In 1927, “The Seven Doors Hotel”, located in New Orleans, Louisiana, is home to a warlock named Schweick (Antoine Saint-John). Schweick is in room 36 painting a gruesome landscape when a mob of citizens swarm the hotel, capture, torture and kill him. They leave him crucified to a wall in the basement of the hotel.
In 1981 Liza Merrill (Catriona MacColl) inherits the hotel from her long-lost uncle. She decides to refurbish it a bit to see if she can run it and make some money. Larry (Larry Ray), one of the workers, is startled, after seeing a blind woman starring at him from one of the windows, and falls from a scaffolding, hitting his head. Dr. John McCabe (David Warbeck) is called in to treat the injured man. John has Larry taken to the hospital for treatment.
Joe the Plumber (Tonino Pulci) is called to deal with some flooding in the basement. While he is working, he knocks down a bricked-up wall and accidentally opens the gates to one of seven portals to hell, thereby releasing Schweick’s body from the wall. Joe is then killed by Schweick’s rotten corpse.
At the same time, Liza is driving to town and almost runs over a blind woman with a dog. The young woman tells Liza that her name is Emily (Cinzia Monreale). She gives Liza a warning and tells her she should abandon the hotel and return to New York. Liza, of course, ignores the advice and ends up in the middle of a zombie epidemic and worse.
“The Beyond” AKA “E tu vivrai nel terrore! L'aldilà” or “And you will live in terror! The afterlife" was released in 1981 and was directed by Lucio Fulci. It is an Italian horror film and the second film in what is referred to as the Fulci “Gates of Hell” trilogy. The other two films were “City of the Living Dead” 1980, and “The House by the Cemetery” 1981. The film was once also on the video nasty list. In 1983 a pared down version titled “7 Doors of Death” was released in the U.S.
The movie is filled with anything slimy and gross, including body horror, zombies, gouged eyeballs, killer spiders and a chain whipping. As with many of Fulci’s films there is so much violence that the plot gets a little confusing. That’s not surprising since Fulci has a tendency to incorporate more than one random gore sequence in his films, some of them without any real plot connection. This is Fulci’s style. The actual ending to the film itself is actually kind of cool, and although a little ambiguous, is still satisfying.
Director Fulci has a bit part as the librarian that leaves for lunch just before Martin Avery (Michele Mirabella), the architect gets eaten by spiders.
The reference to the book titled Eibon that is featured in the movie comes from Lovecraft lore. It is a fictional grimoire supposedly created by Lovecraft’s friend, Clark Ashton Smith.
It may be necessary to watch the movie more than once to really understand it.