Attack of the Final Girls is a podcast about the horror genre, so listener discretion is advised. Please check the show notes for specific content warnings for this episode. And of course, beware of spoilers. Welcome to Attack of the Final Girls. and i'm theresa and here we are ready to dive into the world of lucio fulci once again love a fulci film yeah
I was actually prepared for this Italian horror movie today. It wasn't just something simply happening to me. I was ready to receive. I was ready to receive the message. I love it. I was ready for some Fulci church. that's right so today we are talking about the beyond which came out in italy in 1981 in the states in 1983 it is the second in the gates of hell trilogy
along with City of the Living Dead and House by the Cemetery. And it was originally released in the U.S. under the name Seven Doors of Death. It did not really become the beyond in the U.S. until 1998 when it was reissued and restored to its full violent gory glory. Yeah, it was interesting that I read that when this was originally released in the United States, it had a totally different score. Yes. It didn't have the Fritzi score with it.
And I would be interested to rewatch this movie with a different score. I think it would probably change the tone quite a bit. I believe... it's still possible to do that. In fact, I want to say, I'm not going to say this for sure, but I bet that if I went into the room in my house we have both versions probably for today's academic exercise we went with the og version uh which grindhouse releasing helped restore in uh 98 nice yeah i read uh
In the little blurb, because we watched this on Shudder because it's streaming on Shudder right now. All three of the Gates of Hell are streaming on Shudder right now.
and i read on the little blurb that tarantino says that this was one of his favorite films and so he was like yes pretty crucial in in getting this movie re-released and restored yes absolutely his uh dvd distribution company film distribution company partnered with grindhouse releasing to get this restored to its original form he had only I believe, seen The Seven Doors of Death as a kid and then got to eventually see the Italian cut and then wanted to bring that over to the U.S.
say what you will about him overall but as as i said when we were talking about this while we were watching the movie he has done a lot in terms of like restoration and preservation that is you know
I'm grateful for that. Yeah. If you can say one good thing. That's right. That's right. That's the good thing I'll say. All right. Yeah, this is... just like many of uh fulci's other films it's sort of like nightmares and dreamscapes yeah you know what's real what's not real should we pay close attention to everything
shrug you know if you're looking for a movie that's straightforward and will show you exactly where you need to go in order to get to the end of the film this is not the film for you no definitely not according to imdb A young woman inherits an old house in Louisiana where, following a series of supernatural accidents, she learns that the building was built over one of the entrances to hell. Alright, as IMDB descriptions go, that's not inaccurate.
But it only scratches the surface. Yeah, for sure. This also had Catra McCall in it, who is in all three of the Gates of Hell movies. In different characters, though. She's not the same character each time. I would say she's like a muse for Fulci. He featured her a lot, and she was always a main character in the three movies. And then David Warbeck plays Dr. McCabe, the sensible, reasonable man of the year. Damn it, I'm a doctor! I'm a doctor. I won't go for these nonsense explanations.
Emily is played by Cinzia Monreal. I'm gonna say Monreal because that's what I'm assuming her name is. I think she's Italian. That's basically it. Antoine St. John played Schweik. He's like the inciting character, I guess you could say.
slash zombie so that's kind of the main cast of characters they kept it small for this one sometimes in fulci movies you have the problem of too many characters that you're supposed to give a shit about And it gets very... big and bogged down by those stories and in this case we didn't have that we just had like four main characters go with that Yeah, I think where this one gets a little unwieldy and it's not necessarily a bad thing is
people will often say with this movie that the plot is merely connective tissue between these like wild gory dream sequences which like fine i'm not complaining about that and it's kind of true but i do think the plot is present I think this movie works kind of backward in that you don't know how it all ties together or what story we're leading to until we get there. Yeah. And for some people that can be... little confusing and I think for this time too you know having that kind of like
I don't want to say backwards narrative because it's not like we're going in reverse. We're not pulling a Christopher Nolan here, but you know, the kind of like, how are all these things connected?
oh we finally figure it out toward the very very end when all of the shit is going down that's a little more common now it still gets mixed reception now yeah this is certainly a movie that sort of works forward in terms of chronology and i will say it's less hypothetical i guess you could say than i think demons is i think demons is there's a lot more sort of supernatural suggestion happening and this one is very firmly supernatural but it's much more like
let me tell you and show you that this isn't real. And then as we move forward in the movie, it's less suggestion and less like strange dream sequences and more.
