lucio fulci's THE BEYOND (1981)

again, i'm out of my element with this stuff, though my best friend lives and breathes it. what occurred to me watching The Beyond, though, is the effect that context has on standards: this is surely a more polished film than City Of The Dead, and by and large there's a genuinely unsettling mood that most horror flicks would kill for, but stripped of its few charms there's little to clarify to me why Fulci is held to a sort of auteurish ideal among the horror cognoscenti. even looking past the rock-bottom production value, the film is sloppy, vague and rife with holes, depending solely on mood and gore to score its points, and as a result the underwhelmingness of it all undermines the scares. Argento i can understand: as much as Suspiria (the only one i've seen, i readily admit; as i said, out of my element here) suffers from milder cases of the same afflictions, there's obviously art oozing from its design, tone, and pacing. but the two and a half Fulci films i've seen leave questions. maybe i just don't understand. but there's so much potential, so little delivery, and yet so much regard.