The Beyond

[AceRimRat]

just watched the Beyond for the first time - wow! really enjoyed it.

i got my first look at fulci a few years back when i rented new york ripper. kinda liked it, bought the dvd later on, still kinda like it.

so i rented zombie on dvd a while ago. kinda liked it, kinda didn't. then more recently, i went on something of a euro-horror kick, with argento and all that.

so i got city of the living dead and the beyond. watched city first, figuring i'd work my way up to the "masterpiece." liked a lot of it, but i found the ending somewhat abrupt (not the scream, i mean the whole sequence). otherwise, pretty good.

so now i watch the beyond and i'm just blown away. it has the same sort of flaws - plot doesn't make a whole lot of sense, bit of an abrupt ending, etc. - but i found it much more gripping and dramatic, not just gory (though they was plenty of that).

the thing that really struck me is how much better than NYR (i think) it is. you wouldn't know the same guy did both films. not that nyr's bad - it's one of my guilty pleasures - but the beyond just seems so much better, more depth, more chills, just a really great movie. i honestly wasn't sure what to expect, since i know a lot of folks on the board tend to be love-it-or-hate-it toward the beyond and cotld. but i was really impressed.

just wanted to share.

(as an aside, i listed to the first half-hour of the audio commentary and boy, is it funny. and interesting, too. it's a shame warbeck died so young - and a great thing he got to record this commentary before he died. it's a nice tribute, he seems like a really funny guy and good friends with catriona maccoll.)

(*yeah, i know i'm kind of ranting. sorry. it's late, and i'm just really hyped. this is one of the best movie experiences i've had recently, seeing a film i've never seen before and just really enjoying it...)

[Mark Relford]

Ace, check out Fulci's Don't Torture A Duckling. You wont be disappointed!

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"Have you ever had an Egyptian feast?"

[mutleyhyde]

That's pretty funny Ace, I just last night watched NYR for the second time. When I first watched it, back when the dvd first came out, I wasn't too impressed. The acting wasn't great, the plot somewhat hard to follow (poor editing me thinks) and the whole duck voice thing just ruined it for me. Except for the latter gripe, I kind of expect this from the giallos, and should've known better. It's just that I paid too much attention to the hype at the time, allowing my hopes to get up. Yet on this second viewing, I appreciated it a lot more. Even though the editing can be a little unevenly paced at times, the flow of the story was pretty good, and the film is very well shot, with nice panoramic shots of the city and, of course, those Segio Leone-esque close-ups of facial expressions and, erm, the action. I kind of had this same experience with Argento's Bird With the Crystal Plumage. Maybe I'm just getting used to the Itallian "way" of film. They definitely have their own pace to them (slow) and are somewhat anti-climactic, with little bursts of energy throughout the film rather than a Hollywood grand finale.

Anyway, I think it really held up well on the second viewing, and the biography on Fulci made me want to run out and get The Beyond, as well as City and Zombie.


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"When I go to confession, I don't offer God small sins - petty squables, jealousies - I offer him sins worth forgiving!"

May the Hammer eternally bleed!
M. Hyde

[Jason25]

The Beyond is a classic.

I love The New York Ripper also though. It has some excellent scenes in it.

[AceRimRat]

Don't get me wrong, I really do enjoy NYR. Lots of great little set-pieces. But to me, The Beyond was just so much more of a *movie* in its storyline and empathy for the characters, etc. COTLD had nice scenes, too, like NYR. But I just thought as a whole, The Beyond went, well, beyond that. (And I just wasn't fond of Zombie, but again, a film with terrific set-pieces, like the underwater shark/zombie fight.)

And as I've asked a billion or so times, just what is it Fulci has against eyeballs anyway?