The Beyond: Looking Back - The Creation of the Beyond

Looking Back - The Creation The Beyond (2014)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

This 48-minute documentary gathers together many of the technical people who helped create Lucio Fulci's THE BEYOND. On hand for interviews are cinematographer Sergio Salvati, producer Fabrizio De Angelis, screenwriter Dardano Sacchetti, artist Enzo Sciotti and Fulci's daughter Antonella. This documentary covers a wide range of subjects related to the film but it starts out talking about Fulci's early movie and how he ended up getting hired for ZOMBIE and what that did to his career.

From here we focus on THE BEYOND as producer De Angelis talks about how he would sell movies to foreign markets even before they were made. This here was the most entertaining thing in the documentary and one could argue that this subject needs its own film. He discusses selling a poster and title for THE BEYOND and then it was up to the screenwriter to come up with a story. We learn about how the screenplay was written, the various ideas that were thrown into the movie and then we hear from everyone on how it all came together.

If you're a fan of THE BEYOND or just Italian horror movies in general then you should enjoy this documentary, which comes close to a hour running time. Everyone involved share their memories on the movie and there's also some, namely Fulci's daughter, who tries to say her father's reputation as a hot-head wasn't really true but then we hear from countless people who talk about how brutally mean he was. Either way, this is a fun look at the making of the film.