Voices from Beyond
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
- Release Date: May 11, 1991 (Cannes Market)
- Directed by: Lucio Fulci
- Written by: Lucio Fulci and Piero Regnoli
- Runtime: 1 hour 31 minutes
Voices from Beyond was one of the last movies that Lucio Fulci ever directed. It was filmed in 1991 and premiered at the Cannes Film Festival marketplace later that year, but sat unreleased until 1994. Other than that odd release detail, I know absolutely nothing about the making of this movie. Its Blu-Ray release from Code Red features no special features, scene selection, or even a menu; it simply plays the movie in a loop. It's almost as if the movie exists in this weird vacuum, only to be found by die-hard fans of Italian horror films who are starting to reach the bottom of the barrel. That's kind of a shame, because as the sickness-era Fulci films go, this is the closest that one has come to feeling like his earlier horror films that became such classics of the genre.
The movie's plot revolves around the sudden death of a wealthy man from an internal hemorrhage. After death, his spirit lingers in his corpse and begs for his daughter to figure out who killed him. Production-wise, I really enjoy how this movie looks and sounds. Being a direct-to-video / TV production, it looks like it was shot on 16mm film instead of 35mm, but the level of grain and detail in the film stock makes it look like a middle ground between the two. Everything has this slightly blurry, almost hazy look to it. Characters have a glowing outline in some scenes due to the lighting, and the blurry edges of other scenes give the movie a very dreamy look. Combine this visual style with a score that features music loops going on for minutes at a time, and you get a movie that feels like a low-budget cousin of The Beyond. It's the type of thing that makes for a great viewing in the middle of the night, when the mind is a little tired and your sleepiness enhances the mood on screen.
While a little bit restrained due to the movie's low budget, the special effects and surreal qualities that defined things like the Gates of Hell trilogy make a bit of a return here. The corpse that the dead man's spirit resides in lays in a coffin for almost the entire movie, and as time goes on, it decomposes more and more. This starts with simple things like live spiders and webs, before moving into some gooey decomposition makeup that also features live maggots and worms. Numerous dream sequences peppered throughout the film give it the surreal feeling that so many of these sickness-era Fulci films were lacking. One scene features his final return to the zombie subgenre, as zombies burst out of their tombs and attack a man in a crypt. Another sees the dead man and his wife having a dish consisting of cut-up eyeballs, all while being surrounded by dressed-up corpses. There are many other fun oddities as well, but that being said, I do wish that these scenes occurred in the film's reality instead of dreams. In things like The Beyond or City of the Living Dead, unexplained violent occurrences actually happened to the characters with very little explanation given. Not only did that make those movies unpredictable, but you were never sure which characters would be safe in the story, as everyone seemed to be fair game. The fact that the supernatural violence is constrained to dreams makes the story feel much more low-stakes, as none of the characters are in any real danger. That's just a nitpick though, as I really was entertained by watching Fulci play around in the special effects sandbox for one of the last times of his career.
If I had to complain about one thing in the movie, the dub track does leave a lot to be desired at times. The dub actor for the dead man has one of the most monotone voices I've ever heard in an Italian horror film. Every single line he says is delivered with the same inflection; whether he is arguing with his wife, talking with his daughter, or begging his father for help. It always sounds like he is using the voice he would at a reading of the script instead of actually performing what was written. One dream sequence features the same man and his father clearly shouting at each other while all of their dialogue is dubbed in whispering voices. I'm sure this was done to make the scene more "dreamy", but it just came off as unintentionally funny to me. While most of the other actors handled their parts just fine, this one actor stood out so badly from all the others when it came to effort. For a character that is so integral to the storyline of the film, he really needed a much stronger performance to keep the audience interested in him.
Flaws aside, Voices from Beyond is probably the best movie from Fulci's later career. It features so many of the qualities that defined many of his classic works, and really feels like he was truly back in the saddle for the first time in many years. It's much more well-made than any of his other direct-to-video / TV films, and much more confident and engaging than something like Demonia was. I would love to find out more about the making of it, because I truly don't understand what warranted it being shelved for so long. For being in such poor health, the Maestro was able to show that he still had a little bit of that spark in him, even has he neared the end.