firm plot points that lead us from point a to point b yeah and yet it's not as firmly rooted as zombie is no you know where zombie it's like we know from the very beginning like okay like there are zombies on this island shit is going down it's more complicated than that as we get into the story but zombie i would say is one of fulci's most straightforward horror films like we never sort of question what
happening there you know we are in the ocean there is a zombie fighting a shark we are you know we are on an island there are zombies etc
I misspoke. I said demons. That's a Bava movie. There is a connective tissue there, though, because Dardano Sarchetti, who was one of the... numerous collaborators on the rewrites of the demon script actually wrote the story that this movie was based on and then co-wrote the original screenplay with full There's a lot of co-collaboration that happened between them, so I end up getting confused.
Yeah. And although they're not the same, a lot of those movies that were coming out around the same time have the same sort of like disconnection.
that you don't see in american cinema at least not at that time not happening during that time american cinema was very much more linear and less like dreamlike at least the stuff that's coming out that's very popular especially horror i think italian filmmakers have a tendency to share that sort of like how are we going to tie this all together type thing and lots of people say that that's because they didn't give a shit about the script
I don't think that's necessarily true. Yeah, I would disagree with that, yeah. I don't think it's that they didn't give a shit. And sure, there is merit to movies that are just you know i'm gonna say terrifier merit to movies that are just gory sequences tied together with a very thin thread of plot yeah there's merit to that but i don't think that it's fair for us as american
movie watchers and folks who are creative and have created things in the past. I don't think it's fair for us to kind of cast our American aspersions onto At this point, these men were older already, you know, older Italian filmmakers.
And be like, well, your stuff doesn't make sense. Because we don't have the lens of understanding, you know, to be able to say that, I would say. Yeah, I think there was also definitely more of a... in general at that time still vestiges of that sort of european surrealism you know um in art and music and film and all you know all forms of media you know we could take it all the way back to the german expressionist
And really thinking about, these are creators, artists, who lived through the arc of two world wars and the aftermath and fascism. And so they are... expressing themselves in ways that are less than literal for reasons that I think are deeply cultural that American audiences now I think can understand it a little more with a cultural context, but I don't think maybe...
most american the average american movie viewer was sort of like ready for that level of interpretation at the time that this movie was coming out i'm so glad that you brought up living through two world wars because i was just thinking too like these italian filmmakers I mean, I can't say across the board that they all existed during that time, but they lived during Mussolini. They lived through an actual fascist dictatorship.
Similar to a lot of filmmakers in Germany. Now I'm just thinking of war movies, but I'm thinking of like Eastern European and German and Italian and French filmmakers and how they're... interpretations of world war ii and their movies that they have made around the subject are always so much more like crushing than anything that an american director could do not to say that american directors you know are failures but they simply do not have that lived experience so as a man
you know, adult men that are already older at the point when these movies are coming out, they're going to be imparting this sort of like tangential thematic. stuff and also it might be a little bit of a fuck you like to censorship of course at a certain point in time movies like this were not allowed to be made they were legally and you know at some point threatening your life and livelihood if you were to make movies like this.
So perhaps it's a little bit of a, well, now I get to make this movie. It doesn't have to mean anything. It can mean only what I want it to mean. And I'm going to do exactly and only what I want to do. yeah fulci was born after world war one he was born in 1927 but you're looking at the immediate aftermath of one giant conflict in europe heading right into the next one and you know italy was deeply affected he was born in rome so you know i think you're absolutely right i also think
in terms of the censorship by the time fulci was making movies the censorship you know censorship was less of an issue but I think certainly if he... was aware of or or looking at cinema across Europe I think being very cognizant of the fact that
you know many many german filmmakers fled the country and then went into the u.s hollywood system and then we're making things there and how that all works together it's an interesting thing to look at It's sort of unfair to be like, these movies don't make sense because They're not like experimental short films where we literally have no idea what's going on. There's certainly a thread that ties the movies together.
