Twilight Zone

By R.S.

BEYOND AND BACK Directed by James L. Conway Screenplay by Stephen Lord

This semidocumentary is an attempt to dramatize case histories of people who have somehow revived after having been pronounced dead. The film stresses the similarity of their experiences in the twilight zone: a sense of hovering above their beds, a trip through a prettily lighted tunnel toward a bright glow, pearly gates (or something quite like them symbolically), the whole accompanied by warm, sensual feelings. Many, of course, catch a glimpse of God along the way, and they all make The End sound infinitely preferable to a case of the Russian flu. But the film is so simplemindedly earnest in tone and repetitive that it robs intrinsically fascinating material of all drama and mystery. Technically, the picture is so inept that it is impossible to tell when one of its subjects is alive and when he or she has crossed over; they all look like products of the undertaker's rather than the moviemaker's art.

--R.S.

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