Beyond Darkness

Exorcise Regime

Beyond Darkness
aka La Casa 5
aka Evil Dead 5
Italy 1990 Directed by Claudio Fragasso
Severin Films Blu Ray Zone A

Warning: I guess this has spoilers.

Well, this will be a short review.

Okay... so I bought Beyond Darkness from Severin, mainly due to the fact that the film’s score by Carlo Maria Cordio was included on a separate bonus CD. Turns out though... that’s really only one of two things worth making this purchase for, the other being the special limited edition slipcase with the film’s more notorious and completely inaccurate alternate title of Evil Dead 5.

So the film has nothing to do with the much more famous Evil Dead franchise. However, the Italian title, La Casa 5 is also a direct reference to the Evil Dead movies (which were called La Casa movies in Italy) but, of course, none of these later films were continuations of those films... just a quick title to cash in on the success of the US franchise (so I really should watch those one day), much in the spirit of the gazillions of unofficial Django movies made in the wake of the original Franco Nero movie, most of which didn’t have a character called Django in them and were nothing to do with the first one.

So...  really wasn’t expecting all that much from this movie but I was expecting a much more fun time than I ultimately got. The film starts off with Father George (David Brandon) trying to read the last rights to a female serial killer on death row who says, basically, not to bother... I ate all the souls of the kids I killed and you’ll be joining me in hell soon. She also gives him a demonic bible and he now starts seeing hallucinations of her in his daily life. He then leaves the church world and becomes a drunken wino, who now sees things like the dead demonic lady driving the kids around town in a bus etc.

Meanwhile, Father Peter (Gene LeBrock), his wife Annie (Barbara Bingham) and their two sprogs have been moved into a possessed house with a portal to hell in the hopes that they can clear things up there (not that they find this out until demons from hell start turning up). It’s actually the same house in Louisiana that was used in Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond (reviewed here) so, you know, you’d think they would have known something was amiss.

And not much else happens and, when I say not much, I actually mean quite a lot happens but it’s all so dull and plodding that I was finding it really hard to make my way through this one. I mean there’s a black swan rocking contraption with a life of its own, a doorway to hell which calls to the kids, zombie like creatures in black, diaphanous robes invading the house in a fog a few times, a kidnapped child and various quick possessions as people’s eyes glaze over with white contact lenses every now and again when they enter what I shall only call ‘the fog dimension’... and then Father George turns up to try and redeem himself and help Father Peter exorcise one of his own kids in what must be the most boring exorcism scene I’ve seen committed to film. And David Brandon is not subtle in his scenery chewing performance... which is probably how he’s been directed to be because, lets face it, the film is not too subtle either. He’s also the only one who seems to have a strong personality in this so at least he’s mostly watchable in an otherwise unbelievably dull film, it has to be said.

The cinematography comes through with a penchant for stressing verticality in the shot composition a lot of the time (very easy to do in the jail and interior house scenes and it’s emphasised a lot) and there’s a nice shot looking down at one of the characters through the spoked sections of a door arch at one point but... yeah, the cinematography doesn’t even come close to saving this picture, I’d have to say. It’s dull, dull, dull and when there is a nugget of interest where Father Peter’s daughter is left with the man in the local church and finger points to him being someone more sinister, the plot thread is not only not investigated but the daughter drops out of the picture unexpectedly. We never see her in the narrative again and everyone just seems to have forgotten about her, which is strange and makes me think there might have been more planned for this movie and maybe the budget or shooting schedule got sliced at some point, perhaps.

Carlo Maria Cordio’s score was, it turns out, worth the purchase and I shall be putting on the CD later today but, I’d have to say that, while it’s typical of the sort of synthesised disco horror scores of the time in Italian cinema, when everyone was trying to be Goblin and were mostly failing miserably, it does feel inappropriate to the movie and really doesn’t help it any. I can tell it’s going to be good away from the confines of the movie though so, at least there’s that.

And I really have nothing more to say on this one. I haven’t had time to watch the extras on this but, you know, it’s Severin so it’s a shoe in they’re going to have good extras and, probably, they’ll be a darn site more interesting than the actual film. All in all, it’s another good package from Severin but a really dreadful movie, as far as I’m concerned and nowhere near as good as similarly themed movies such as Beyond The Door (reviewed here). Sorry, I just can’t recommend this one, even to the friends who, like me, usually love clunky Italian horror movies. It’s just not good.