If there are points when maybe we're not fully on board with or fully like certain how something connects to the larger picture it's okay because it doesn't have to and maybe we'll find out later but if we don't we had a good time like we want it fun you know
Totally, yeah. I also think that this one in particular... like it actually does for the most part make sense if you pay attention like if you're clocking the characters and their connections to each other and like really focusing on place you know because like again like if you're unaware that this is part of a trilogy about the gates of hell like maybe if you're going in cold maybe you're not focusing on that but when i watch this movie i think so much about place and space and like okay
We're approaching this from the lens that we're in a space that is adjacent to the gates of hell. And so all of these people are revolving around that. so that alone connects them you know and then we start to see the threads like oh okay the little girl is the daughter of the person working on the house you know and it all ties back to the house slash hotel
I think it's pretty easy when you look at it through the lens of place. But if you don't know to do that, maybe it would feel a little more disjointed. Yeah, I do think it was interesting in terms of place that they selected New Orleans to be the location. Because typically, the location for Fulci movies tends to be either a big city in Europe or a big city in the United States, such as the New York Ripper. Not to say that New Orleans is not a big city. I know it's huge, but...
But it just was an interesting selection for him. The other thing I would say is just that New Orleans has always been known to be a very supernatural city. So I think certainly if you were thinking about... where are the gates of hell you know and you're starting to conceive of this concept okay i'm going to make movies that are centered around different places in the world that are gates of hell new orleans is one of those places that is considered like a
spiritual or supernatural nexus so that could be a very deliberate choice on that part and it's funny because new orleans is not integral to the plot you know it's not like it's tethered there there's nothing really that says that the hotel has to be there But it is, and that's kind of an interesting thing, especially because Fulci being Italian, it's like, okay, New Orleans is definitely on the short list of popular American cities.
so perhaps that's why he selected it but yeah it also in terms of geography maybe just because it's spread first of the trilogy i think is in europe somewhere and i think the second one is in new york but i could be wrong the third one the third one i mean it was in new york I could be wrong, but they're definitely not all three in New Orleans. No, no, this is the only one. I actually really like that New Orleans as a place is just a setting and it's not steeped in the culture because it avoids
that thing especially with any movie but especially earlier films where you get into very what i feel like now would be kind of cringy portrayals of black and african diasporic spiritual traditions like voodoo and hoodoo and things like that And I know, obviously, I'm not going to sit here and play
2025 sensibilities on filmmakers in the 70s but i'm just actually really grateful that this movie doesn't even try to go there right so i don't have to sit here as a viewer and be like oh god like well we gotta
we gotta reckon with this you know because so many movies so many horror films have gone that route whether you're talking about indigenous peoples or you know indigenous uh spiritualities in island countries or you know places like new orleans i've seen so many like cringy like i mean and I will say, like, there's a lot of, like, cringey, fake, like... tourist-centric voodoo stuff happening in new orleans even today so that is like a part of the whole mix of things but i just i love that that
didn't even have to be a concern or a conversation in this movie like if you know enough about that place you can kind of imply like ah yes like again once again it makes sense why a gate of hell would be here because you have this
kind of melting pot of different spiritualities and beliefs and and ritual and things like that from different peoples from around the world sort of coming to this port city but we don't have to like sit here and see really crappy portrayals of you know you know kind of characters of African-rooted spirituality.
Yeah, they really don't deal with that at all. No. It's just a place. It's like, oh, we're in New Orleans. Yeah. The one thing that is really cool that is specific to New Orleans and could not be exactly replicated anywhere else is the causeway scene where yes where liza is driving over the causeway and almost hits emily with her car
for no reason she could have stopped way before but she was just like person with car and then she starts getting scared and it's like stop stop what are you doing yeah yeah i'm gonna hit this girl But you couldn't have replicated that almost anywhere else. The Causeway is very specific. Sort of a bridge. It's like a road. It's a very specific driving experience. I've never driven on it. I've been on it in a car many times in my life. Yeah, it is.
