Beyond The Darkness/Review

From The Grindhouse Cinema Database

< Beyond The Darkness
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You know, I remember when this film hit the Grindhouses in the late 70's early 80's, but I never had the chance to see it. Then one winter back in 1982, I had a girlfriend buy me a VCR for Christmas. Unfortunately I was in a drug-induced coma and still thought it was summer time. Which means that I forgot to buy a gift for her. Oops! What can I say?

One day I was at the pawnshop trying to get money for my next fix, when all the sudden there was a copy of Beyond The Darkness. At that time, the movie was called Buried Alive. So I picked up the copy of this movie for $20. Wow! What a bargain. Back in the day, it would cost up to $80 for a VHS cassette of your favorite movie. Can you believe that shit? So I sold everything that I needed to sell to get my fix money and stole the VHS copy of Buried Alive.

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When I got home, I was so high on mescaline, LSD and mushrooms and decided now would be the perfect time to watch this flick. Unfortunately for me, I sold my VCR to the pawnshop 2 weeks ago. Now I was on a mission to find somebody with a VCR so I can watch this fucking movie and I was determined not to fail this mission. My #1 priority was to watch this movie tonight!

Too bad I got sidetracked on the squeaking sound that my refrigerator door made every time I opened it and closed it. Plus I began to worry about the light in my refridgerator door staying on when I closed it. No wonder I had so many fucking bills. I knew for a fact that the reason my electricity was so expensive was because of this little light in the refrigerator door. I knew for a fact that it was staying on 24/7 and I knew I would not rest until I knew for sure that this problem was resolved. By now, you're probably wondering if I ever got around to seeing this movie? The answer is yes, but it took me about 4 more years to getting around to it. Anyway, the film is directed by Joe D'Amato, who also directed all of the Emmanuelle films and also directed Anthropophagous too.

The movie starts out with the main character, Frank and his roommate Iris. They decide to toy around with a voodoo doll, but little does he know that him playing with voodoo was a bad idea and turned around and bit him in the ass. Suddenly his fiancée gets sick and dies. But he's not willing to let go of his beautiful fiancée and decides to dig her up and steal her corpse.

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While he's driving down the road with the corpse, he picks up a hitchhiker. The hitchhiker gets so stoned off of a joint that she rolled that she passes out in Frank's car. So Frank gets to his house and lets her sleep in his car. He then takes the body in his mansion and begins to embalm her. Not too sure why they wouldn't of embalmed her before burying her, but whatever. He then begins to feast on her heart, when suddenly the hitchhiker decides to walk in. She begins to scream and Frank then has to murder her. If only the stoned hitchhiker wasn't so fucking nosey, then she would have been fine. Frank's roommate Iris helps him dispose of the body, but then Frank decides that murdering is fun and decides to murder again and again.

My favorite scene in the movie is Frank picks up a jogger and takes her to his pad and begins to get down and dirty with her. The part that makes it so great is he does her with his fiancée's corpse in the bed next to them. The jogger eventually sees the corpse and begins to freak out, so of course Frank needs to kill her.

Over the top gore, cannibalism and necrophilia makes this one of my all time personal favorite Italian love stories. After seeing this movie, you'll see where Nekromantik got their ideas from.

Reviewed by Horace Bones

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