The Beyond (1981) Synopsis

New Orleans, Louisiana, 1927. An enraged posse of men descend on the isolated Seven Doors Hotel deep in the swamps. They grab an artist called Schweik (Antoine Saint John), who is cloistered there. Accusing him of being a warlock, Schweik is dragged down to the cellar where he is savagely beaten with heavy chains, tortured with quicklime acid, and crucified with his wrists nailed to a cellar wall, despite his dire warnings of evil to be unleashed.New Orleans, 1981. Liza Merril (Catriona MacColl) is a young woman who arrives from New York City to claim the hotel as her inheritance. No sooner has architect friend Marin Avery (Michele Mirabella) begins to show her around the property, strange incidents begin to happen. A painter (Anthony Flees) falls off his rig and is horribly injured, coughing up blood and babbling about, "the eyes, the eyes." Dr. John McCabe (David Warbeck) arrives to take the injured man to the hospital, and offers Liza some sympathy. Next, a plumber, named Joe, attempts to repair a major leak in the flooded cellar. However, he is murdered by a presence that emerged from behind a slim-caked wall. The atmosphere at the hotel is further chilled by the creepy-looking servants, Arthur (Giampaolo Saccarola) and Martha (Veronica Lazar), who apparently come with the hotel. Martha discovers Joe's dead body in the cellar, and another much older cadaver lying in a pool of dirty water nearby. It is apparently that of Schweik, the artist.Driving down the 14-mile causeway to New Orleans, Liza encounters a strange blind woman, standing in the middle of the desolate highway. The blind woman introduces herself as Emily (Sarah Keller), and tells Liza that she has been waiting for her, although her eyes are occluded with cataracts. Liza drives Emily over to her opulently furnished house in New Orleans. Liza is warned by Emily to leave the hotel while she still can. Meanwhile at the hospital morgue, Dr. John McCabe is performing the autopsy on Joe the plumber while his assistant Harris (Al Cliver) wants to install an EMG machine to the corpse of Schweik. John laughs it off and leaves for lunch, while Harris remains behind to install the EMG machine. After Harris leaves for a call, the EMG machine begins pulsing with activity. A little later, Joe's wife Mary-Anne (Laura De Marchi) arrives with her daughter Jill (Maria Pia Marsale) to dress up her husband's corpse for the funeral, when she is killed in a horrific way by scalded with acid. Jill is then menaced by the re-animated cadaver of Schweik.Liza meets with John McCabe in a downtown bar to discuss her misgivings and anxieties. He expresses puzzlement when Lisa complains about he ineptitude of her weird servants. John claims to have never heard of them before despite knowing everyone in the area. Then a phone call from the bar arrives from Harris who informs John that Mary-Anne's body was found in the morgue, while Jill was found huddled in a corner frightened and unable to speak. After Joe and Mary-Anne's funeral, Emily appears again to Liza that evening at the hotel. Emily tells Liza about the warlock Schweik, who stayed in Room 36 of the hotel and about the supernatural underworld that the hotel conceals. The hotel was built over one of the Seven Gates of Hell, and Schweik has been the Guardian. Emily is about to reveal more when her hands wander over to a canvas depicting a desolate vision of lost souls in a terrible and arid landscape. Suddenly afraid, Emily says that the painting was painted by Schweik before he died, and she runs out of the hotel parlor into the night. But Liza notices a disquieting fact about her sudden departure: Emily made no footfalls on the bare wooden boards as she ran, and neither did her seeing-eye dog.The next day, Liza ventures nervously into Room 36, a dingy phantasmal of sheet-covered furniture and shafts of dusty light. She finds an ancient book, whose weirdly flesh-like cover bears the single word: Eibon. The closet breaths a cold hind of dark stygian realms from behind moth-eaten clothes. Liza tries to shrug off her fears and strides into the bathroom, only to be confronted with Schweiks rotting corpse nailed to the bathroom wall. She runs screaming from the discovery into the arms of the visiting John McCabe. The two of them return to the cursed room, but find nothing. Two nails are all that remain of Liza's nightmare vision. When Liza says she must have been over stimulated by Emily's tale, John queries her story by saying that there is no blind woman living at the house she described.Liza goes for a walk around New Orleans with Martin Avery, and they happen upon a old antiquarian bookshop. Just