Vozes das Profundezas

The spirit of a dead businessman enlists the help of his daughter to help find out who murdered him. Made for TV this is one of notorious Italian film director Lucio Fulci's last movies, a far cry from his classics such as The Beyond and Zombie Flesh Eaters, but at least slightly better than the awful The Sweet House of Horrors. Despite having an obvious TV movie look we do thankfully get some Fulci trademarks such as a maggot infested corpse, gore, female nudity (topless) and even a short zombie sequence. But really this movie is recommendable to Fulci fans only, the story is silly, the English language dubbing is appalling, a mother and daughter are played by actresses who were only a couple of years apart in age, some slow motion flashbacks look crap and I was getting a bit bored towards the end. Highlight is Fulci's cameo carrying out a gory autopsy. I love many of Lucio's movies but I won't be watching this one again.

Rest in peace, oh no, not this sorely departed soul. He wants his conniving killer revealed with the help of his innocent daughter. One of his last directorial efforts, Lucio Fulci presents something peculiar, and very patchy. You wouldn't think you're watching a made-for-TV presentation though. While not packed with violence, there's still a persistent mean-streak with Fulci's signature style. Explicit brutality towards a child, squashed eyeballs in a soup, mausoleum zombies (in a dream), topless nudity and flashes of a rotting, oozing corpse covered in flies and maggots. A TV-movie you say? Even with those nightmarish details, Fulci's vision is restrained, but there's something rather expressive and personal in his canvas of work.

The histrionic story is a hazy murder mystery without the mystery build-up, filled with lingering suspicions, sordid family secrets and the afterlife (presented by an echoing voice-over) getting involved through the use of allusive slow-mo dream sequences caused by either guilt or grief, depending on the character, to communicate or torment. Those prolonged dreams, and sometimes nightmares were striking and strange, along with the flashbacks, but without them there wouldn't be any thrills/intrigue/exposition/shocks - just melodramatic tropes and cold stares. While the narrative hardly comes out of first gear, its slow nature gives off a hallucinogenic vibe with the screen being soaked in moody imagery, foreboding aesthetics, swirling camerawork and a distinctive score.

This supernatural mystery doesn't entirely come together, yet remains hypnotic in its ideas and atmosphere.

Voices from Beyond (1991)

** (out of 4)

Made-for-TV flick ended up being the next to last film for the Italian goremaster. In the film a father suddenly dies and his young daughter arrives and starts hearing his voice. The father wants his daughter to discover the truth behind his death but it won't be easy as he made quite a few enemies in his life. One could debate the merit of Fulci's later day works but then again we could debate much of his gore period as well. If you don't mind the cheapness of his later films then you might want to check this one out as it somewhat comes off as a greatest hits from the director. The story itself is pretty stupid and it's doubtful anyone watching is really going to care who the killer actually is. I can't sit here and say that I figured out who did it but then again I really wasn't trying to figure it out. Also, as expected, the performances aren't the strongest and none of them are helped but the cheap dubbing that sounds rather silly. With that said, how many people actually come to Fulci for a story and good acting? What we come to a Fulci film for is gore and this one here offers quite a bit of it so don't let the fact that this was made-for-TV stand in your way. The gore levels are pretty high from start to finish as we get a fake looking stabbing, an autopsy scene with guts being pulled out and several other gory deaths. We also get another nice touch of visiting inside the father's grave every few days just to see what shape his body is in. It's also worth noting that there's a sequence where zombies attack one of the possible suspects so it was somewhat nice seeing the director doing one more scene inside that famous genre that he helped shape. The film also throws in a fair amount of sex and nudity so the sleaze factor is pretty high on all levels. Again, this isn't a masterpiece or one of Fulci's strongest works but it does contain enough of what we've come to expect from him.

More of a mystery movie with some gratuitous horror elements thrown in; mediocre overall.

It starts with a woman having a nightmare in which her sex partner gets out of bed, goes into the room of her crying child, and kills it. She wakes up. Then, that man is dying in a hospital, spitting up blood. His estranged daughter arrives, and he manages to contact her through her dreams (I think), and he wants her to find out who killed him before his body entirely decomposes in its grave.

There's not too much mystery about who did it, or even how; most viewers will have figured that out long before it is revealed. I'm not sure the way he was killed would really have worked.

Anyway, the horror elements get in through: a gory autopsy, the recurring dream of the man killing the boy, a nightmare in which a plate of eggs turn into eyes which are then cut, and several shots of the decomposing man both in nightmares and actually in his grave.

I was a little surprised to see a dedication in the end by Fulci to Clive Barker! Interesting.

Caution: Some plot and scenes revealed

"Voices from beyond" is one of Fulci's most coherent and successful productions, especially among his last films. As usual, the subject are the horrors of death and what comes after it.

The story deals with the death of Giorgi Mainardi, a man with a lot of money and enemies. After the prologue and the opening credits we witness the violent death of Mainardi, vomitting loads of blood. During his burial ceremony we are introduced to the main characters and in flash back sequences to why they had good reason to hate him. After his death, Mainardi manages to keep contact to the living: To his only trustee, his daughter Rosy, he talks in dreams, and his enemies he haunts with terrible nightmares. This concept gives Fulci the opportunity to insert many wildly surreal dream sequences (including, believe it or not, a zombie attack), and he makes good use of it. This dreamlike aspect of the movie is contrasted to the clinical analysis of Mainardi's death and decay, starting from his unpleasant demise on the death bed, ranging over the autopsy carried out by the Maestro (i.e., Fulci) himself, and ending in repeated shots of his decaying corpse.

Other fine images include a still life with broken light bulbs (the device used to kill Mainardi) which summarizes the evil plot against him.

We also watch the claustrophobia of Mainardi's father whose spirit is still alive but who has no means to communicate with the outside world, except his tears. He has to suffer interminable mockings through Mainardi's enemies.

Maybe this character expresses Fulci's own incapacity to express himself properly in his latest movies due to extremely limited budgets and equipment. In fact, in an interview Fulci declared that he wanted to make one more movie with sufficient production values (i.e., "The Wax mask"), so that he can die in peace. As everybody knows, fate has declined this favour to him.

Nevertheless, with "Voices from beyond", Fulci has demonstrated that he could create something of value even with restricted resources.