Whenever
the discussion arises about what the main difference is between classic
American and European horror films, I usually give an example that highlights
the archetypical contrasts between these two monolithic schools of terror. The Exorcist (1973), directed by William
Friedkin, is perhaps the quintessential American horror picture. Set and filmed
at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., one would be hard-pressed to find
a scary flick that is more definitively American. It features a clearly
explained dilemma, a well-plotted succession of shocks, a superbly crafted
script filled with crackerjack dialogue, and perhaps most recognizably, a
parade of remarkable special effects that hold up to this day. Nevertheless it
strives to appear gritty in spite of the intense production values on display. Another
way to describe it: American horror practices the art of being polished without
looking polished. Long story short, The
Exorcist embodies well the standard American approach to horror, so well in
fact that it is still the blueprint for mainstream Hollywood frights today,
such as Insidious (2010) and Deliver Us from Evil (2014).
On the
other side of the spectrum we have The
Beyond (1981), or under its original Italian title E tu vivrai nel terrore! – translated And You Will Live in Terror! Director Lucio Fulci’s masterpiece of
overwhelming terror and dread may be the best representation of European horror
as whole ever made – at least as it was in the 1970’s and 1980’s. All the good,
the bad, and the ugly of Eurohorror is present and accounted for. There is the
atmosphere, complete lack of discernible plot, extreme gore effects,
breathtaking visuals, and impossibly out-of-synch dubbing that you simply get
used to after watching such films for a while.
Putting
these two examples side by side clearly illustrates the night and day
differences in filmic approach between us Yanks and our neighbors across the
pond. Most would rightly see The Exorcist
as the clearly superior film in terms of… well… pretty much everything.
Nonetheless I prefer the latter. The
Beyond is a singular achievement that is admittedly an acquired taste, but
I am determined, resolute in fact, on helping you to acquire it.
The Beyond opens with a scene that
blatantly telegraphs what the viewer is in for during the next hour and a half.
With text telling us that what we are seeing is occurring in ‘Louisiana, 1927’,
we see a mob complete with torches and pitchforks paddling their way up a bayou
in boats towards a decidedly Southern Gothic hotel. When they reach their
destination, they gorily attack their target – a slightly off painter who rants
about the end of the world – with chain-whipping, crucifixion, and a bath of
lye. Little do the attackers know, the hotel is built atop one of the seven
gateways to Hell! Cut to modern day (read: 1981) and Liza (played by the
gorgeous Catriona MacColl) has inherited the hotel unaware of its sordid
history and she soon must contend with zombified ghouls, a mysterious blind girl
named Emily, flesh-eating tarantulas, and the forces of evil from Hell itself!
It’s
interesting to the note that, despite the completely European aesthetic and
approach, the film is still set in the United States in an attempt to attract
an international audience. This was also the aim of the casting, where
London-born Catriona MacColl was billed as Katherine
MacColl in an effort to make her sound more traditionally English even though she
was indeed English anyway. British genre actor David Warbeck, popular already
from his work in Hammer Studios films such as Twins of Evil (1971) plays opposite MacColl as a doctor and
concerned friend.
Other cast members came more
locally from Italy and included Cinzia Monreale as the blind girl and Al Cliver
as Harris the doctor’s assistant – Al Cliver’s real name is Pierluigi Conti and
he was born in Alexandria, Egypt. Lucio Fulci himself even has a cameo role as
a librarian. As was common practice back then, each actor spoke their lines
in their own language and was dubbed over in post-production. In fact, standard
operating procedure in the Italian film industry at that time was to film whole
productions silently and overdub the entire
soundtrack after the fact. The result was an eerie disjointedness that just so
happened to serve horror films like The
Beyond fairly well.
Maybe
the single biggest reason The Beyond
works so well is that at the helm is maestro of the macabre Lucio Fulci,
seminally adorned with the title The
Italian Godfather of Gore. Though he is justifiably well-known for
excessive amounts of grue, from throat-rippings to head-crushings, Fulci has
been sadly overlooked as a powerfully talented artist. Some of his films, such
as The New York Ripper (1982), certainly scrape the bottom of the
sleazy barrel, but several are truly bonafide works of art. Zombie (1979) is a worthy walking dead
film featuring incredible make-up and gore effects as well as a great score by
Fabio Frizzi – whose score for The Beyond
is nothing short of brilliant. Fulci’s early giallo Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (1971) is also known as a masterpiece of
the genre with dazzling set pieces and wide-angle tableaus.