There are some very specific bridge situations in New Orleans. The Huey P. Long Bridge is another one. It's a very narrow bridge, so it's kind of scary and claustrophobic to drive on. Yeah, the causeway is a very kind of, like, singular, like, vehicle bridge road experience.
and it looks really cool too it does it's a very neat visual emily is like standing in the middle of this bridge liza's driving towards her and there's almost nothing on either side like it looks very bleak that drive-in so i i did like that quite a bit in terms of setting but this movie is definitely a fulci violence showcase oh my gosh yes like if you were to have a clip reel of fulci's best gory sequences and kills
I would say that probably 60 to 70% of it would be kills from this movie specifically. Absolutely, yeah. You also see sort of advanced versions of some Fulci hallmarks, like lots of eyeball stuff.
lots of like you know sharp objects being impaled through heads you know really well done effective like flesh tearing scenes yeah this is really one of those films where you get to see sort of his gore and effect kind of sensibilities on display and kind of more realized than in other films where like oh you know he kind of did that in zombie and he kind of did that in this movie and uh We're just really seeing it all in its full, full glory. Yeah, like...
If you've seen this movie, I could probably mention a couple of different ones and you'd be like, oh yeah, I remember that. The torture scene at the beginning of the movie where Schweik's being... Because Schweick is sort of the inciting figure, he is the person who reads the Ebon book. Or the book of Ebon, it depends on what you're looking at. The book just says Ebon on it.
so he read it and then he painted this you know bleak and terrifying painting and these guys come and find him at this hotel and burn him and beat him with chains and then crucify him to a wall, and then they do the burning thing, which I'm assuming is supposed to be like lime. because they're sort of like barring him into this room but i think they're like burning him with acid or lime and
That is iconic. All of the eyeball stuff, Joe the plumber getting his eyeball scooped out by a random hand through the wall. I think her name is Martha, the housewoman.
that cleans she gets her eyeball popped out by being impaled on a nail the spider scene i'm sure that that's so great i'm sure that that is like top because if you're afraid of spiders that's going to be a scene that sticks in your head because it's a mix of real spiders crawling on somebody and then puppet spiders biting and like stinging and tearing flesh.
ETSA it's pretty wild yeah if you're not afraid of spiders you will find the real spiders are the chillest spiders ever which kind of cracks me up they're just they're just like gently doing their thing and sometimes you'll you'll uh Catch, like, a real one walking in a scene with like the puppet spiders that are being like very violent and forceful and they're kind of like
I don't know. Like, let me just set a leg here. Nope, nope. Back up, back up, back up. But if you are scared of spiders, be warned, it's a pretty intense... scene yeah like even the like the fake spiders are the ones doing all the attacking they don't have any real spiders do any attacks but
it's uh the real spiders are some some big boys though they are big they're hairy yeah they got all of their legs it's a lot of fun though this is although you know lots of people are like oh this doesn't have a plot it does kind of loosely is Lovecraftian, I would say, only in that it's
the book of ebon and then yeah sort of the beyond as a topic that lovecraft deals with quite a bit but the book of ebon when it was first suggested was actually not lovecraft it was like a lovecraft adjacent creative work they consider it to be part of like the lovecraftian you know cthulhu mythos stuff but not actually written by him and
That's about as close as you get to it being Lovecraft. I would agree. There's tons of stuff that you could say, well, that's Lovecraftian, but it's like, okay, but you can't just say like, Evil fishermen are only Lovecraftian. Not that there are evil fishermen. But you know what I'm talking about. No, I do. I do. Yeah, we have this tendency with this sort of rise in popularity in the past. like 20 years, I would say.
the sort of re-popularity of Lovecraft. I thought you were going to say the reanimation of Lovecraft. Oh, man. That was such a missed opportunity. That's okay. It's all right. I've failed. I've failed, everyone. Damn it.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, keep going But yeah, what I was saying is with the sort of renewed interest in Lovecraft that's happened, I would say over the past 20 years, I do think we have this dangerous tendency to sometimes, as like fans, say that like everything is Lovecraftian and you know you got to be a little careful with that because there are things like parallel development you know not everything is reception or intentional reception and especially when we're looking at
you know film traditions and traditions of expression like outside of what we're typically exposed to, I think we have to be really careful to not say everything is Lovecraft. I was just listening to a podcast episode about the classical world. And it was basically talking about at different points in American history.
