Frank's great love Anna dies due to the voodoo doll tinkerings of his jealous housekeeper Iris. A taxidermist in his spare time, Frank digs Anna's body up and embalms it, leaving Anna to lie in state like Lenin in Frank's bed. Frank gets up to antics with women which frequently end in murder, with Iris helping him clean up after the killings, but as she believes Frank is going to ask her to marry him, Iris invites all of her weird relatives to Frank's large house in anticipation of a proposal. When Frank is not forthcoming, a big meat cleaver comes into play. Sultan of Italian Sleaze Joe D'Amato had to turn up in this list and Beyond The Darkness remains his definitive masterpiece - gruesome enough for the horror market, and sleazy enough for Italian perversion aficionados. With its overtones of necrophilia and explicit sexual violence towards women, the film is legendary in Italian Exploitation circles, and rightfully so.
My first film watched was Carrie aged 2 on my dad's knee. Educated at The University of St Andrews and Trinity College Dublin. Fan of Arthouse, Exploitation, Horror, Euro Trash, Giallo, New French Extremism. Weaned at the bosom of a Russ Meyer starlet. The bleaker, artier or sleazier the better!
