From Beyond (1986)

Genre: Horror (monster/mad scientist)
Writer: Brian Yuzna, based on a short story by H.P. Lovecraft
Director: Stuart Gordon

As a majority of the movies in my home collection are horror flicks, I figured it was about time I discussed one. I selected From Beyond, one of two 80's horror movies to star both Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton. Combs and Crampton had just worked opposite each other in another Stuart Gordon movie the year prior, one of my personal favorites, Re-Animator (1985). From Beyond also co-stars veteran horror actor Ken Foree, whom many may remember from the original Dawn of the Dead (1978). Fans of Barbara Crampton, if any exist amongst my two-or-three person readership, should especially love this movie, as it is easily the sexiest that Ms. Crampton has ever been seen on screen. She also gets a sex scene with a big slimy rubber monster thing that is easily as weird, though not quite as explicit, as the near-cunnilingus from a severed zombie head scene in Re-Animator. So I don't sound like I'm forgetting any possible female readership, I'll also mention this movie features a shot or two of Ken Foree and his package running down the stairs in a speedo.

From Beyond is loosely based on a short story written by H.P. Lovecraft. "Loosely," of course, means exactly that: I read the short story once upon a time, and if I recall, it was only three pages long. Any resemblance to the original source ends by the time the opening credits take place. After that, it's pure 80's horror insanity. A large part of this movie's budget went into lighting gels, latex, and some sort of jelly slime stuff, plus a crazy little machine with lots of outlets and tuning forks.

Here's the setup: Dr. Edward Pretorius (Ted Sorel) is a brilliant but mad scientist who is creating a machine they refer to as "the resonator." According to the movie (and the original source), there are weird creatures that float around us in the air, all of the time, but we can't contact them or detect them because they exist in another dimension. The resonator makes it possible for these things to see and touch us, and vice-verse. It also causes the human pineal gland to grow--the pineal gland being a small organ in the base of the brain (I think) that often functions as a "third eye" or some other evolutionary device in science fiction stories and pop psychology. Since no mad scientist is complete without a young assistant, he has Crawford Tillingast (Jeffrey Combs) to do some of the late-night work while Dr. Pretorius is playing is bondage games in the other room--with prostitutes, I assume.

Crawford Tillingast successfully gets the resonator working in the opening scene, which causes some glowing eel-like things to appear hovering in the air. They attack Crawford, causing him to shut down the machine and spend the rest of the movie with a bite on his cheek. When Crawford informs Dr. Pretorius, the good doctor turns the machine on and gets attacked by some sort of extra dimensional god thing, that twists off his head and swallows it whole. Crawford attacks the machine with an axe, then flees the house and gets himself arrested.

Naturally, Crawford is completely honest with the police regarding what happened to Dr. Pretorius, so they ship him to a mental hospital and lock him up in a padded room. This brings into the story Dr. Katherine McMichaels (Barbara Crampton), a psychological researcher fresh out of grad school and familiar with Dr. Pretorius' work. She is allowed to meet with Crawford, which leads to a great example of Jeffrey Combs' intense overacting in this flick: he says, in a restrained panic, "It ate him...BIT his head off..." --dramatic pause to get closer to the camera-- "...like a gingerbread man!"

The person in charge of Crawford's care, an older woman named Dr. Bloch (Carolyn Purdy-Gordon, the director's wife and another actor from Re-Animator), thinks it best that he be locked away as insane. Katherine, on the other hand, is young and curious, and thinks Crawford may be telling the truth about the resonator, after a CAT scan reveals that Crawford's pineal gland appears to be growing. She convinces the police to let Crawford repeat the experiment under her care, and the two return to the house where it all happened, along with Bubba Brownlee (Ken Foree), a cop assigned to watch over them.

That, of course, is just a brief description of the first act. From here, the movie gets even stranger. After the trio is able to reactivate the resonator, Dr. Pretorius appears out of nowhere--which does, at least, prove that Crawford didn't kill him. The good doctor tells them that he has merged with the being they keep calling "It." He then tells them that he wants to merge with the rest of them, too. There is something oddly perverted about this whole setup and Pretorius' obsession with merging with everyone.

They manage to shut off the machine before he can do too much damage, but as the story progresses, Dr. Pretorius/It gets better at forcing the machine to operate itself. By the end of the second act, everything has gone haywire, Katherine is wearing a skimpy leather outfit, Crawford has a snake-like appendage sticking out of his now-protruding forehead, and Bubba is dead. Oh, uh, *spoilers.* (Actually, the best part isn't the fact that Bubba dies, but the specific way in which he does--it's just as strange and inconsistent as the rest of this flick.)

After this, there's a lot of scenes featuring the bald Crawford Tillingast covered in blood and sucking peoples' brains out through their eye sockets. There's one particularly great scene with Crawford munching away at a human brain that he found at the hospital (they leave them laying around), his only comment when caught being "Mmm...good." This eventually leads to a latex-and-slime covered climax and the obligatory gigantic explosion. I don't think that should spoil anything for anyone, as most movies of this type end with a gigantic explosion.

For fans of 80's horror movies, From Beyond is definitely worth watching. It has plenty of crazy latex creature effects and odd puppetry, lots of slime and blood (and some brains), and some damned insane dialogue delivered with absolute severity. The special effects are cheesy--it was the 80's, after all--but entertaining. And, if you don't know who Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton and Ken Foree are, this would be a good introduction--right after Re-Animator, of course.