our instinct to say everything is like the roman empire like not the my roman empire is thing but like literally comparing everything to the roman empire and like that is a dangerous precedent and yeah lovecraft is problematic like let me be clear but you know not to say that as dangerous in terms of imperialism to you know say that everything is Lovecraftian but I do think we do need to be careful about like just
slapping that just because we like lovecraft or like cthulhu is a cool squid boy like you know not everything is that that's true that's true and that was something i think maybe hurt this movie a little bit in terms of reception here is like thinking that this was going to be a lovecraft movie and it's not yeah it's not like the reanimator or like you know right although reanimator is just a sort of a
iteration of that story but yeah we just have to be careful with that because just simply using an element of that does not make that thing yeah wholesale you know yeah so yes the book of ebon is in here but it is merely a foil yeah merely a foil of getting further into it and and the quotes and things that are like that one of my favorite thing lines is a very last line in the movie which we'll talk about later this is a story of a woman who inherits a hotel and then
all of Fulci's best, you know, um, gore scenes happen. But there is actually a really good twist to this one. Yeah. It's a twist that makes sense. It's not one where you're like, oh, that's kind of corny. You know, it's a twist that makes sense. And I actually was reading in a long form review. I think it was on Reddit. about this movie that they thought that Hellraiser would not exist.
had the ending of this movie not happened. Like, Clive Barker would... I can totally see that. Yeah. Sorry, Hellraiser and Hellraiser 2, since they kind of... Well, yeah, they're kind of... one movie yeah you want to get really technical about it yeah i could i could totally see that yeah how this would pave the way for that yeah having that same sort of like last minute twist and yeah especially the idea of what is real and what is imagined.
and what is happening in the beyond versus what is happening in the real world. So that's something that's kind of an interesting sort of thought experiment. Because. I think a lot of people just throw out the idea that you can analyze a Fulci film. They're just like, it's not worth it. It's supposed to be a dream. It's supposed to be a nightmare. Don't cast any more energy into it. I think that's lazy. Sorry, it is. There are movies, I think, that...
Do not gain you any additional value for analysis. And like stupid movies too. Like Failure to Launch. Why would you analyze Failure to Launch?
you don't need to do that you know what I mean like it's there wedding crashers probably don't analyze that yeah 50 first date it's fine i forgot that movie existed until you just said it 50 first dates yeah okay that's fine yeah you know there are movies that don't benefit you from having analyzed it any deeper in this case though i think you're right i think that it's sort of a missed opportunity
Because this is one of the few Fulci films, I feel like the first time I watched it, I really connected with it. And I was able to say, okay, I get it. I understand what's happening. I'm not like... why did that happen that's weird but we just keep going on with it so i think this one is it is a movie that is worth exploring what is happening to Liza who's our main character in real life does Ellen really exist
Is she somebody that has Liza's best interests at heart, or is she somebody who's trying to draw more people to the beyond? Especially as the movie progresses, we see that Liza meets Emily on the causeway, and then they go to Emily's house. And, you know, the doctor's like, nobody lives there. And you're like, okay, doctor, you don't know everybody who lives in New Orleans. Shut up.
And then you find out, you know, he goes to visit this house at the crossroads. They keep calling it the crossroads, which is, you know, that's like a devil thing. And the house is boarded up and it looks as though it's been destroyed.
But even after that, we see scenes of Emily at her home by herself. Yeah. Which, if it was just a thing where Liza's imagining it, generally we wouldn't have emily be in her home alone after that we would just see her only as a you know a way to connect liza to the beyond but in this case we see her home alone and we see her die
We see her get attacked by zombies and then die. So it's kind of an interesting thought experiment when you say what's real and what's not. When you go as far as to say it's not just Liza imagining things. Because otherwise, Emily would not exist on her own. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, we kind of talked about this. We've talked about this with many movies, but fairly recently with the St. Maude episode.
I love that challenge of really having to think hard while the scene is happening and then immediately after like, is this real? Is this in someone's head? Has someone stepped into another plane of existence? Or has, you know, the veil become thin? Whatever it might be in a particular movie. And I love the challenge of that as a viewer i feel like every time i watch this movie i think of it a little differently especially in regards to the emily scenes i'm like is liza stepping into
the beyond when she's interacting with Emily or is Emily stepping back into the real world from the beyond or maybe a little of both I love the challenge of that. Because there are points when Emily says, I don't want to go back. And we're also sort of led to understand that Emily reads the book at the beginning of the movie and then bursts into flames.