With The Beyond, Fulci brings the full weight
of his deliriously impassioned nightmares to bear. The motif of eyes – one of
the director’s most prevalent obsessions – are a major focus of the film. The
characteristic close-ups he employs are a hallmark of Fulci’s style, but the
number of ocular organs that get altered in some way or mutilated completely here
excessive to say the least. Emily isn’t the only character struck blind with
some sort of milky-white cataract, so is a young girl named Jill, and a couple
others by the end. The plumber, Joe, gets his eyes gouged out by the rotted
fingers of a zombie, and then his zombified corpse puts a nail protruding from
the wall to grisly use by mangling the eye of the housecleaner. All this
together makes eyes seem more like an obsession of the director’s as opposed to
a motif.
The gore
in The Beyond is certainly its most
notorious selling point, and many viewers might see it as nothing more a parade
of gruesome set pieces tied together by a story that makes very little sense.
Even if this was all the film offered, it would still stand tall above others
of its ilk. Acid baths, throats torn to unleash fountains of blood, and even an
exploding head… Anyone in search of messy practical effects (courtesy long-time
Fulci collaborator Giannetto De Rossi) will not be disappointed. Still, The Beyond is much more than gore and
surrealism. It is an exercise in dream logic and the deep seated terror of
knowing that the thin veil of reality has been ripped away, revealing the
indescribable horror underneath.
The
hotel sits atop a gateway. This doorway to Hell does not conform to the laws of
reality. Bodies discovered and taken away to the hospital morgue reappear,
decomposing in a bathtub or jumping suddenly from the flooded bowels of the
basement. The opened doorway seems to hold an evil sway over man and animal
alike, not only bringing back the dead but causing accidents and influencing
animals such as tarantulas and dogs to attack and kill.
More
than once, characters seem to show up in a place without explanation. Emily manifests
out of thin air with her German Shepherd (named Dickie) in the middle of a
barren highway, causing Liza to slam on the brakes. The little girl Jill,
ostensibly the daughter of the ill-fated plumber, mysteriously reappears in the
hospital morgue during the finale with absolutely no way to have gotten there.
And of course, the infamous turn of logic in which Warbeck and MacColl, in an
attempt to escape the onslaught of walking dead at the hospital, open a door
and find themselves inexplicably back in the basement of the hotel. It is as
though the characters are trapped in a nightmarish alternate reality created by
the opening of the gateway.
Time is
also displaced so that characters from the past and present interact. Emily,
stricken blind by her visit to the sea of darkness, comes from a place in time
sixty years before the film takes place. She has Liza visit her at her home,
yet when Dr. John (David Warbeck) travels to the house to verify the story, it
is boarded up and long abandoned. Other events seem out of order, or
accelerated. For example, Martha the housekeeper discovers both Joe’s mangled
corpse as well as the mummified body of the painter murdered decades earlier.
However, we don’t see her call the police or the hospital, and we don’t see the
bodies taken away. The next instant we are shown both bodies lying on slabs at
the morgue, with only a few scenes of dialogue in between. It is as if time is
jumping from one moment to the next and the characters are completely unware
of it until it is too late.
The resultant effects of such
dream logic are that The Beyond feels
very much like a celluloid nightmare as opposed to your stereotypical
hack-n-slash. It aims at a sort of deep-seated terror that lumbering hulk-ish
killers like Jason Voorhees or Leatherface (from the Friday the 13th and Texas
Chainsaw Massacre series’ respectively) just cannot inspire. Of course,
today’s audiences, used to jump scares derived from sudden reveals and loud
musical cues and plots that run like the wind, probably would find The Beyond’s slow-burn dread to be
boring and the old plaster effects to be unrealistic…
But to those of us that love
such films, these are qualities to be aspired to. Watching Fulci’s masterpiece is
a reminder that makes us harken back to a time in cinematic history when the
blood was redder, the atmosphere heavier, and the frights harder earned. I
highly encourage you to check it out, for if you do, “you will face the sea of darkness, and all therein that may be
explored…”
No comments:
Post a Comment