I’ll admit, I had not heard of The Beyond until about 2008. I had been watching horror films since I was kid in the early ’90s, cruising the local video stores for whatever I could find, but I don’t ever remember seeing a box or poster for the movie, or even its gore-reduced version, The 7 Doors of Death. I started buying horror DVDs in the early 2000’s from Anchor Bay, then moved onto Shriek Show’s Italian exploits and eventually came across Grindhouse Releasing’s version of The Beyond (around 2011).
I remember popping it into the DVD player at my girlfriend’s apartment, watching it on her 55″ plasma television, and though I’m not really a gore fan, I was ready for whatever I was about to see. It definitely lived up to its expectation with violence and gore, but by the time that I came to the end of the movie, with its abrupt downer, I remember thinking….that’s how it ends?
I would be lying if I said that I loved the movie right away, since it was just so different. I remember thinking it over for a day, then deciding that I needed to watch the movie again, but by the end of the second viewing I was in love with it. The Beyond absolutely had some great cinematography and while the dubbing can be a little distracting, everything was so well done.
Setting aside everything else that I loved about the movie, the locations used were absolutely amazing and I was interested in finding out as much as I could about them. There’s something about that Southern look that’s unique to anywhere else. All that I really came across via blogs at the time were some short articles and a few pictures of where the locations were, with Louisiana being the central American location. Later I would come across a video created by a hardcore fan which went into great detail. Check it out and enjoy!
-Nick