And then she returns when, you know, when we actually kick into gear, the main story through line, she comes back and she's blind and she has a seeing eye dog. And then over the course of the movie, other people become blind. Yes. Joe's daughter. Yeah. After, you know, her dad is killed, but he's the one who gets his eyeball poked out first. And then her mom is killed by irresponsibly contained acid in a lab that just falls onto her head for a while. Yeah. And her face melts.
Well, her daughter sees that and then she becomes blind. Yeah. At the funeral for them, you know, we see that she's blind. But she turns evil. eventually you know she like later on in the movie Liza finds her in the morgue and she tries to kill Liza and the doctor has to shoot her in the head and her head explodes very good
Also a very good effect. Yeah. So that's also an interesting thing. Like how does the beyond affect people when you come into contact with somebody who has been to the beyond? Does that mean that you are no longer a part of your own timeline? yeah like it is it's also an interesting thing to think when do the doctor and liza leave the real world and enter the beyond. That is... the really fun part of it. I go back and forth about when that happened.
and I think it's plausible to say there are several different points throughout the movie where they could have left the real world and I don't know for sure I mean the most logical point would be At the very, very end when they go through the door and then they're in the stairway in the hotel again, you know, that's the obvious answer. But I bet it was earlier than that.
i thought that the easy answer would be to say when they're driving and liza says there's not a soul around you know and it's all foggy and stuff because i get to the hospital and there's nobody there yeah but there are still other like can't think of another term to call him but npcs in the hospital like the lab guy is in there and he like tries to cut the doctor with the knife That's a dude who, you know, is not a part of their shared delusion, if that's what Liza and the doctor are having.
So it's kind of interesting. I also saw posited in another review that the doctor and Liza leave the real world when the painter falls off of the scaffold. At the very beginning, yeah. that he is the inciting incident for them because remember he goes there are her eyes like he he like yeah wakes up and yells her eyes And that is the moment when the two of them start along this path of not being in the real world. And that's why Liza starts, you know.
I mean, who knows? Like, we could sit here and talk about it all day long, and the only person to tell us would be Fulci, and he probably would not even give us an answer anyways. Probably not, yeah. Because he'd be like, uh, you decide. Yeah. You know, you're the movie watcher, so you decide. But it is an interesting idea. Like, at what point do we leave the real world and go into... Because...
The thing I find so fascinating about that thought experiment is that there are other people who are not the main characters who are having things happen to them in absence of the doctor or Eliza. Yes. So that makes you think, okay, well, we're still in the real world because these people are having things happen to them outside of that.
do we know yeah maybe we're just like in this strange little dollhouse that exists between the beyond and the real world well yeah and if you want to get into like You know this is a more... this is less Lovecraftian, but if you want to get into, like,
you know dante's inferno and other portrayals of hell you know it is kind of everyone having their own like parallel and related experience of hell you know where there can be kind of these parallel things happening all at once you know and it's each sort of person's version of their own personal hell yeah which is you know could kind of support that like they're on the road and then what we're seeing is other people you know interacting with the beyond sort of adjacent to them and they're
Sometimes, you know, their streams are crossing and sometimes they're not. Don't cross the streams. Don't cross the... And it's almost always around the hotel that we're having these terrible things happen. The only time we're not is in the hospital.
But we also come to understand at the end of the movie that there's some sort of strange connection between the hospital and the hotel. Well, and remember the... The tunnels. Yeah, the tunnels and remember... spider attack architect uh when he gets the plans out remember that
He discovers that there's the hotel, and then there's sort of a mirror building, and I wonder if that's meant to be the hospital. Oh, that makes sense. Okay, that would make more sense. With the gate kind of in the middle, and then... first after the spiders one half of the building disappears and then we just see the hotel the hotel's plans and then it disappears So I wonder if technically like the gate itself is sort of framed by the hotel, but the gate is larger and then is also framed.
Good point. That's a good point. I forgot about the disappearing plans thing. This is like some Buffy hell mouth. Yeah, that's what I thought too. Like it is, it is really a hell mouth kind of thing because all of these terrible things are happening adjacent to this area. So interesting that you brought up that they could all be having their own terrible experience. Like perhaps it's the act of inheriting or it is the act of that dude being very hurt that opens that home off.
