Hell Never Looked More Stunning Than in This Wild Surrealist Horror From the Godfather of Gore

Lucio Fulci's The Beyond is one of those films that remains polarizing even more than 40 years after its release. Roger Ebert famously disliked it and even included it in his book, literally called I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie. Fulci, tenderly nicknamed the Godfather of Gore at a certain point in his career, has always been a controversial auteur, often criticized for his sparse narratives and excessive depictions of violence on screen. Some of Fulci's earlier works, such as his Giallo films,A Lizard in a Woman's Skin (1971) and Don't Torture a Duckling (1972), actually feature a more conventional approach and a more coherent mystery plot — but not The Beyond. This 1981 horror is a truly uncompromising piece not bound by the rules of the genre, while effectively combining Southern Gothic, lots of disturbing gore, and the wild surrealism used to dominate horror films in the previous decade.