From Beyond (1986)
Review by Theron Neel
The mid-eighties were a golden period for director Stuart Gordon. He began his career in Chicago’s avant-garde theater scene in the late sixties, working with heavyweight people such as David Mamet, Dennis Franz, and Joe Mantegna. Gordon eventually made his way to Hollywood, and in 1985, he made the wonderful film Re-Animator. In 1986, he followed that up with another fantastic horror film, From Beyond.
Based on a short story by H. P. Lovecraft, From Beyond is the tale of Dr. Edward Pretorious (Ted Sorel) and his colleague, Dr. Crawford Tillinghast (Jeffrey Combs). It seems Dr. Pretorius has been doing research into the pineal gland, which he believes functions as a dormant sixth sense. Along with Dr. Tillinghast, Pretorious has designed and built a machine, a sonic resonator, that stimulates the pineal gland, allowing humans to feel and see a parallel universe that surrounds us at all times. This parallel universe is inhabited with dangerous, otherworldly creatures that aren’t aware of us unless the resonator in use. It is also seemingly ruled by an evil intelligence that wants to destroy humanity.
The film opens with Pretorious and Tillinghast experimenting with the resonator for the first time. This session ends in the death of Dr. Pretorious, apparently at the hands of Dr. Tillinghast. Tillinghast is locked away, babbling about how a creature ate Pretorious…a creature from beyond. Of course, the resident evil psychiatrist, Dr. Bloch (Carolyn Purdy-Gordon), immediately labels him a lunatic and recommends he be institutionalized. But the foxy Dr. Katherine McMichaels (Barbara Crampton) isn’t so sure. She listens to his story and, intrigued, decides the only way to know what really happened is to recreate the experiment with the resonator. Since the police can’t tell what occurred—they found Dr. Pretorious’ headless body, but no blood and no head—they agree to let Dr. McMichaels try to figure it out. So, they release Dr. Tillinghast into Dr. McMichaels custody and, accompanied by a police escort, Sgt. Bubba Brownlee (Ken Foree), they head back to the Pretorious house to get into all kinds of preternatural trouble.
This is an amazingly fun film that has a little bit of something for everyone. Wonderful performances – check. Kinky sex – check. Great effects – check. Brain eating – check. Thankfully, Stuart Gordon has filled the cast of From Beyond with several of the superb actors from Re-Animator. Jeffrey Combs again shows himself to be an acting treasure. In the shattered Dr. Crawford Tillinghast, he creates a character that is quirky, intelligent, funny, forceful, and poignant. And as always, his line readings are priceless. Barbara Crampton, as the “girl wonder” psychiatrist, is very subtle and again proves herself one of the gamest actresses working. With her role as Dr. Bloch, Carolyn Purdy-Gordon seems to be trying to corner the market on “evil doctors.” But in certain scenes, she allows us to see the humanity behind the cruelty.Sadly, Ken Foree (Dawn of the Dead, The Devil’s Rejects) doesn’t get to do much, but he’s a lot of fun to watch while he’s doing it.
Stuart Gordon has made several films based on H. P. Lovecraft tales, with Re-Animator perhaps being the best known. This is a deceptively difficult thing to do because most of Lovecraft’s stories were quite short. But Gordon has shown over and over again that he can fashion an effective full-length film in the spirit of Lovecraft’s somewhat quaint original source material. That he was able to do so again here while also writing in bondage, gore, and big rubber monsters, none of which seem at all out of place, proves that Stuart Gordon is a modern horror movie god…perhaps one From Beyond.
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