But then everybody having their own experiences in regards to that of like whatever is going to make them get squicked out the most. Joe getting his eyeball popped out while he's trying to fix this water leak. Martha getting her eyeball popped out via a nail. So many eyeballs. She's trying to clear that clog, which is the thing that she does. It's a very thought provoking movie.
Like, it's tons of fun, but it's also thought-provoking to think, like, okay, what's actually going on? Okay, so here's a big question. Okay, there are zombies in this movie. Is this a zombie movie? Mmm, shit. I didn't even think about that. I don't remember what the precedent is I said before because I was so sure before. I don't think so. I am saying that because I didn't see anybody eat flesh. That's my main reasoning for saying that. That's legit, yeah. Like, they are zombie-like.
like shambling corpse dead people that only die if you shoot them in the head but i'm going to say no but i could This is not, like, a closely held conviction for me. I could absolutely be swayed. You could be talked out of it. I could be talked out about it. This is about as thin as toilet paper, so I'm not saying, like, this is my final ruling. I'm just saying...
currently i don't think so yeah what do you think um i also don't think it's a zombie movie i think this sort of falls into the same kind of situation as like we've talked about tombs of the blind dead are they ghouls or are they zombies and i think these
creatures are more ghouls in that they are very similar to zombies in terms of creature profile but in terms of like their function in the movie i feel like When I talk about zombie movies, the zombies serve a particular both storytelling and commentary function. And that's not their role in this movie. So that's why, to me, it's not a capital Z zombie movie. These are, they're ghouls, they're kind of like zombies, but I would not call this a zombie movie.
No, they're mostly just to herd the people into... you know i don't think that they were ever really going to kill liza or the doctor either i think that they're merely a function of moving liza and the doctor to the beyond yeah that's my thought on it yeah i would agree with that So I want to talk about some of this funny junk that I thought was hilarious. Joe the Plumber is there because...
The basement is like filled with water, which seems wild. She's like, oh, until I get a plumber here, there's no water. I'm like, maybe... stuff in New Orleans just floods way more often. Well, it is below sea level. That's true. So maybe it does flood. Maybe they just have the expectation that their basement's going to be flooded. But Joe goes in there and he's like, hmm, there's a leak underneath this pipe. And then he takes a hammer and
smashes the wall. I mean, that does not seem like good plumbing practice. I know, it's like, I'm pretty sure that's not how you fix a leak. No. Pretty sure that's how you make a leak worse. Yeah, yeah. The lab.
when we after joe is killed and we go into this lab i guess like it's a morgue i suppose it doesn't really look like a morgue it kind of looks like a 70s space like they reused a spaceship set exactly it's not safe this lab is not safe no nothing safe about it there i forget what other movie i was watching but i was like oh my god this lab safety is terrible
And we were just like riffing on that the entire time. But this one is also not safe. Open vials of acid that can be knocked over and melt some lady's face. There's a sign that says do not entry. Yes, do not entry. Yikes. allowing people to just walk in and out there i mean there's a sign but there's no security also the morgue freezers have people standing in them.
which let me tell you not safe body handling no because you open that door and it just flies right out exactly that's what happens to the little girl a body falls out of the freezer onto her i mean we're assuming because it kind of like fades out yeah but yeah the lab safety not 10 out of 10 they need to go back to their lab safety class everybody's falling off of ladders in this movie oh everybody's just falling off of everything where is osha right scaffolding guy falls off
Spider attack architect dude falls off a ladder. Everybody be falling off the ladders. Somebody get these men harnesses. Everything in New Orleans is covered in cobwebs. I learned this today. Paintings covered in cobwebs. Houses covered in cobwebs. Outside stuff covered in cobwebs. There's spider cobwebs everywhere. Juliet says that there's more likely to be cockroaches than there are spiders. True.
