Beyond the Darkness (1984)

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

This is a pretty silly movie but sickly entertaining overall as described in various other reviews. I was constantly taken out of the move, though, by one of the worst, most inappropriate musical scores I can remember hearing in a movie. Much of it sounds like someone trying -- and failing badly quality wise -- to imitate one of John Carpenter's synthesizer-heavy scores. Sometimes it switches to something like an obnoxious lullaby. Sometimes it's just random disco. Always bad, also noticeable and annoying, always inappropriate for the mood that would otherwise be created by what's on the screen.

Yes, this is definitely a guilty pleasure. And the guilt comes from giving the movie a 7. It doesn't deserve that high of a rating. None of the film's alternate titles really seems to quite fit. And D'Amato's direction is run of the mill. A rousing soundtrack by Goblin is a highlight(I prefer this soundtrack to Suspiria's). The biggest complaints are the hand-held shots, which are slipshod, and the beautiful countryside setting is almost completely ignored. Also, the dubbing is atrocious, but you just have to expect that with old cheesy foreign movies. There are a few people speaking during the dinner scene who don't have moving lips.And now, I shall gush. The reason why I watch this repeatedly is due to the presence of the severe, the exquisite, the succulent Franca Stoppi as house governess or whatever she is suppose to be. Her hair in a bun, her always-conservative dress hanging off her whisper of a body, well, I guess I'm probably in a minority, but she's nails. And her portrayal of Iris is delicious and devious. It's fortunate she was allowed so much screen time. Frank and Iris and Anna have a rather unusual relationship. Anna is dead because Iris wants young Frank for herself. Iris employees a local gypsy to perform a bit of voodoo to drive Anna into the grave. But Frank's having none of that, so he steals her body from the boneyard(a woefully mismanaged scene that has the casket only about 1 foot below the soil). In a fantastic autopsy scene that would make Savini cry, all of her organs and her brain are removed so Frank, a taxidermist, can preserve her. He keeps her in his bed so he can kiss and fondle her corpse. Iris takes it in stride and helps dress the corpse and even paint the fingernails. She knows this is just a phase(and what a phase!) and in good time, Frank will be hers. A few girls fall afoul of Château Frank and are murdered, with the smirking Iris helping the process along by dismembering a body and helping give it an acid bath or tossing a corpse in the incinerator. Eventually, she grows tired of the game and demands Frank dispose of Anna's body once and for all so he will belong to Iris. But, Frank has grown quite attached. Two scenes to further highlight the strange relations between Frank and Iris show the young man suckling at the older governess's breast and then Iris giving him "a hand up" while he pines over Anna's body.D'Amato gives a few solid scenes. My two favorites are when Frank loads the freshly disinterred Anna into the side of his van(a super creepy red, windowless jalopy that would make Ted Bundy jealous) and the interior shot looks like she's going back into a grave or coffin, and when Frank is on his way home with a hitchhiker and the back window of the van's cab opens slightly, and the deathly white hand of Anna slides out, bobbing along with the twists and turns in the road dangerously close to the hitchhiker's head. Very effective.Towards the close of the movie, Iris has had enough of all this weirdness, and in her best Mrs. Bates, she stalks through the dark to kill Anna's twin sister. She must have a killer knee, because she kicks Frank in the crotch and he starts bleeding all over the place through his trousers(wince). It's a showdown between Frank and Iris that ends rather bad for both of them, but not before Frank can give a final twist to the plot. Highly recommended for fans of the sick.

Beyond the Darkness (1979) *** 1/2 (out of 4) D'Amato's rather notorious gore feast is a strange mix of downright nastiness and a twisted love story. A young man's one and only love dies so he digs her up, dissects her and pretends she's still alive. While doing all of this other women pop up in his life but they will need to be murdered. This is an extremely twisted, sick and at times downright disgusting film from the master of sleaze. There are countless sleaze movies out there but this one here features gore, nudity, sex, cannibalism, chopped up body parts, parts melting in acid, dissections, necrophilia and this is just the start of things. This movie is banned throughout the world and it's easy to see why because I'm sure there are very few who will be able to stomach everything that goes on here. I'd guess that most people won't make it past the twenty-minute mark when we get a dissection scene that looks very real and I'm going to guess that some real animal intestines were used. This is followed by a scene of a woman being cut up only to be thrown into a tub of acid. And we still haven't gotten to some of the sicker things. What I enjoyed most about the film is that underneath all the gore it does have somewhat of a heart in seeing this guy, obviously a nut, going through all this trouble to try and be with the one he loves. Original title: Buio Omega.

