The dubious-documentary
folks at Sunn Classic Pictures strike again with this sensationalistic study of
near-death experiences, which is filled with so many bogus assertions, staged
reenactments, and unsupported claims that its relationship to fact is laughably
remote. That said, Beyond and Back is
entertaining-ish, even though it goes on far too long, and during its best
moments, the movie casts a creepy spell. Beardy, bearish host Brad Crandall—a
hirsute professor type with a deep, melodic voice—introduces the movie from a
mist-filled graveyard, and then retires to a library from which he remarks upon various episodes. Most of the vignettes are
reenactments of incidents involving everyday people who “crossed over” while
they were clinically dead for brief periods.
The depiction of this phenomenon
is similar in every episode. After the person dies, the camera rises above the
person to represent the perspective of an out-of-body spirit, and then bright
light shoots toward the camera. Next, the camera hurtles along a tunnel, or
shifts to some idyllic setting, and in many instances the subject encounters a
vision of Jesus before being told their time on Earth is not yet done. In
between these reenactments, Crandall shares the usual Sunn Classics brand of
“facts and figures”—serious-sounding pseudoscience that’s really a lurid mix of
hearsay and hogwash. In Crandall’s finest deadpan moment, he sums up a series of vignettes illustrating the last words of
dying people thusly: “All these people died after having their visions, and so
can tell us little.”
Beyond and Back
is more focused than the usual Sunn Classic product, since projects like The Mysterious Monsters (1976) cover
multiple believe-it-or-not mysteries at once, but Beyond and Back suffers for this singularity of purpose, because
the picture is padded and repetitive. Nonetheless, Beyond and Back has several engaging moments of cheesy melodrama,
notably a long sequence about a WWII private’s near-death experience. The voice
of the actor playing the private was unmistakably replaced with that of
Hollywood leading man Richard Jordan (although Jordan is not credited), and
Jordan’s emotional line readings give Beyond
and Back a few moments of dramatic credibility. FYI, this movie is not to
be confused with the following year’s release Beyond Death’s Door, also from Sunn Classic Pictures.
Beyond and Back: FUNKY
2 comments:
I remember seeing this or Beyond Death's Door back in the day and thinking, "this is such b.s." But it was still kind of fun to watch and laugh about later. And now I'm doing it again 30 some-odd years later.
When you're a 13-year-old nerd obsessed with weirdness, and Sunn Classics has four-walled your neighborhood, you learn to enjoy it.
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