Beyond and Back

I've been on a tear of these pseudoscience "documentaries" as of late, and while some of them are outrageous but still entertaining, most are downright dumb.

And I believe all right. I believe this is a massive load. While not as painfully Christian as, say, anything by the likes of Pure Flix/Pinnacle Peak, Beyond and Back is really quite entertaining in its overacted, extremely riffable VHS quality that I'm watching on YouTube.

Beyond and Back is one of the few movies that impacted me for years to come. I saw it with my mother back in 1978 or 1979 at a local theater. Since that time I have had an enormous desire to see it again. Unfortunately the producer of the film, Sunn Classic Pictures Inc. became defunct shortly after several of its top managers left to the expanding Tri-Star Pictures. Recently however, several of the original management members reacquired Sunn Classic Pictures Inc. and are in the process of redeveloping the company so there is a possibility that this movie will return on VHS or DVD. I recently contacted Sunn Classic Pictures Inc. to try and find out if the possibility is a real one.

It was only 14 years old the last time I saw this movie almost 25 years ago, but as I mentioned it made a bigger impact on my than any other movie I have ever seen, even to the point of encouraging me to try and obtain a copy now as an adult.

The movie as others have mentioned in their reviews was somewhat of a documentary with interviews of people who claimed to have died and then come back from the dead. The movie took the stories and then reproduced them into visual representations of what occurred and how the experience would have been observed from a first hand perspective.

One scene I can still recall is of a younger man who had died in the hospital and then while dead left his body thinking he was alive and o.k. only to look back and see his body dead on his hospital bed. After walking around the hospital out of his body he eventually ends up returning to his body at which point life returns to his body.

Some reviewers have said the movie is to long. Personally I don't recall the overall length of the film, I only that in many ways this movie helped reaffirm my beliefs in life after death regardless of whether one ultimately ends up in heaven or hell.

This movie primarily tries to take you on a journey with the question of whether life ultimately ends when the physical body dies. Those who have seen this movie or may see this movie in the future and who enjoy it may also be interested in the books by Mary K. Baxter called an "A Divine Revelation of Hell", "A Divine Revelation of Heaven", or "A Divine Revelation of the Spirit Realm".

My parents allowed me to see this crappy documentary for some reason when I was a small child. I was traumatized by it and never again got out of bed without looking back to see if my body was still lying there! Still, every time I get out of bed, the thought occurs to me. So don't let your kids watch it! That is, if you can even get your hands on it, which I strongly doubt!

By the way, the storyline that affected me most was about a guy who entered the hospital with a chest cold, then left his body and encountered evil satanic nurses. Nice. I can't believe I can remember some crappy documentary from 1978 and that it affected me so much.

I think this movie contributed to an extreme fear of death in me from a young age, and I'd have been vastly better off never having seen it. I am no longer as impressionable of course, in fact I'm a callous skeptic, but I cannot erase the emotional damage caused by this stupid 70's documentary. Lame, I know.

Brad Crandall returns as presenter/host once again, (most suitable he is too, great booming voice!) this time making his entrance in an eerie cemetery, before telling us about the near-death experiences of several people, shown here in re-enactments.

A Schick Sunn Films docudrama, one of many made in the 1970's, is surprisingly eerie and even moving in places, though exactly how much research was done to verify these people's claims is debatable. Some of this is undeniably hokey, even amateurish, but it has a sincerity about it that won me over, not to mention it creates a nice eerie mood.

Some reviewers even claim it prevented them from killing themselves, thus inspiring them to not give up on life, which is wonderful.

Only available on a rare VHS, and based on a book by Ralph Wilkerson, it deserves an HD release, but for now can be found on YouTube.

I remember Sunn Classic Films quite well. Actually I was in Beyond and Back, and would like to know if there is any way to get a copy of it. Sunn Classic Films' documentaries were quite good for their time (the 70s). The Lincoln Conspiracy was my favorite.