for a second, Lisa spies a copy of the book Eibon in the window. But when she runs into the shop, the book is gone. The weird old bookseller tells her that he never heard of a book by that name. Back at the hotel, Arthur is continuing his efforts to re-seal the hole in the cellar wall that Joe unwisely breached when he gets killed off-screen by unseen ghouls.Martin goes on alone to visit a local library in search of the original blueprints to the hotel. The strange librarian (director Lucio Fulci) leaves him alone as he goes out to lunch. Just when Martin discovers a clue in the Seven Doors Hotel blueprints, a bolt of lighting from the unseen forces of darkness knocks him off a high ladder to the floor, breaking his neck. Then, a horde of supernatural tarantulas appear and finish off the paralyzed Martin in a very gory way by eating his face off. Meanwhile, John investigates the house where Liza said she met Emily. But he discovers only a blasted, decaying shell of a house, empty of clues, except for one rotting item on the floor: the book of Eibon.At the hotel, Martha is continuing her lackluster efforts to clean up the hotel, and drain a scum-filled bathtub in Room 36. As the dirty water recedes, the living copse of Joe the plumber rises from the foul fluid. He impales the appalled housemaid through the back of her head on one of the nails jutting from the wall.Meanwhile, the semi-sinister Emily returns to her house which magically appears with all the posh furniture that was seen during Liza's visit. But then she is visited by the motionless, but menacing, figures of the recently dead; Arthur, Joe, Mary-Anne, and Schweik. Despite her pathetic pleas to be allowed to stay in the land of the living she is called back to Hell for she apparently served her purpose. Emily orders her guide-dog, Dickie, into action who attacks the rotting cadaver of Schweik. For a while, it seems that Emily's dog valiant efforts might save her. But with a mesmerizing stare from Schweik to the dog, and in a moment of devilish duplicity, Dickie turns on Emily herself, ripping out her throat in a welter of blood and gore.Back at the Seven Doors Hotel, Liza is suffering a supernatural assault during a visit to the cellar. John arrives from the hospital just in time to save her, but then accuses Liza of being in league with the forces of darkness. Just as John reveals from his research of the book of Eibon which he brought with him, that the hotel is one of the seven gateways to hell, a sudden storm erupts in the confines of the flooded cellar. As they flee to John's car and drive away, the hotel is seen lurking with the undead. The gates of hell have finally been opened.Driving around New Orleans, they notice that there is nobody in the streets. They arrive at the hospital where John gets a gun from his desk drawer, but discover that to their dismay that the nightmare has broken out there too. They run into a group of zombies that stagger through the corridors, and the phone lines are all cut. There are no bodies anywhere, yet no one seems to have survived the marauding undead. When John and Liza are separated, John finds his colleague Harris hiding in a storage room. John and Harris brief exchange of words ends when Harris is killed by flying glass by a magically shattered window, which impales him to a wall.Reunited, John and Liza find the exits blocked by groups of zombies. Corralled into the morgue, they find Jill there, and a fresh horde of reviving corpses. John begins shooting the zombies in the head to prevent them from reviving. Amidst the turmoil, Jill suddenly attacks Liza, her eyes cataracted with the stigma of the living dead. Jill is now an agent for the forces of darkness, as Emily had been. John whirls around and, without hesitating, blasts the young girl's face off with one bullet. A final appearance from the spectacularly rotting corpse of Schweik, drives the terrified couple down a spiral staircase into what should be the hospital basement. But to their utter bewilderment, they find themselves back in the cellar of the Seven Doors Hotel. John notes how impossible the entire ordeal is, but reluctantly accepts it as real. Following a bright light emanating from a cloud of smoke, they walk through the large hole in the wall, and into a landscape of death depicted the warlock's painting; each horizon offering the same view of dead bodies scattered everywhere among the arid landscape. The porthole behind them closes, and there is no escape! John and Liza are trapped in the Beyond.... apparently for all eternity.Quote from the book of Eibon: "And you will face the sea of darkness, and all therein may be explored."

