In the same year they inadvertently made movie history with the troll-free Troll 2, director Claudio Fragasso and predominantly freckled child actor Michael Stephenson went Beyond Darkness. Actually a sequel to 1998’s goofy-ass Ghosthouse, this Italian-financed haunted-house retread bears more relation to the Hollywood horror shows it rips off.
Rev. Peter (Gene Le Brock, Metamorphosis) moves his wife (Barbara Bingham, Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan) and their two tots into a beautiful, spacious Louisiana home. On their first night, they enjoy a dinner of beans, about which their tiny daughter, Carole (Theresa F. Walker), says with glee, “And then you make stinkies!”
The downside to the fam’s newfound Norman Rockwell existence is all the paranormal activity that takes place there, thanks to a witch (Mary Coulson, Lucio Fulci’s Door to Silence) recently executed for murdering several children and swallowing their souls. The unexplained gift that greets them upon move-in day — a swan-shaped rocker, as fugly as it is a satanic shade of black — should have been their first clue. Same goes for the breathing wall, which Carole claims has a blow dryer behind it, not to mention the radio that attacks them. I kinda miss the clown.
What we have in Beyond Darkness is a beyond-shameless pastiche of The Amityville Horror and Poltergeist. When harm comes to the kids, Peter enlists the help of a fellow reverend (David Brandon, Lamberto Bava’s Delirium), a gap-toothed man of God who’s fallen from the flock and hitting the hooch hard after an encounter with the witch on Death Row. And then the film becomes Italy’s umpteenth take on The Exorcist. And then you make stinkies. —Rod Lott