From Beyond

"I thought I was in Hell!" a relative once told me. "I woke up, looked over at the TV, and this movie From Beyond was on Showtime. Have you ever heard of it?"

I could well understand her reaction. From Beyond is a relentlessly sickening grue-fast of mutation and monstrosity, gore, blood, and chest-bursting alien horror that might very well feel, to the unwary viewer waking up to such a noxious nightmare, as if they were, indeed, seeing a vision of Hell. The special effects are top-notch for such a low-budget film, and the monster and creature makeup is calculated to have you grabbing your barf bag. There's nothing pleasant about a viewing of From Beyond.

Nor should there be. Based on the short story by cosmic horror meister H.P. Lovecraft. watching From Beyond on cable when I was, like, twelve, marked the first time in my life I had ever seen that name. Later, Lovecraft would loom large in my pantheon of favored fantasists, but, back then, I had no idea he had been dead since 1937 (no internet).

Young Crawford Tillinghast (Jeffrey Combs) is the assistant of Dr. Edward Pretorius (the late soap opera actor Ted Sorel), a kinky, weirdo, slimy old fart, that, even when he's still human, has a sort of creepy lizard-man thing going. Pretorius is twisted evil, but nonetheless is a thoroughly brilliant scientist, who develops a device (the "Resonator") that is like big computerized tuning forks to "open up the gateway" or dimensional portal between what is known, and what is invisible to the naked eye.

Floating spermy tadpoles swim through the air, and bite Crawford in the face. (Note: If you move in the "field", they can see you, and will attack.) They bite Pretorius' head off and Crawford ends up committed to a psychiatric facility. Here, Dr. Katherine McMichaels (Barbara Crampton) begins the treatment of the trembling, traumatized Crawford, who is perched on the edge of a mental breakdown.

Her amazing therapeutic suggestion is to return to Pretorius' house to "recreate" the experiment. This is much against the protestations of the head psychiatric nurse/killjoy "Dr. Bloch" (the name is a clear nod to author Robert Bloch, who created Psycho and who was a penpal and protege of Lovecraft's), played by the director's wife, Carolyn Purdy-Gordon.

They are accompanied by homicide squad police officer "Bubba" (Ken Foree, from Dawn of the Dead), a TV cop show stereotype of a black guy turned cop that would leave woke critics spitting if depicted today. Later, when Crampton dons some of Pretorius's collection of S/M outfits, she tries to tempt him and the whole thing takes on a racial undercurrent the filmmakers, during the era, saw no problem with playing on.

But that's probably a minor quibble. At least, it's a subcurrent, NOT the (pardon) "thrust" of the movie.

The trio goes to spend the night at Pretorius's stark, Addams Family manor, turn on the Resonator, and the deceased Pretorius himself makes a monstrous appearance from the Other Side, mutating and spewing and generally managing to be hideously sickening. After that, Crawford gets nearly swallowed by a sandworm borrowed from Dune (it emerges here from a flood of water), and Bubba gets devoured by flying demon insects from another dimension. (He's eaten alive, except for his face, stripped clean to the bone.)

It's just sickening sight after sickening sight with this movie. No wonder my relative woke up and said she thought she was "in Hell."

Crawford, bald and twitchy and weirded-out, has a little snake antenna come pushing through his forehead and tries to eat lab specimens and does devour a few human brains, sucking them out through the victims' eyesocket. I won't say anymore except that somehow McMichaels manages to construct a time bomb complete with sticks of dynamite (where did she get the materials?) in nothing flat, and that's a huge glaring hole in even a science fiction horror fantasy film such as this. (Note: It always helps to have the outside edges of the story of such a book or film depict at least some actions and events realistically, as it aids in the suspension of disbelief. But, I digress.)

And how, viewers may well ask themselves, did she learn exactly how to construct such a device? Did she minor in "Bomb Making" at medical college?

I'll say no more. From Beyond is a sick, slick, sleazy, grotesque, barf-bag cinematic gem from the mid-1980s. Directed by the late Stuart Gordon (who spent the rest of his entire career doing worse and worse bargain-basement "adaptations" of Lovecraft stories), it's the sister to his equally excellent ReAnimator (which I reviewed a while back). I enjoy the former (which also starred Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton, as well as Caroline Purdy-Gordon) more, but I must admit From Beyond is a film all its own, so over-the-top it gives John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) a run for its splattery pancakes. (I'm sure they've made even more sickening films since then, but I've rarely seen a modern film for the last couple of decades, and don't miss them.)

My relative thought she was "in Hell." According to Pat Benatar, Hell is for children. (Pat was pretty big in 1986.)

Pat probably has never even watched From Beyond.

From Beyond (1986) [Vinegar Syndrome 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray Promo Trailer]