Alternate titles : The Seven Doors of Death, L'aldila, E tu vivrai nel terrore - L'aldilà, Die Giesterstadt der Zombies.

Tagline : "The flesh-craving undead return to the land of the living and raise a little hell of their own"

The BeyondYet more low-budget zombie mayhem from cult Italian director Lucio Fulci. In this, Liza Merril (played by Fulci regular Katherine MacColl) inherits an abandoned hotel outside a small Louisiana town, on the edge of the swamplands.

Hoping to start a new life away from the city, she begins to renovate the place. But shortly after moving in, she's befriended by a blind girl named Emily (Sarah Keller), who tells her that the hotel is built on one of the seven gateways to Hell (I think there's another in Dunwich, in "City of the Living Dead"), and that she should leave as soon as possible.

Of course Liza thinks this is all nonsense and, ignoring Emily's warnings, carries on with her plans, with unfortunate consequences for the workmen and staff at the Hotel who end up getting bumped off by numerous zombies and undead apparitions, which pop-up periodically to wreak murder and mayhem.

David Warbeck steals the show as the local doctor, John McCabe, who starts to investigate the bizarre happenings, and ends up being chased around the hospital with Liza by flesh-eating zombies. The films climax provides some of the more gripping moments of the film, as the good doctor grabs a handgun from his desk and goes on the offensive, with zombies getting blasted left and right as they attempt to shoot their way out.

Overall I did kind-of dig this film, even though I've never really been a Fulci's fan. Amongst some of the more interesting scenes we get to see a poor plumber having his eyes gouged out by a zombie, a maid having her head impaled on a nail which gouges her eye out, a librarian falling off his ladder and then being eaten by rather false-looking, plastic spiders, a woman getting acid thrown in her face and Emily having her throat ripped out by her own guide dog!

My favourite scene has to be during the end shoot-out, when a young girl zombie gets her head blasted off by the gun-toting doctor. Great Stuff!

Overall Marks : 7/10.

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