20 Cult Horror Movies You Must See Before You Die

Though Italian director Lucio Fulci may be best known in the UK for his video nasty Zombi 2 (aka Zombie Flesh Eaters), it’s another video nasty that most horror fans worldwide associate with him. It’s understandable, because The Beyond is easily one of his better films.

In 1927 Louisiana, a group of angry villagers brutally assault and crucify a man named Sweick, a painter and alleged warlock living in the Seven Doors Hotel, the apparent guardian of a door to hell situated in the hotel's basement. Fifty-four years later, Liza Merrill (Catriona MacColl) purchases the old hotel and notices bizarre occurrences that are intensified after she meets a peculiar blind girl named Emily. Detailing that she must leave the establishment before the gate is opened, a plumber inadvertently locates a hidden room in the bowels of the hotel thereby allowing hell's minions to walk the Earth.

The Beyond is a mixture of surrealism and straightforward horror, and this mixture naturally makes for a lot of happenings that don't make much sense. For this reason, The Beyond can be difficult for people to "get," often feeling like a linear narrative that is thrown together without any sense of "how" or "why." But in reality the events' lack of logic is exactly what makes them horrifying. Combine this purposeful lack of logic with deceptively adept pacing, and you have a true horror masterpiece.