Admiration for Fulci can be traced in a distribution move that brought The Beyond back to theaters and expanded its audience.
A recommendation turned into a re-release
The most concrete connection between Quentin Tarantino and Lucio Fulci is found in The Beyond, originally released in 1981. Rolling Thunder Pictures, the label associated with Tarantino, took part with Grindhouse Releasing in bringing it back for American audiences. Researcher Paola Brembilla places that re-release in 1998 in her study of the film's international circulation, published on August 26, 2019. The support can be documented without inventing a ranking of Fulci's favorite films.
The difference between praising and distributing is important. A statement can spark curiosity; a re-release creates the material possibility of seeing a film in new conditions. Prints, theaters, advertising, and a title circulating again all come into play. The name of a well-known filmmaker may attract viewers who would not have sought out that work before, but the final experience depends on what they find when they sit down in front of the screen.
In this case, the history of the versions also matters. Brembilla's study notes that the film had circulated in the United States as 7 Doors of Death, with changes to the editing and music. The late-1990s restoration made it possible to access a version without those cuts. This was not simply a matter of changing a work's reputation with a prestigious quote: it could also change the object the audience had the chance to know.
The hotel and a nightmare logic
The Beyond follows a woman who inherits a hotel in Louisiana, where a history of violence and a supernatural threat alter the experience of the space. The film does not organize all of its episodes as an investigation that promises to answer every question. The connections can feel unstable, and the places stop offering the security they ought to provide. That instability is part of its effect, even if not every viewer values it in the same way.
The hotel is especially effective as a starting point because it combines familiarity and strangeness. It is a building meant to shelter people, yet it contains rooms, basements, and hallways whose history the protagonist does not control. Receiving it as property does not mean understanding it. The story exploits that difference between owning a place and being able to inhabit it safely, until architecture itself becomes a threat that surpasses the decisions of the person trying to manage it.
Fulci also works with the body's vulnerability. Physical attacks do not merely indicate that someone has died: they interrupt the continuity of the world and make watching difficult. The emphasis on eyes and faces is especially affecting in a film where perception is already uncertain. Seeing may provide information, but it does not guarantee protection. Knowledge arrives too late or does not allow intervention in the expected way.
The atmosphere also depends on how the episodes connect with one another. A sequence may begin with a recognizable task and shift toward a situation that does not follow the previous rules. The viewer loses the comfort of anticipating which spaces will be safe and which characters will remain in control. The film accumulates that distrust until the idea of returning to a stable normality seems increasingly unfeasible.
What does it mean to champion Fulci?
Defending The Beyond does not require denying its discontinuities or explaining them all away as intentions laid out by its director. A critical reading can recognize that its strength lies more in associations, atmosphere, and moments of intensity than in transparent causality. Another may find that structure insufficient. Disagreement is productive when it concerns what the film does, rather than measuring it exclusively against the expectations of a conventional investigative thriller.
Tarantino's involvement in the re-release offers a reception context, not an automatic explanation for every shot. Nor does it authorize attributing to him the promotional texts that others write about Fulci. The New Beverly's programming recalls the restoration and re-release, but an institutional synopsis and a signed review are different documents. Demonstrable admiration lies in supporting the circulation of the work; its precise reasons must be tied to identifiable statements when they are reproduced.
That support connects with grindhouse culture and exploitation cinemas, where many films found intensely interested audiences without occupying the center of critical legitimacy. Bringing them back makes it possible to rethink what was left out of the more familiar accounts of film history. It does not automatically turn every marginal title into a masterpiece, but it returns to viewers the chance to judge it.
To approach Fulci through this relationship, The Beyond is a better-documented choice than a generic list of his entire filmography. It is worth identifying the version being watched and paying attention to the way its spaces and bodies lose stability. The interest of the 1998 re-release lies in having made that encounter possible. The film retains its ability to provoke admiration, rejection, or bewilderment without needing Tarantino's prestige to speak for it.
See the selection of filmmakers and actors admired by Tarantino.