Beyond the Darkness (1979)

Tagline: “Even death can’t keep them apart”

Duration: 94 minutes

Film Quality: 3.5/5
Gore Content: 4/5
Entertainment Value:3/5
Originality: 3/5

Introduction

Joe D’Amato has filmed more Euro-sleaze than Adam Sandler has been in crap movies but he certainly outdoes himself with this one. Until last week I knew it by reputation, remembering one article in The Dark Side magazine way back in the 90s declaring that it would never receive an uncut release in the UK, instantly arousing my interest. Last year, still never having had a sniff of this film, discovered that 88 Films had an Indiegogo campaign to restore it in 2k along with three other movies, I decided I was in. When you wait the best part of 25 years to see a film, distorted expectation levels can lead to disappointment but this one delivers on its reputation in spades…it is seriously nasty!

In a nutshell

A taxidermist, Frank, loses his fiancé to illness, little knowing that it owes more to his housekeeper’s practice of ‘the dark arts’ than any medical condition. He injects his dearly deceased with a preservative, exhumes her, disembowels and stuffs her, laying her to rest in his bed as if she were still alive. Needless to say his housekeeper, Iris, is not pleased and from thereon in it’s carnage with a number of ‘guests’ meeting grisly ends.

So what’s good about it?

I tend to prefer straight up, honest to God horror, euro-sleaze has never really been a sub-genre that’s floated my boat but curiosity got the better of me in this instance so I thought I’d give it a go. Let’s just say that it delivers on its promise like a Michael Bay action flick…D’Amato knows his target audience and gives them exactly what they want. This ticks every box plus a few others that nobody really asked for. Hints of incest, necrophilia, cannibalism, the total destruction of the human body on multiple occasions, this is extreme to say the least.

The on screen gore is surprisingly well done and VERY gooey! After a slow start D’Amato hits you with the first set piece, Frank’s long and detailed disembowelling of his fiancé in which he, with an emotionless face, slowly pulls out her intestines, throws them in a bucket before eating her heart (lovely touch seeing the blood fly out of the severed arteries as he chows down!). He then sadistically pulls out the fingernails of a hitchhiker who walks in on this display, seemingly for the sheer fun of it. But that’s nothing compared to the limb by limb decapitation of an unfortunate jogger who is then put, piece by piece, in a bath of acid, let down the plug hole with the sloppy remains buried in the garden…oh, and then Iris eats a chicken casserole whilst still covered in her blood. Even Frank vomits at that point…yes, this rivals the levels of some of the cannibal films around at the time.

It has some very uncomfortable undertones! Yes, Iris is the housekeeper but as Frank is an orphan she is very much a mother figure so to see her breastfeed Frank (who must be in his mid 20s) is a little disconcerting to the say the least. She then later, right in front of Frank’s stuffed fiancee, gives him a hand job which takes notions of sexual perversion to all kinds of new levels. We don’t see it but the fact that he puts his bride to be in his bed…what the hell does he do to the corpse at night???

The one thing I wasn’t expecting was how well made this film was. The acting is top notch, particularly from the female members of the cast. Franca Stoppi is incredible as the steely eyed Iris, every inch the believable sociopath and utterly terrifying, particularly during the decapitation by cleaver scene and its aftermath. Also, despite playing the part of a corpse for pretty much the entire film, Cinzia Monreale really looks the part with her dead-eyed stare and chilling, expressionless face. It really shouldn’t be underestimated how difficult this must have been.

Finally there’s D’Amato’s direction which is perfectly paced and always engaging. You just have to look at some of Mario Bava’s later efforts (‘Five Dolls for an August Moon’ comes to mind) to know that films of this type can be incredibly boring and dull with terrible dialogue, flat direction and little thought given to plot. But D’Amato cleverly gives the actors room to breathe and it never outstays its welcome. It also helps to have the ever-reliable Goblin on board to provide a terrific score with driving synth and mellow piano juxtaposed depending on which character is on screen, further adding to the atmosphere.

And what about the bad?

As I said, euro-sleaze isn’t my thing and, fortunately for me, D’Amato places ‘Beyond the Darkness’ just the right side of horror whereas many of its type can easily fall into the category of borderline porn. For this reason I can see a lot of modern day audiences being turned completely off by this which is a shame because it is a surprisingly good and well-crafted film. Also, 88 Films very wisely included the original Italian dub with subtitles because the English language cut suffers from the kind of terrible acting and fake accents (I think the hitchhiker must have been dubbed by a relative of Dick Van Dyke, such was the ineptitude of the London accent!) that can render a good film laughable so stick with the original language version if you can

Any themes?

Yes, and all of them seedy! If Iris really has taken the place of his mother Frank has some serious Oedipal issues, not to mention his necrophiliac leanings. Yes, he’s suffered a trauma and he is clearly predisposed to having a fascination for resurrecting and preserving the dead through his work as a taxidermist. Now, before any taxidermists reading this (I’m sure there’s hundreds of you but it’d be just my luck!) I’m not saying that there’s a connection but the writers are clearly asking us to make that link between a seriously disturbed individual channelling his psychosis through his choice of hobby. His desire is to preserve his fiancée at her peak, glass eyes and all, so that she will forever be perfect and can’t let go of the fact that she has passed on.

There are shades of ‘Psycho’ in its bizarre family dynamic with Iris as the matriarch. However this premise is turned on its head by the object of the subversive male’s sexual desire front and centre as a corpse. Whereas the very much alive Iris brings these desires out in a horrifically literal sense, Hitchcock’s classic presents the matriarch herself as a corpse representing the suppression of his sexual desires.

Release History

This didn’t get a UK release until ten years after its international release, a case of bad timing perhaps as films were being seized, banned, censored and generally stripped of their dignity left, right and centre. A pre-cut version that was missing some five minutes, some of it dialogue but much of it gore, was passed uncut by the BBFC for the VPD VHS release in 1989. This passed well under the radar and wasn’t a particular success, deleted fairly quickly.

88 Films picked it up in 2016 and ran their Indiegogo campaign to get this film restored in a 2k scan along with ‘Absurd’, ‘Aenigma’ and ‘Massacre in Dinosaur Valley’, looking at £40,000 to remaster all four films. They managed upwards of £80,000 which resulted in a fifth film, ‘Absurd’s prequel ‘Anthropophagous’, as well as supplemental material for all five films being delivered as part of the campaign. The film was released completely uncut (the version that was delivered to my door last week) and for that kind of dedication we should all be very grateful.

Cultural Impact

Other than its reputation as an extreme piece of euro-sleaze it passed by relatively unnoticed at a time when these types of film were ten a penny, however it's garnered quite a reputation over the years amongst hardened gorehounds. It’s only now in the UK, that we’re getting a chance to appraise the film and see it for what it is. Yes, at its devoured heart it’s a sleazy piece of exploitation cinema but scratch the surface and it’s much more than that…an example of a superior director putting his inimitable stamp on the genre at a time when the floodgates were open with an ‘anything goes’ attitude.

Final Thoughts

Perhaps a little strong for your casual horror fan, for me it lived up to its reputation which is rare for a film that is well into its fourth decade. It’s a strong entry in D’Amato’s back catalogue and its fantastic that we’re finally getting the chance to see it. If you live in the UK and weren’t part of the Indiegogo campaign then it’s definitely worth the money, you won’t be disappointed.

You’ll like this if you enjoyed…

‘Anthropophagous’, ‘New York Ripper’, ‘Absurd’.