Edwige, my steadfast kangaroo companion, and I were working our way up the stairs of the Museum of Schlock, trying to get up to the 4h floor. The Beyond exhibit was on the 4th floor. That’s where the Goose Lord gang had taken the Revenging Manta, the ninja vigilante of downtown Orlando. Edwige was just hopping away up the steps as I tried to catch my breath. She was out of view by the time I made it to the 4th floor.

— To be continued.

Tonight’s movie is 1981’s The Beyond from director Lucio Fulci. This is the greatest horror movie of all time. Full stop. The Beyond is like The Amityville Horror if The Amityville Horror fulfilled its promises. Instead of James Brolin whining about the lost catering money, you get a corpse rising from a draining bathtub ready to impale the housekeeper’s head on a nail sticking out of the wall. Something horrible happens every five minutes in this movie. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a haunted house attraction.

The movie begins with a painter named Schweick (Antoine Saint-John) getting accosted by an angry mob that look like they came from a Frankenstein movie. They call him an “ungodly warlock” and drag him down to the basement. Schweick tells them that the hotel was built over one of the seven gates of hell and that only he can save them. The mob doesn’t buy his story and proceeds to crucify him to a wall. They then pour hot lye on him before walling him up.

Fast forward sixty years and a young woman named Liza (Catriona MacColl) has inherited a rundown hotel from her late uncle. This is the same hotel where the ungodly warlock  was crucified. One of the repairmen working on the hotel falls off a scaffolding when he sees the visage of a creepy blind girl. A Dr. John McCabe (David Warbeck) is called to check on the injured worker and Liza’s architect, a man named Martin (Michele Mirabella), comments on how they’re off to a great start. Oh, and the basement is flooded.

Joe the Plumber (Tonino Pulci) shows up to fix the water problem, but accidentally opens up one of the seven gateways to hell. We know this after he breaks some kind of Satanic seal and a zombified hand reaches out and gouges his eyes out. When Joe’s corpse is found later, it seems to be puking up bile. The corpse of Schweick also surfaces and both bodies are brought to the hospital for examination. Joe’s widow and teenage daughter come to see the body, but before you know it, Joe’s wife is taking a sulfuric acid bath while his daughter tries to run from a gelatinous blob formed from what was once her mother’s face.

Meanwhile, Liza encounters a blind girl named Emily (Cinzia Monreale) who I suspect is a ghost from hell. Emily tells Liza to leave New Orleans and to hurry. More horrible incidents occur involving dogs and spiders. And just when you think things can’t get any worse, the zombies show up. I don’t want to hear any complaints about this movie not making any sense. We had microwavable milkshakes back in the 1980s. Did that make sense? The Beyond gives us a scene of a redheaded zombie teenager getting her face blown apart by a Colt Python. This is why we love the movies!

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, episode 450, episode 477, episode 491, episode 492, episode 493, episode 495, episode 496, episode 545, episode 546, episode 547, episode 548, episode 549, episode 575, episode 596, episode 597, episode 598, and episode 599) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florid