The words above, spoken by a disembodied voice near the end of Lucio Fulci's masterpiece E Tu Vivrai Nel Terrore...L'Aldila, are important to me because they are true. We will face the sea of darkness, and all therein that may be explored. We each owe a death, and what we will find Beyond is anyone's guess. Fulci shared his stark vision of it in 1981, and while American audiences were originally given a butchered print going under the name 7 Doors Of Death in 1983, twenty years later the full film was unleashed under its' actual title: The Beyond.
I saw The Beyond by myself in my bedroom on a videocassette, which is appropriate. I was familiar with some of Fulci's other films, and was a fan of his, and Italian horror in general. But after I saw The Beyond, that was it. There was no going back. I had been shown a feverdream of epic proportions, a nightmare captured on celluloid that refused to budge from my seething cerebellum. From the sepia-toned opening of a lynchmob (actually a nailchainquicklimemob) to the final shots of The Beyond itself, I was a captive of a masterwork that never should have been. By all accounts, the film was made much like his others: fast, cheap, and without location sound...but there is something different about it. Something awe-inducing. Something terrifying. Detractors will scoff at the effects (which were great for their time and place), the story (it doesn't have one), even the acting (effectively rendered into pantomime due to the dubbing, another point of contention for naysayers). The reason they detract is because they missed the point: The Beyond doesn't care. Like Death Itself, The Beyond is intractable. You don't like it? Too bad, you have to deal with it anyway:
"What I wanted to get across with this film was the idea that all of life is often a really terrible nightmare and that our only refuge is to remain in this world, but outside time." ~ Lucio Fulci on L'Aldila
But that's not why I'm here. Not yet.
I'm here because of Great Britain. I've lived in California my whole life, and the closest I've been to England is British Columbia. But the story of the BBFC and the Video Nasties rocks my brain in a way I can't explain. American film classification is voluntary: If you make a movie and can convince a theatre to show it, you don't need to submit it to the MPAA. Not so in the UK. The BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) issues certificates with ratings, but if you don't get one you're outta luck, Jack. When the Video Cassette Recorder appeared for home use in the early 1980s, there was no regulation. Video distributors got B-movies cheap, and sensationalism always sold. Gory, lurid advertisements for films like The Driller Killer (power drill going into a guy's forehead) and SS Experiment Camp (naked woman hung upside down by her feet) drew the ire of conservatives, and the newspapers (fueling public fears about the warping of children by media) garnered this new menace with the moniker "Video Nasty". The board got tough. Local constabularies were authorized to seize offending materials and given no real guidelines beyond films that were "obscene". Video shops got raided all over the country, with the less-than-film-savvy bobbys reportedly seizing The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas because they figured it was a porno.
In 1984, legislation was drafted to regulate the home video industry, and the final tally of films to have found their way on to the list of the BBFC and Director of Public Prosecutions rose to 72, including The Beyond, with two more (Xtro and Shogun Assassin) often included, because while they were seized by some constabularies and rumored to be Nasties, they were never on any official list.
In the end, it came down to two things that the board just could not abide: Sexualized Violence and Genuine Animal Cruelty. On these two elements, the BBFC stands firm, and some of these flicks are still banned completely to this day.
It is my quest to endure all 72 of the Video Nasties in their unexpurgated state. This will take a while, due to issues of availability and the desire to retain my sanity. In some cases (such as The Last House On The Left) entire scenes have been lost, and we have to settle for what remains...which is still more intense than one can stand on a daily basis.
A few things you might want to know: I'm not a lunatic who only cares about gore or a snot who loves to point out flaws or an anonymous ranter who slams for the "pleasure" of slamming. No. I love all kinds of movies. I love exploitation movies because they make no bones about what they are: sleazy entertainment, thank you very much, and if they've thrown in some social commentary or a neat filmmaking trick, it's a bonus to be appreciated and applauded. Some of these movies contain genuine film of animal cruelty, and at least two contain documentary footage of human deaths as well. There will be rape, murder, monsters, zombies, cannibals, Nazis, serial killers, werewolves, incest, racism, madmen, madwomen, revenge, possessions, Udo Kier, and a lot of movies with "Don't" in the title. I'll try to explain why the films were targeted, what you can expect from them, and how difficult they were to obtain. And don't forget: just because it's not a Nasty, doesn't mean it isn't nasty, and there will be chartered trips to many other bizarre, perverted and terrifying corridors of film. C'mon. It'll be fun. Just be prepared, like me. My name's Justin. JustinCase.
AND REMEMBER: To avoid fainting, keep repeating to yourself - "...It's only a movie...It's only a movie...It's only a movie..."
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