Say what you will about the acting, the music, the script, or even the plot of this potent and disturbing flick...it hits you like a ton of bricks and leaves you with a dropped jaw, hungry for more.

It's ashame that D'Amato didn't make more films like this. His repertoire includes a few cannibal flicks and lots of porn. This, along with "Anthropophagus," stands out as his most effective work. With "Beyond the Darkness," it's like he set out to make the most horrific and disgusting slasher flick he could fathom, and he pretty much hits the nail right on the head. There is something deeply disturbing about several scenes in this film. The bathtub scene, along with the housemaid eating the stew scene are among some of the most disturbing scenes I have seen in a film ever. And I've seen my share.

All this being said, "Beyond the Darkness" is a film that can be watched over and over. D'Amato somehow still keeps it fun. Unlike other extreme horror films of the era, it remains watchable. To think that he made a film like this with what was, no doubt, a tiny budget, and it came out so beautifully unflinching and nihilistic, is nothing short of genius. "Beyond the Darkness" is one of the coolest movies I've ever seen. And like a fine wine, (made from blood and guts and acid,) it just keeps getting better with age. Watch it with your mom.

A solid 9 out of 10, kids.

More filth from the mad mind of exploitation director Joe D'Amato, a purveyor of sleaze who nonetheless made a good few guilty pleasures during his long career – ENDGAME being the most notable of them. Sadly, this grisly effort is a thoroughly boring affair, dealing as it does with a sociopathic killer who merrily bumps off a string of nubile, naked women. Despite the slow start, this is a film which crams in the bloodshed with a sickening regularity, yet at the end of the day the film is just boring.

A series of graphic and sadistic murders takes place, where our young protagonist pulls the fingernails from screaming women before dissolving them in an acid bath. He disembowels his dead girlfriend and sews her back up, and later on develops a taste for human flesh before finally getting his comeuppance at the hands of a macabre mother-figure. The special effects are pretty realistic, so only strong stomachs need apply for this one – D'Amato ended up in court after being accused of using a real dead body in the movie (no such thing of course). In other respects though, it is routine sex-n-violence epic, where the only good acting of note comes from the elderly detective investigating the killer.

When the wealthy orphan taxidermist Frank Wyler (Kieran Canter) loses his beloved fiancée Anna Völkl (Cinzia Monreale),victim of voodoo conducted by his jealous housemaid Iris (Franca Stoppi),he robs her corpse, embalms and brings to the bed in his room. He does not overcome his feelings for her, killing every woman he has some involvement. Meanwhile Iris wants to marry Frank and helps him to dispose the bodies.

The sick, twisted and kinky "Buio Omega" has all sort of perversions and disgusting scenes, with sequences of necrophilia, mutilation, torture and embalming. However, the characters are awfully developed, and the viewer never knows, for example, whether Frank changed his behavior after the death of Anna, or he was indeed a twisted character. The weird Iris is also badly developed. The graphic and gore scenes are among the nastiest I have ever seen in a film. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): Not Available