New Orleans, Louisiana, 1927. An enraged posse of men descend on the isolated Seven Doors Hotel deep in the swamps. They grab an artist called Schweik (Antoine Saint John), who is cloistered there. Accusing him of being a warlock, Schweik is dragged down to the cellar where he is savagely beaten with heavy chains, tortured with quicklime acid, and crucified with his wrists nailed to a cellar wall, despite his dire warnings of evil to be unleashed.New Orleans, 1981. Liza Merril (Catriona MacColl) is a young woman who arrives from New York City to claim the hotel as her inheritance. No sooner has architect friend Marin Avery (Michele Mirabella) begins to show her around the property, strange incidents begin to happen. A painter (Anthony Flees) falls off his rig and is horribly injured, coughing up blood and babbling about, "the eyes, the eyes." Dr. John McCabe (David Warbeck) arrives to take the injured man to the hospital, and offers Liza some sympathy. Next, a plumber, named Joe, attempts to repair a major leak in the flooded cellar. However, he is murdered by a presence that emerged from behind a slim-caked wall. The atmosphere at the hotel is further chilled by the creepy-looking servants, Arthur (Giampaolo Saccarola) and Martha (Veronica Lazar), who apparently come with the hotel. Martha discovers Joe's dead body in the cellar, and another much older cadaver lying in a pool of dirty water nearby. It is apparently that of Schweik, the artist.Driving down the 14-mile causeway to New Orleans, Liza encounters a strange blind woman, standing in the middle of the desolate highway. The blind woman introduces herself as Emily (Sarah Keller), and tells Liza that she has been waiting for her, although her eyes are occluded with cataracts. Liza drives Emily over to her opulently furnished house in New Orleans. Liza is warned by Emily to leave the hotel while she still can. Meanwhile at the hospital morgue, Dr. John McCabe is performing the autopsy on Joe the plumber while his assistant Harris (Al Cliver) wants to install an EMG machine to the corpse of Schweik. John laughs it off and leaves for lunch, while Harris remains behind to install the EMG machine. After Harris leaves for a call, the EMG machine begins pulsing with activity. A little later, Joe's wife Mary-Anne (Laura De Marchi) arrives with her daughter Jill (Maria Pia Marsale) to dress up her husband's corpse for the funeral, when she is killed in a horrific way by scalded with acid. Jill is then menaced by the re-animated cadaver of Schweik.Liza meets with John McCabe in a downtown bar to discuss her misgivings and anxieties. He expresses puzzlement when Lisa complains about he ineptitude of her weird servants. John claims to have never heard of them before despite knowing everyone in the area. Then a phone call from the bar arrives from Harris who informs John that Mary-Anne's body was found in the morgue, while Jill was found huddled in a corner frightened and unable to speak. After Joe and Mary-Anne's funeral, Emily appears again to Liza that evening at the hotel. Emily tells Liza about the warlock Schweik, who stayed in Room 36 of the hotel and about the supernatural underworld that the hotel conceals. The hotel was built over one of the Seven Gates of Hell, and Schweik has been the Guardian. Emily is about to reveal more when her hands wander over to a canvas depicting a desolate vision of lost souls in a terrible and arid landscape. Suddenly afraid, Emily says that the painting was painted by Schweik before he died, and she runs out of the hotel parlor into the night. But Liza notices a disquieting fact about her sudden departure: Emily made no footfalls on the bare wooden boards as she ran, and neither did her seeing-eye dog.The next day, Liza ventures nervously into Room 36, a dingy phantasmal of sheet-covered furniture and shafts of dusty light. She finds an ancient book, whose weirdly flesh-like cover bears the single word: Eibon. The closet breaths a cold hind of dark stygian realms from behind moth-eaten clothes. Liza tries to shrug off her fears and strides into the bathroom, only to be confronted with Schweiks rotting corpse nailed to the bathroom wall. She runs screaming from the discovery into the arms of the visiting John McCabe. The two of them return to the cursed room, but find nothing. Two nails are all that remain of Liza's nightmare vision. When Liza says she must have been over stimulated by Emily's tale, John queries her story by saying that there is no blind woman living at the house she described.Liza goes for a walk around New Orleans with Martin Avery, and they happen upon a old antiquarian bookshop. Just for a second, Lisa spies