"Beyond the Darkness" is a prime example of European-sleaze at it's best.**SPOILERS**Following a tragic death, Frank Wyler, (Kieran Canter) finds himself unable to move beyond mourning his ex-fiancée Anna Völkl, (Cinzia Monreale) due to the weird circumstances surrounding it. Unwilling to accept the fate from Mr. Kale, (Sam Modesto) the local mortician, of her death, he enlists the help of maid Iris, (Franca Stoppi) to help exhume her corpse, embalming her and placing her body in his room as a reminder of their love. Still unable to cope with her death, she takes it upon herself to bring in local girls back to the house to cheer him up, but when they discover the deadly secret, he dispatches them to keep them from talking about it. When Elena Völkl, (Cinzia Monreale) arrives looking into her sister's death, he falls for her, but soon learns the true cause of her death and sends him into a psychotic rage, leading all in his way into a race for survival to get away.The News: This is one of the very best of the Italian exploitation films. What makes it so is that there's so much of it's sleaze feelings coming from the subject matter. The fact that this one contains so many exploitative elements, and seems to be so comfortable with them, is what really drives this one and makes it such a fun watch. Nowhere else is this more on-display than the suitably disgusting embalming scenes to preserve her corpse. From the overt and quite bloody removal of the inner organs to a complete dissection of the corpse and one scene where he even eats the heart, complete with blood squirting from its arteries onto the surroundings, this scene is incredibly graphic and disturbing. Another rather tough scene is the sequence when a corpse is cremated in an incinerator, the tendons shrink and this pulls the body into a fetal position. There's a lavish attention to detail reproduced in this part that makes it more disturbing than any film burn scene, but it happens in this scene. Adding to that is a scene of really sleazing it up with a zoom-in on the nipple of a charred breast, and it's a really grotesque sight. Beyond these elements, the film is also packed with a series of extreme gore scenes that are effective and really well-done. All of a person's fingernails are pulled out with pliers in an act of pure sadism and the corpse dismemberment is a sickening, uncompromising gore sequence as it is completely and utterly cut to pieces and dumped into acid, complete with gruesome close-ups provided of the flesh-less pieces immersed in acid. The scenes involving the preparation of the corpse following the exhumation deliver all the grotesque gore you could ask for, and it's with these scenes that the film kicks in to the extreme. No detail is spared as the naked Anna is laid out, split open and gutted, never shying away from the nudity or the gore and it looks like actual autopsy footage is inserted for the close up details. Beyond the gore, it's even got some really well-done suspense scenes, especially the truck ride with the hitchhiker as the rattling truck rattles the corpses' hand out of a window inches away, with each rattle getting closer, and then trying to get it back before it's discovered. A later scene where the two are getting into bed and the corpse is in the bed next to them has a really creepy, disturbing air to it. Also worthwhile is the mansion, which looks like a retro-Gothic design that delivers some great atmosphere, and the various shots of her ghostly corpse are morbidly effective. There was a couple problems to it as well. There's the fact that there's a really lethargic pace to it that hinders it somewhat, as it tends to unfold rather slowly without really building much adrenaline or energy through it's running time. Not that it ever becomes dull, but it does have a tendency to move a little slower than expected. The other flaw is that the ending to it is pretty problematic. The mystery surrounding the sister showing up is also never explained, as it sort of appears out of the blue and somewhat without meaning, and it's not really sure what the meaning was for the inclusion. It does seem a little unlikely that a twin sister would throw a shock into them for someone in their kind of relationship, as it seemed to be that it would've been information revealed early on and it did seem as it was a serious relationship. Plus, there's also the weirdness surrounding the appearance of the detectives into the end, and their confrontation with the guilty parties is a mystery as the whole thing is played out in a silent manner, offering no clue as to what it's intent was. As it stands, though, these are minor quibbles and aren't as damaging as the other issue.The Final Verdict: One of the strongest films to ever get through in the European sleaze genre, it's got a lot to look forward to. Due to the subject matter and extremes presented, this is one for the strongest-willed of Exploitation fanatics, while those who have no desire for these films should avoid.Rated UR/NC-17: Extreme Graphic Violence, Full Nudity, several sex scenes, themes of necrophilia and Language