Everything starts innocently enough when a mob of angry townspeople in the bayous of Louisiana way back in 1927 invade The Seven Doors Hotel and brutalize a painter staying in Room 36. We also learn there is a book involved with the title “Eiobon” which is one of those books that some off screen voice always reads from promising gloom and doom for dopes foolish enough to buy the old Seven Doors Hotel and to try and renovate it so that it can be on the bed and breakfast circuit. But mostly we learn that those Cajuns take their art way too seriously!
Somewhere along the way there is also this blind girl with green eyes that tells us that the hotel is one of those joints that doesn’t get a good rating in Fodor’s. Her name is Emily and her chief task is to put ideas into Liza’s head that Room 36 would make a good location for the “Gates of Hell” theme room.
Liza is a New York City gal who has inherited the old place from her rich uncle and is determined to reopen it.
And if that whole “gateway to hell” problem that the hotel comes with wasn’t bad enough, the basement is flooded and construction guy just took a header off a scaffold. OSHA should probably just set up a field office in the driveway!
The doctor who shows up to check on the guy that got splattered on the ground is Dr. John McCabe, a guy who has this perpetual five o’clock shadow and runs around battling zombies while determined to find a scientific reason to it all.
Following another on the job injury involving a plumber and a zombie, we check back in with Emily. She and her guide dog were found by Liza standing in the middle of the road hitchhiking so Liza gives her a ride back to Blind Emily’s place and Blind Emily jabber jaws about something or other. (I always forget what these mysterious blind-types say because it’s always the same – you know – your house is possessed, get out, did my dog poop on the carpet, – that sort of thing.)
There’s more problems with the renovation when the guy Liza has put in charge of the project goes to the hall of records. This is the place where really old musty books are kept that usually contain lots of damning information about whatever property, marriage, death, or birth is the subject of the movie.
This dude gets the blueprints for the hotel and is shocked to see that it is a lot bigger than he thought (actually we don’t know what the big deal is with the floor plan because it’s never referred to again) and is so surprised that he falls off the ladder he had to climb up on to get the book thus creating another opening on the hotel construction crew.
Following the death of the dude at the records department (which involved a tarantula attack carried out by a few real spiders and several fake spiders that ate the guys face, eye, and tongue) more strange things occur.
The best part of the movie is the last ten minutes when McCabe and Liza are confronted by an army of zombies at a hospital. McCabe shoots some of them including a little girl whose eyes turned green at her parents’ funerals. It’s one of the highlights of the film to see the little twerp’s head blown clean off in all its messy glory.
Liza and McCabe go down to the basement of the hospital, but somehow end up back in the basement of the hotel! Dang, it was a lot bigger than anyone thought!
They wander around down there and walk toward a hole in the wall where light is emanating from. Turns out it was emanating from hell its freaking self because the hotel is no where to be found and the desolate landscape is littered with corpses! This remodeling job really got botched!
If all of the above wasn’t enough of a recommendation, then there is this to consider: The Beyond is pretty much the same movie as City Of The Living Dead! In both films, some doofus has gone and opened up a door to hell, leaving a couple of people to survive some yucky scenes sometimes involving maggots, sometimes spiders, but always involving eyes getting injured! You’ve got gore, you’ve got bad acting by Catriona MacColl, and as a bonus, a much better finale than in City Of The Living Dead!
Make no mistake, this is a Fulci zombie movie, and as such, most of it makes no sense. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason as to what is happening, only that there were some good gross out scenes to film.
Who knows why the doors to hell would be found in an old hotel in New Orleans? Who can say what was up with the hospital turning into the hotel? Who has any idea why Fulci made the same movie twice with the same woman? Really, who did he think he was? Bruno Mattei?
© 2011 MonsterHunter