a copy of the book Eibon in the window. But when she runs into the shop, the book is gone. The weird old bookseller tells her that he never heard of a book by that name. Back at the hotel, Arthur is continuing his efforts to re-seal the hole in the cellar wall that Joe unwisely breached when he gets killed off-screen by unseen ghouls.Martin goes on alone to visit a local library in search of the original blueprints to the hotel. The strange librarian (director Lucio Fulci) leaves him alone as he goes out to lunch. Just when Martin discovers a clue in the Seven Doors Hotel blueprints, a bolt of lighting from the unseen forces of darkness knocks him off a high ladder to the floor, breaking his neck. Then, a horde of supernatural tarantulas appear and finish off the paralyzed Martin in a very gory way by eating his face off. Meanwhile, John investigates the house where Liza said she met Emily. But he discovers only a blasted, decaying shell of a house, empty of clues, except for one rotting item on the floor: the book of Eibon.At the hotel, Martha is continuing her lackluster efforts to clean up the hotel, and drain a scum-filled bathtub in Room 36. As the dirty water recedes, the living copse of Joe the plumber rises from the foul fluid. He impales the appalled housemaid through the back of her head on one of the nails jutting from the wall.Meanwhile, the semi-sinister Emily returns to her house which magically appears with all the posh furniture that was seen during Liza's visit. But then she is visited by the motionless, but menacing, figures of the recently dead; Arthur, Joe, Mary-Anne, and Schweik. Despite her pathetic pleas to be allowed to stay in the land of the living she is called back to Hell for she apparently served her purpose. Emily orders her guide-dog, Dickie, into action who attacks the rotting cadaver of Schweik. For a while, it seems that Emily's dog valiant efforts might save her. But with a mesmerizing stare from Schweik to the dog, and in a moment of devilish duplicity, Dickie turns on Emily herself, ripping out her throat in a welter of blood and gore.Back at the Seven Doors Hotel, Liza is suffering a supernatural assault during a visit to the cellar. John arrives from the hospital just in time to save her, but then accuses Liza of being in league with the forces of darkness. Just as John reveals from his research of the book of Eibon which he brought with him, that the hotel is one of the seven gateways to hell, a sudden storm erupts in the confines of the flooded cellar. As they flee to John's car and drive away, the hotel is seen lurking with the undead. The gates of hell have finally been opened.Driving around New Orleans, they notice that there is nobody in the streets. They arrive at the hospital where John gets a gun from his desk drawer, but discover that to their dismay that the nightmare has broken out there too. They run into a group of zombies that stagger through the corridors, and the phone lines are all cut. There are no bodies anywhere, yet no one seems to have survived the marauding undead. When John and Liza are separated, John finds his colleague Harris hiding in a storage room. John and Harris brief exchange of words ends when Harris is killed by flying glass by a magically shattered window, which impales him to a wall.Reunited, John and Liza find the exits blocked by groups of zombies. Corralled into the morgue, they find Jill there, and a fresh horde of reviving corpses. John begins shooting the zombies in the head to prevent them from reviving. Amidst the turmoil, Jill suddenly attacks Liza, her eyes cataracted with the stigma of the living dead. Jill is now an agent for the forces of darkness, as Emily had been. John whirls around and, without hesitating, blasts the young girl's face off with one bullet. A final appearance from the spectacularly rotting corpse of Schweik, drives the terrified couple down a spiral staircase into what should be the hospital basement. But to their utter bewilderment, they find themselves back in the cellar of the Seven Doors Hotel. John notes how impossible the entire ordeal is, but reluctantly accepts it as real. Following a bright light emanating from a cloud of smoke, they walk through the large hole in the wall, and into a landscape of death depicted the warlock's painting; each horizon offering the same view of dead bodies scattered everywhere among the arid landscape. The porthole behind them closes, and there is no escape! John and Liza are trapped in the Beyond.... apparently for all eternity.Quote from the book of Eibon: "And you will face the sea of darkness, and all therein may be explored."

Published Time: 2020-10-24 00:20:08