This article originally appeared in the November 2014 BOSTON COMPASS, #58.

PSYCHOTRONIC MOVIES IN OUR ZONE

THE BEYOND (1983) dir. LUCIO FULCI
11/21 & 11/22, 11:59PM, $10.25, @COOLIDGE

Very excited to see that The Coolidge is screening Lucio Fulci’s THE BEYOND as part of their AFTER MIDNITE (AKA midnight movie) series. Singularly important to this writer is Fulci’s Louisiana set, ghostly gore film… the first midnight movie I ever attended!

Anchor Bay (they were so good) had just released the film on DVD/ VHS and I’d bought the special edition that came in a tin box with a postcard of the film’s poster (and little more). Then one day, I was in Pipeline Records (Matt (Fat) Day’s shop, RIP) in Harvard Sq., and there next to a Biggie Smalls 12” was the film’s poster. It was screening at The Coolidge.

At 17, sure, I knew about midnight movies. Having already consumed the Psychotronic Video Guide & Film Encyclopedia and various issues of the magazine, I knew all about 42nd Street and related, but already ancient, in the flesh aberrant cinema portals.

I knew about, and had been to The Coolidge as well (and was already attending the awesome, still extant 24 Hour Sci-Fi Film Marathon the theater then hosted). But I hadn’t known that they did it like, “The Beyond @ MIDNITE!!” I rounded up my proto-deviant friends, and together we departed from Weymouth for Brookline. And so I became Midnite Movie Scum.

The Coolidge’s programming is, and has been for some time now, the best it’s ever been in the 17+ years since I was first handed that midnight movie apple. Take a bite. THE BEYOND is easily Fulci’s most enjoyable film. Gory, weird, and inexplicable. Let Fulci show you the way to the gates of hell over on Harvard Ave.
– Dan Shea