Blue Holocaust

est un film d'horreur visuellement sobre qui se déroule principalement à la lumière du jour. La logique et le déroulement de l'intrigue ne jouent pas un rôle majeur ici, Joe D’Amato se concentre principalement sur les massacres naturalistes des victimes, la perversion sexuelle (la vieille Iris / le jeune Francesco) et les éléments de nécrophilie (Anna morte / Francesco vivant). Il le fait avec des tons de musique pop horrifique dans les scènes d'horreur, et avec de la musique romantique du groupe Goblin dans les scènes sexuelles. Une dépravation remarquable qui, avec de meilleurs acteurs et une musique sombre, aurait pu devenir l'un de ces films après lesquels vous ne pourrez pas vous endormir. Dans la filmographie trash de D’Amato, cependant, c'est un coup de maître. (15/04/2003)

A young man cannot live without his dead girlfriend, so he decides to dig her up from the grave, take her home and mummify her. This sets off a chain of events that leads to three murders. This film is considered by many to be D'Amato's best work. Yet, or perhaps because of this, I cannot help but be disappointed. I can ignore the stupid dialogue and the awful actors, they aren’t that important in the gore genre. What's worse is that the film has zero atmosphere, the bright, garish colours don't have much of a horror feel and even the music by The Goblins, otherwise so great in Argento's Suspiria, doesn't really fit. The murders themselves are not very sophisticated, they aren’t very “gore”. In this respect, perhaps only the bathroom scene with the butcher's cleaver and the acid will satisfy die-hard gore fans. Ironically, the most impressive scene is the one that doesn’t show a drop of blood, when Amato alternates between shots of the full mouth of the dining housekeeper and the remains of a body dissolved by acid. That moment will make you lose your appetite. (22/09/2003)

I quite like rooting for the main characters sometimes, but here it impossible, there isn’t anyone who’s normal. That wouldn’t be that much of a problem, but the villains are perverted in such a nasty way that it was hard to watch. Some scenes are disgusting, but it’s nothing that would shock me, D’Amato would have to try a little harder for that. In terms of execution and direction, Beyond the Darkness is not bad, what I can certainly reproach, though, is the music, which, besides being terrible, is played where it has nothing to do. As I’ve already said, the film is not bad, I just didn’t like it. (18/08/2008)

Pour qui a déjà au moins quelques films d’horreur à son compteur, Blue Holocaust sera – de loin – moins choquant et extrême que ce qu’il était apparemment censé être à l’époque de sa sortie. La thématique de « l’amour au-delà de la tombe » a été exploitée depuis dans des œuvres nettement plus convaincantes, par exemple les deux parties de Nekromantik. Et, en retirant de l’équation le thème pervers, il ne reste qu’un bête film d’horreur italien cheap et répugnant qui n’arrive pas à susciter l’enthousiasme et dont l’intrigue ne mène nulle part. (18/11/2018)

"Beyond the Darkness" is a movie that you may not like because it is not easy to identify with the characters. I like that D'Amato does not play to please the masses, but he strives to really tell what he wanted. And so, even a relatively normal man becomes a madman, although in this case there were certainly some predispositions. Nevertheless, you can see a sick animal in him, which is suffering on its own. For me, definitely at least one thumbs up. (07/02/2014)