Sightlines · reception

How The Beyond was received

1981 · Lucio Fulci · The Beyond on Sightlines

The arc

Hacked down and retitled '7 Doors of Death' for its US release, it was dismissed as incoherent gore; Quentin Tarantino's Rolling Thunder re-released it uncut in theaters in 1998, and it's now widely held up as Fulci's masterpiece.

What’s debated

The eternal Fulci fight: is the dream-logic plotlessness sublime surrealism or just sloppy filmmaking with great gore?

Its footprint

Its final image of the Sea of Darkness is one of Italian horror's most referenced shots, and the closing line about facing 'the sea of darkness' gets quoted endlessly; its UK history as a 'video nasty' only burnished the legend.

Where it stands

The crown jewel of Fulci's 'Gates of Hell' trilogy and a cornerstone of the Eurohorror cult canon — the one horror heads mean when they say 'you have to see a Fulci.'

Did you know? The butchered American cut, '7 Doors of Death,' trimmed the gore and swapped in a new score; US audiences didn't see the real film in theaters until Tarantino's Rolling Thunder Pictures revived it uncut in 1998.

Named by the director

• Antonin Artaud — Fulci invoked Artaud when describing The Beyond as an attempt at an 'absolute film' — a plotless succession of images rather than a logical story.