The Beyond (1981)/Revisit

 My daughter really, really wanted to watch this. Like she begged me to watch it, haha. The tarantulas attacking the architect's face had us howling; her reactions to it were just priceless.

I personally have no idea if Emily is a spirit or some sort of otherworld character from the past trying to warn Liza away from the dreaded warlock hotel in Nawlins, but I think she's just this incredibly iconic character, with her German Shepherd and painted contacts. When Liza drives up on her, I just think Fulci nailed it. It looks as if Liza encounters two figures not of our world.

And the zombies of the film: I told my daughter, the Fucli zombie is not like any other. How they can just turn up wherever, like the Eibon book, and just whatever Fulci wants to do, he does. Fulci's style of storytelling is so elusive, head-scratching, unpredictable, and outrageous, I can't help but admire how audacious he is with throwing at us these bizarre setpieces such as Emily being attacked by her dog, a mother passing out for some reason and enduring a face acid bath, a maidservant finding the plumber's corpse in a dirty bathtub and receiving a punctured eyeball from the nail in the wall helped to crucify Schweik's warlock, Warbeck and MacColl fighting off Schweik's zombie horde while unable to truly escape "hell" (the ending is so creatively innovative and I consider impenetrable), and the redheaded girl "changed" while in the morgue watching her mother die.

Never has a pool of acid and blood moving on a floor been so ominous. The use of the house/hotel, a morgue, the warlock's portrait, the hellgate mark, and the book of Eibon are all devices for Fulci to play with. I personally get a kick out of Fulci just thumbing his nose at convention and saying, Fuck the rules. .

I warned my daughter: Fulci loves his eye violence. She did tell me she thought the opening crucifixion and Poe-like wall burial of the warlock impressed her. And Emily's brutal neck and head savagery by the dog left my daughter bewildered and thrown for a loop. I told her that if she wanted walking corpses, Fulci gives her plenty of them. Just with the magnificent Frizzi score. It looked like Warbeck was constantly surrounded, yet he always found a way with one gun. And MacColl in the morgue with the bodybag corpses is epic.