Journey Into the Beyond

A minor bad taste classic Journey into the Beyond was one of the first shock documentaries directed by Rolf Olsen, a journeyman director whose work includes everything from violent action movies, sexploitation epics and even children's films. An apparent investigation into the fringes of psychic spirituality with so-called real experts, exorcisms and seances, be warned Journey also manages to be a very sleazy cocktail indeed. There's many a grotty scene of real brain tumor removal and animal cruelty. An unforgettable scene offers a Third-World doctor yanking out cancers from his patients using his bare hands and no anaesthetic. Although it seems less outrageous compared to later films of its ilk i.e. the Faces of Death series, Journey turned many people pale in the Seventies. Some prints came with a warning bell to alert viewers of the more vomitous scenes and when it was shown at a Spanish horror film festival in 1978 it had mass walkouts and numerous retchings. Olsen also directed Shocking Asia and its sequel under pseudonyms. The lesser Shocking Asia 2 shares some footage with this movie.

Hi, I'm from Mexico. I wish to know where I can buy this movie or if a member of the forum would sell it to me. I like these kind of movies because this is an age "no caffeine" and seems like the blood, sex, violence... in a word, the real world are banned on the screens. But of course, war in Iraq is cool and no bloody, poor people on the streets are invisible and power abuse is just "fiction themes". Directors like Rolf Olsen bring us the real world, raw, crude, naked, but the true world on we live. Why? Because we can change it, but first we must know it...

Thanks, and sorry my bad English

1975's "Journey Into the Beyond" was a more graphic kind of shockumentary, defined in the early 60s by "Mondo Cane" and its brethren. Initially a 113 minute German feature titled "Reinse ins Jenseits - Die Welt des Ubernaturalichen" from veteran director Rolf Olsen, it received stateside release in 1977 at 95 minutes with the narration of the venerable John Carradine, apparently following in the footsteps of fellow fearmongers Vincent Price ("Taboos of the World") and Boris Karloff ("Mondo Balordo"). Its 'R' rating is justly deserved, a large number of gruesome scenes earning a warning bell to hide your eyes, including a bloody bit of dental surgery, as well as removal of cataracts and cysts full of disgusting pus. On the lighter side are sequences depicting psychic phenomena, hypnosis, spiritualism, telekinesis, seances, exorcism, levitation, voodoo, and lastly life after death. We find a rainmaker in Ghana, a childless woman engaged in a fertility rite of spiritual sex, a firewalk in Marina Del Rey conducted by a mystic of Tibetan practices, who then proves himself by inserting knitting needles through his neck and cheeks. It may have lost some of its shock value and may not prove very convincing, but Carradine is fully engaged in transcribing the Paul Ross script, and does lend genuine gravitas to the incredible proceedings. It does tend to drag endlessly over an hour and 45 minutes, and by the 80s more horrid concoctions would be found on your local video shelves.