I wound up in that place thanks to Asia Argento. I first saw her in a film in 1994 called QUEEN MARGOT and upon searching her back catalogue I happened upon her Father’s film TRAUMA. From there it was a rapid downward spiral of Giallo murder mysteries and—as horror scribe Chas. Balun describes them—chunkblowers. All of that lead to a dismal VHS bootleg borrowed off a friend. Truth be told, the film really didn’t blow my mind back when I first saw it. Through a haze of Bava, Argento and their ilk it was just another in a succession of spaghetti splatter flicks that I was barreling through and compartmentalizing in my subconscious—I was ODing on grue just to get it all crammed through my ocular cavities and wedged into my cortex. It took Quentin Tarantino and Grindhouse Releasing’s 1998 re-release to make me really sit up and take notice. When they released THE BEYOND to DVD through Anchor Bay a decade ago, I sat there—a few years removed from my orgy of Italian horror cinema—transfixed by the imagery that Director Lucio Fulci was parading across my television screen. It’s the closest film comes to a living, breathing surrealist nightmare—the perfect companion to Don Coscarelli’s PHANTASM and Dario Argento SUSPIRIA. I recently heard someone say that thanks to J-Horror, the scariest movies don’t have to make sense anymore. Obviously that person never saw THE BEYOND! …Read More