Director Stuart Gordon and actors Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton made a few loose adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft’s work back in the 80s, the best known of which was probably The Re-Animator. Gordon never really worked with a particularly huge budget during his career, but he did have an idiosyncratic style that gave his work at the very least a cult following of its own. There’s a lot of splatter and a bit of humor to his work. As for the actors, Combs has made a career out of his generally creepy vibe, and Crampton was something of a scream queen in 80s horror cinema.
The trio followed up The Re-Animator with an even looser Lovecraft adaptation called From Beyond, and guess what I found on Shudder the other night…
One night, a machine called a “Resonator” starts going a bit crazy and Dr. Crawford Tillinghast (Combs) wakes his older colleague Dr. Edward Pretorius (Ted Sorel) to give the other man the news. Pretorius is named for a mad scientist character from The Bride of Frankenstein, so he probably isn’t going to be the model for sanity in any movie, but here we are. As it is, the Resonator apparently allows for potential communication to other dimensions, and whatever is on the other side isn’t as friendly as Pretorius or Crawford might have hoped. It isn’t long before Pretorius is dead, missing his head, while Crawford finds himself locked away in an insane asylum.
And then in comes Dr. Katherine McMichaels, a scientist who suspects whatever happened in that house may hold the keys to curing disorders like schizophrenia. Along for the ride is a large cop, Bubba Brownlee (Ken Foree), and as the trio looks into what the Resonator does, it seems Pretorius might not be as dead as he was believed to be. That’s OK, since he isn’t as human as he used to be either, coming out whenever the Resonator flips on, looking less and less human as his body seems to be made of silly putty now. The easy thing to do would be to never turn the machine on. But Pretorius is getting stronger and stronger while Crawford and McMichaels both seem to be compelled to experiment with the machine. And it isn’t as if Pretorious is the only thing that shows up when the machine turns on…
This movie is short, sweet, and doesn’t mess around. Sorel makes for a good, creepy and somewhat perverted villain, Combs and Crampton both fit into their respective roles just fine by now (with some eye candy shots of Crampton for those who watch these sorts of movies for that sort of thing, but Foree gets to run around in a small pair of underwear too, so there’s at least something for people whose tastes don’t run towards women), and Foree acquits himself well as the one person in the house who maybe still has a grasp on reality and making good decisions. Oh, that won’t save him in the end, but this is a Lovecraft adaptation, and in those works, living through whatever happens probably means going mad anyway.
Of course, the other thing about Lovecraftian works is how much they rely on the weird and unexplainable. Nothing that comes from the other side is really explained. All the audience needs to know is it’s hostile and probably hungry. And if Pretorius can be “infected” by whatever’s on the other side, so can other people. When people die in this movie, they don’t die pretty. It’s always violent and messy. True, it’s low budget 80s style violent and messy, but this still isn’t the sort of movie you should watch if you happen to be faint of stomach. Now, I do love The Re-Animator, and while From Beyond is a movie in a very similar vein, it also isn’t quite set up the same way, so while I did enjoy it, I wouldn’t say it’s on the same level as the previous collaboration.
Huh. Am I on a horror movie stretch for Halloween? Probably not, but there will probably be more horror movie reviews before the month is out, that much is certain.
Grade: B+
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