And cockroaches don't make webs, so... They do not. Maybe it was just like, look, it's spoopy. Nobody's been here in a while. In the lab, before the little girl gets the zombie that falls on her, or corpse or whatever that falls on her, um there's a guy in there that just randomly hooks up this strange brain machine to a corpse and then he leaves it unattended it's supposed to be like brain activity i want to add this is after he has already like
done stuff to the like autopsy stuff to the corpse like i'm gonna do all the autopsy things then i'm gonna hook up the brain monitor yeah wouldn't that be your first step yeah what like what are you hoping happens here and then we find out that there is brain activity don't hook up your brain monitor and leave it unattended
on a dead body that's right just seems like bad magic brain machine practice yeah i also love that the doctor is the straight man through all of this he's like i don't believe in that horseshit what does he say to her he says shut up I'm a doctor. He's like, shut up, Liza. I'm a doctor. I'm going to call the FBI. Yeah. He says, shut up, Liza. I'm a doctor. I will not take these harebrained explanations. I'm calling the FBI. And we're like.
wow you just went so far with this like this declaration but the whole time he's like you know i don't believe i don't believe i don't believe and for good reason like liza tells him emily and he goes there and there's not a real person there and then she's like oh yeah i'm talking about the people who take care of the house and he's like that there's no what are you talking about THEN he reads the book and all of a sudden he's like
You know, the whole thing, the whole time he's like, I don't believe in this. And then he's like, this hotel is one of the seven gates of hell. Like, oh, okay. Like. apparently he read this book and just was like okay i'm down yeah yeah fully understand creepy old book i'm convinced now convinced but then he goes to the hospital and that's when he starts giving her shit again yeah Also, I found out today I learned that there is a text only Commodore 64 video game of this movie that was done.
it's called the beyond i want it i bet that there's some like emulator rom of it i mean i have a commodore 64 at my house so i i have so much dead technology i have so many things it's so true yes um maybe we can like go on dutch ebay and yeah find the beyond commodore 64 on a big big old floppy disk yeah or a cassette it might be a cassette game if it's text only i would bet it
i don't know well ebay searching yeah i'm gonna get on that i'm scared i'm gonna like ask matt about this and he's gonna be like oh we have that no so speaking of horror stuff and horror stuff that's in my house uh kind of related to this um this is a really good opportunity to point out since we've been talking about the book of abon and the beyond
i just want to give a huge shout out to our friends at evon press they are back this year they have done comic books based on a lot of fulci's films including the beyond they had a merger company sales situation but they are moving back towards independence this year and so please subscribe to their mailing list because you if you are a comic book person can check out
cool comics based on fulci films including the beyond they did maniac house by the cemetery zombie all the good stuff so loving um that they're back in the world, that we have more independent companies doing horror things. And, you know, we're saying Avon a thousand times, so figured we got to talk about them as well. Fair enough, fair enough. So next time, it's going to be Pride Month. I'm already wearing my pride shirt. I'm not. I'm wearing a Gundam shirt. I mean...
Giant robots can't be gay. Yeah. Okay? Yeah. I don't know, actually. I'm thinking, like, there's so many Gundam shows. I don't know. I bet you could find a Gundam Pride shirt. Probably. The internet provides. The internet does provide.
but next time we're going to be doing a movie that's actually been on our to watch list since we started this podcast yes the movie came out in 2021 and we started our podcast in 2021 so it's literally been since then yeah and we started our podcast after pride in 2021 so yeah We didn't have the time. Have you seen this one? No, I haven't. Okay. No, I was waiting to watch it for the podcast. So it's called Drop Death Gorgeous. I'm assuming it's probably about drag queens.
Yep, okay. So it's about drag queens, so we're going to watch that for Pride. Yeah, we've got some good stuff lined up. This is going to be kind of a banner year for us. We have so many like big movies coming up. Drop Death Gorgeous is our summer ramp up. So we got some heavy headers for Pride. We got some anniversary watches. We got some first watches for me. Juliet is about to kill me because I haven't seen this movie before.
But yeah, stay tuned because we're going to have some exciting stuff this year. It's going to be good. Our summer and fall. menus are are stacked we got a stacked list more clive barker beloved franchises all the things yes yeah Thanks for listening to Attack of the Final Girls. Find us online at and hear bonus episodes at patreon.com slash attack of the final girl.
We are Attack of the Final Girls on Instagram and TikTok. Our theme music is by House Coast and is available on Rad Girlfriend Radio. Be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcasts. Don't lose an episode. And rate and review on Apple Podcasts so more people I'm Julia and I'm Teresa until next time