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i admit, had i first seen it 20 years ago i probably would also be a champion of this film today
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It's funny, as a teenager I wouldn't entertain what I saw as cheap, unsatisfying (even offensive) eurotrash when it came to Italian exploitation. I needed the reassurance of Hollywood's values, the certainty of where the stories were heading, the rush of excitement from hip and expensive American productions making us feel good about ourselves as the end credits roll.
Discovering the forbidden (in the UK at least) underground - and films like
The Beyond - helped put Hollywood horror in perspective, and displayed how sterile and restrictive the genre had become in the 90s. That is not to say
The Beyond and
City of the Living Dead are championed solely for their low production values and anti-Hollywood elements, but Fulci's films do offer an alternative to the predictable tidyness of bigger budget cinema and - to their fans at least - their wild scripts are not unfathomable but rather braver representations of how aggressive and off the rails the horror film can get.