From Beyond

Humans are such easy prey.

Crawford Tillinghast (Jeffrey Combs) is assisting Dr. Edward Pretorius (Ted Sorel) as they have been responsible for creating a machine that can open a pathway into another place. Something “takes” Pretorius’ head when they turn the machine on, with Crawford escaping within an inch of his life with quite a story to tell. Of course he’s considered daft until a psychiatrist, Dr. Katherine McMichaels (Barbara Crampton) wants to see if his story has truth considering she’s an admitted admirer of Pretorius’ work. With a cop accompanying them, Bubba Brownlee (Ken Foree, in the best shape of his life), a former football player, Katherine will have Crawford show them the machine and prove what he said is true. The machine, turned on, allows a different Pretorius, now almost totally influenced by “it” on the other side, to return and raise havoc on the trio with some nasty results.

****

A little science for the Lovecraftian monsters…the pineal gland is considered to be a possible “third eye”, the sixth sense, and a machine, when used to stimulate this gland, can open a sort of doorway into another “world” where monsters exist. Dr. Pretorius of Miskatonic University, along with help from his assistant, created this very machine and it did exactly as they could have hoped, it did open a gateway but the monsters are quite dangerous. Pretorius is “pulled inside”, his head removed supposedly by his assistant with an ax. This assistant is arrested for the murder of his professor, locked away in a padded cell of an asylum, and later visited by a psychiatrist who is interested in the experiments conducted involving the gland and the machine. Of course the assistant says “it came” and bit off Pretorius’ head “like biting off the head of a gingerbread man”.

Bruce Abbott sat this movie out with Ken Foree taking the place among the Stuart Gordon trio (Crampton and Combs make their triumphant returns to get back in the strange of things) in this film after Re-Animator (From Beyond having to follow that would not be an easy task, but it still developed a popular cult following all its own) won the hearts of sci-fi horror misfits like yours truly.

When you’re talking strange shit, From Beyond fits the bill. It is just bizarre and insane. Since I dig bizarre and insane (and Crampton and Combs), this movie hit the spot. Crampton is dressed, early on, in mounds of “nerd doc” clothes, the office suit, coat, scarf, braided hair, and giant glasses. Even under all of this, Crampton is a babe. Not to worry, Stuart has an actress more than willing (hip hip hooray!) to lose the seemingly stuffy confines of such an outfit soon to fill a dominatrix outfit. It was as if Gordon read the sex fantasies of many Re-Animator fans and provided us with a Crampton we were certainly never to forget.

Here’s the thing about Stuart Gordon. His films often don’t end with happy endings where characters introduced in his films turn out better by the end. Most of the time, they turn out either dead or really fucked up. From Beyond takes this to a severe degree. The trio (well, foursome once Pretorius “returns”), except for Combs who was seriously emotionally damaged when visited in his cell, seem relatively healthy but once the Pretorius Resonator machine is turned on, none of them will be the same. Crampton, especially, is no longer as much a psychiatrist wanting to rehabilitate her patient as a patient herself needing a strait-jacket. I liked how Foree represents the more reasonable character. He does stick his hand out as eel like monsters float above the Pretorius machine and get his arm bit (what did he think would happen?!?!), but he's insisting to Crampton that they get the hell out of this house and tell the cops about their findings. Crampton, something happened to her when that machine was turned on for the first time. Like a wave of sexual passion engulfing her, Crampton shows the effects of total stimulation, as if an orgasm was starting to emerge. She has become intoxicated to it and Foree compares her to a junkie needing another fix. She wants to experiment further and the machine's influence is starting to pull them all in...except Foree. Once he's out of the picture, her strength is lifted away and she's easy fodder.

I think Stuart Gordon is really one of our most unappreciated horror filmmakers.  He doesn't make a great many of them anymore which is just a shame.  It is our loss that this gifted director hasn't directed a movie since like 2008. With offbeat fare like Edmond and Stuck proving that Gordon could direct beyond Lovecraft, why he seems to be on hiatus is damn near criminal to me. Maybe he himself is more selective. I don't know. I just wish we had more movies directed by the man. He is always willing to go to dark, dark places. But he makes films that look at human wreckage, humanity at its blackest, and can use horror as a vehicle to go in unique, creative directions. In the 80s, he had creative license to go batshit crazy, and I think David Cronenberg and Stuart are actually similar in regards to body horror and the effects of human ugliness manifesting itself externally/psychologically/sexually. From Beyond shows that Pretorius is a sex freak who enjoys whips, chains, bondage, and leather, with the machine allowing that side of him to reach its zenith thanks to the stimulation of the pineal gland and how it jettisons any sort of control or repression in favor of total dedication and embrace of pure pleasure. But what made him human slowly but surely fades until he's all  monster. Crawford has internal and external warfare where the monster wants to be freed while his humanity tries (and most often fails) to keep it at bay, until he's basically enveloped by the "it" that has totally taken control of Pretorius. I have always felt, though, and judging by what we see of him in human form prior to turning the machine on, that Pretorius had the personality that wasn't resistant towards what the it had to offer him on the other side. Crawford had a conscience and moral compass that was resistant to it. So the battle at the end between good and evil, Crawford vs. Pretorius, humanity and beast, ended as I thought it should, with no true victor. It took Katherine blowing the whole machine to smithereens, with the whole floor going up in a fire cloud, to decide the outcome.

If you love grotesque monsters and body transformation effects, From Beyond will be up your alley. It has the gland literally protruding from a hole in Combs' forehead, with this creature willing him to suck brains from an eye socket of human victims. Of course, if Gordon's wife has a character in his movie, she dies horribly. That's certainly the case here. She's certainly a bitch; she does it well. She's the doc in charge inside an institution, ordering a distraught Crampton to be placed into shock therapy! Combs eats out her eyeball, eventually spitting it to the floor before drinking her brain juice. We also see Pretorius metamorphose into this ghastly monstrosity. Good stuff.

While us guys get to see Crampton in S&M, the ladies get to see Foree in nothing but his underwear. He plays hero really well, but, unlike Dawn of the Dead, doesn't fare too well against flesh-eating flies that exit from the Pretorius machine. His destroyed torso is quite a grisly sight. Combs must endure the gland poking out of a hole in his forehead; that is likely to make those a bit queasy at seeing things sticking out of holes in flesh cringe. And, I personally believe this is Crampton's finest hour. It is a great part, I think, and she really starts out as fully confident and in a comfort zone, totally in control, and by the end has lost everything, her physical condition (when she leaps from a window and lands on the ground, it appears as if her knees are damaged, her legs broken) and mentally worse for wear. To Stu's credit, she is screaming; it isn't a pleasant sight to see her so far gone, but I think it as authentic as could be. Kudos to him.