The Beyond
The Beyond is a 1981 film from Italy, directed by Lucio Fulci, running 88 minutes. reelscum files it under video nasty and zombie.
- Year
- 1981 · 1980s films
- Country
- Italy
- Runtime
- 88 min
- Director
- Lucio Fulci
- Updated
- 30 Oct 2026
- Obscurity
- known (18/100)
- Also known as
- 7 Doors of Death · L'au-delà · The Beyond
- Banned in
- UK
Defined in the glossary: Video nasty, Zombie
One of the 33 titles dropped from the DPP list after prosecutions failed or were abandoned, then left liable to seizure.
Makes no sense whatsoever and is Fulci's best film. Dream logic, fully committed.
Fulci stops pretending to care about narrative and makes a film that runs entirely on dread. A woman inherits a Louisiana hotel built over one of the seven gateways to hell, and the dead start arriving. Scenes connect by mood rather than cause, and the ending is a held image of despair that no studio note survived.
Approach it as a nightmare you are inside rather than a story you are following, and it becomes one of the great horror films. Approach it as a plot and it falls apart in your hands.
Fabio Frizzi's main theme does a lot of the work. So does the refusal to explain anything.
Trailer
The numbers
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Where to watch
Legal options in USA
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Written about
- Gut-munchers: the Italian zombie boom, 1979 to 1983
There was no first one. Argento recut Romero, Fulci forged the sequel, and Italy spent four years feeding the British censors.
The cycle in depth
- Banned, cut and confiscated
A Fulci print flown out of the country, an Australian rating that just means no, and a German court that filed The Evil Dead under criminal violence. Three states, three machines for making a film disappear.
- The Exorcist was banned on video in Britain by one censor
The Exorcist passed uncut for British cinemas in 1974, then had no legal UK video release from 1988 to 1999 because one censor would not certify the tape.
Filed alongside
Zombi 2
A zombie fights a shark. Fulci's splinter shot is still the worst thing here.
City of the Living Dead
The drill scene. Otherwise thin, but the atmosphere is thick.
Cannibal Apocalypse
Vietnam veterans as cannibals. Sillier and kinder than the jungle cycle.
Tenebrae
Argento's coldest and cleverest. That crane shot earns its reputation.
Possession
On the nasties list by pure bureaucratic accident. An actual masterpiece about divorce.
The Return of the Living Dead
Punk soundtrack, running zombies, and the film that invented 'BRAINS'.
White Zombie
Lugosi, Haitian folklore, and the first zombie film. No eating involved.
I Walked with a Zombie
Val Lewton doing Jane Eyre in the Caribbean. Beautiful and barely horror.
I Spit on Your Grave
The most argued-about film on this site. Read the glossary entry before deciding.
The Hills Have Eyes
Craven's meanest. The suburban family turn out to be the better killers.
Cannibal Ferox
Lenzi chasing Deodato with none of the argument. Real animal deaths, no defence.
Day of the Dead
The bleakest Romero. Bub is the only sympathetic character in it.