Heaven is Horror
The Beyond (1981)
directed by Lucio Fulci
rating: 5 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from the vaults
I was surprised, I remember, to learn that the "dawn of man" segment of 2001 was shot on a soundstage. There was so much space - more, if possible, than even Africa. Kubrick liked to control his sets, of course, but give the production designers their due: what they imagined and could not find in the world around them, they built.
Fulci, like Kubrick, needed things he couldn't tease from a location shoot. Probably for different reasons ($), but both men clearly respected their crew. Fulci begins in New Orleans, but never uses the city as shorthand. Take a scene at a funeral outside a crypt, for example, where he elects to put a skyscraper in the center of the frame. Fulci steals what we recognize away from us. The nightmare must be earned, and, like all nightmares, revealed by degrees - the trap found out only from inside.
Only, isn't it a dream at the very start? With a painter and his oils in a hotel outside of town? The torchlight, the wooden boats, the texture of the canvas? And aren't all seven doors of hell thrown open, and not just the door beneath the stairs?
There is the blind girl on the bridge on the highway over the bayou. The vision of the woman running from the house (straight from the set of Inferno, I guess!). The house itself. The hospital. The dog who defends the girl before it kills her (the turn in demeanor is far worse than the blood). The call from the room. The eyes. Those that Fulci doesn't mutilate are some of the prettiest eyes in movies, and even the final seconds are as much escape as damnation - Blade Runner beat by a year.
Not perfect, but still perfect - the official unofficial start of fall.
directed by Lucio Fulci
rating: 5 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from the vaults
I was surprised, I remember, to learn that the "dawn of man" segment of 2001 was shot on a soundstage. There was so much space - more, if possible, than even Africa. Kubrick liked to control his sets, of course, but give the production designers their due: what they imagined and could not find in the world around them, they built.
Fulci, like Kubrick, needed things he couldn't tease from a location shoot. Probably for different reasons ($), but both men clearly respected their crew. Fulci begins in New Orleans, but never uses the city as shorthand. Take a scene at a funeral outside a crypt, for example, where he elects to put a skyscraper in the center of the frame. Fulci steals what we recognize away from us. The nightmare must be earned, and, like all nightmares, revealed by degrees - the trap found out only from inside.
Only, isn't it a dream at the very start? With a painter and his oils in a hotel outside of town? The torchlight, the wooden boats, the texture of the canvas? And aren't all seven doors of hell thrown open, and not just the door beneath the stairs?
There is the blind girl on the bridge on the highway over the bayou. The vision of the woman running from the house (straight from the set of Inferno, I guess!). The house itself. The hospital. The dog who defends the girl before it kills her (the turn in demeanor is far worse than the blood). The call from the room. The eyes. Those that Fulci doesn't mutilate are some of the prettiest eyes in movies, and even the final seconds are as much escape as damnation - Blade Runner beat by a year.
Not perfect, but still perfect - the official unofficial start of fall.
posted by NPK at 9:09 AM
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