I've often seen people say that such-and-such a book or comic or other form of intellectual property is "unfilmable", and it bugs me a little. For one, how do people know that something is "unfilmable" if it's never been tried before? Secondly, this declaration is frequently proven wrong. They once said that American Psycho was "unfilmable", after all, and look how that turned out (note: I actually really like the movie of American Psycho; your agreement or disagreement with this statement will probably depend on how you felt about the movie). Another author who often has the "unfilmable" accusation thrown at him is H.P. Lovecraft, and directors such as Stuart Gordon and Brian Yunza have been proving that statement wrong for decades. Hell, Gordon even filmed Dreams in the Witch House for a Masters of Horror episode, and that dealt with rats with human faces and theoretical physics, for crying out loud.
But we're looking at From Beyond today, one of Gordon and Yunza's earlier works based on one of Lovecraft's short stories.
At 666 Benevolent Street (yes, really) Dr. Edward Pretorius and Dr. Crawford Tillinghast are working on a machine called the Resonator, which according to Pretorius' theories will allow them to see into the fourth dimension by stimulating the pineal gland in the brain. They test is, and it works, but unfortunately the fourth dimension is full of monsters, and one of them attacks Pretorius, twisting his head right off and eating it. Of course, when Crawford tells the police this they don't believe him and he gets shut in the local mental hospital for his trouble. He is "saved" from this by Dr. Katherine McMichaels (so many doctors...), a psychiatrist who has some radical theories about schizophrenia and mental illness and who thinks she can help Crawford by taking him back to the house where it all happened and having him re-enact the experiment - and she has no ulterior motives for wanting to prove that Pretorius' theories were true, not at all... They are joined by a police detective called Bubba Brownlee and the three of them manage to restart the Resonator... only to discover that Dr. Pretorius is not nearly as dead as was believed, and that he wants to share his new discoveries with everyone - whether they want to see or not.
From Beyond comes front-loaded with horror and B-movie icons. There's Jeffrey Combs, who's a mainstay in Gordon and Yunza's work in general; there's Barbara Crampton, star of many horror movies, including You're Next and Chopping Mall; and there's Ken Foree, the Cool Black Guy of the 1980s (and the late 70s). So the film is fun to watch for these three alone - especially near the film's end, where Combs finishes dining on the scenery and starts chewing on the rest of the cast. It's also fun in the fact that it takes one of Lovecraft's more obscure stories - it's only seven pages long! - and makes a full movie out of it. And then there's the effects. We'll leave the CGI alone, as it was only the 80s and it's not really fair to pick on that when it really was the best they could do at the time, but the physical effects are really spectacular. The monsters from the fourth dimension are disgustingly, realistically slimy, which really makes the point that you don't want them to touch you even without the tentacles (because Lovecraft), teeth and general body-melting that goes on. Actually, as I think about it several of the body-melting/melding effects remind me quite a bit of another of Brian Yunza's movies, Society...
On the other hand, the movie falls apart a bit in a few plot-related places. Dr. McMichaels seeming blind belief that Crawford isn't crazy, well before she sees the Resonator at work, strikes me as rather uncharacteristic for a psychiatrist who's considered a rising star in her field - psychiatrists tend to be skeptical of most things possible schizophrenics tell them, for obvious reasons and so it seems contrived, to say the least. And then there's all the sex. Now I've got nothing against sex in film, but again, the reasons for it seemed contrived for the sole purpose of getting Barbara Crampton in a dominatrix outfit doing things of dubious consent to an unconscious Jeffrey Combs (and it's not exactly scientific). I did think I was picking up on some homoerotic subtext of an unrequited kind between Crawford and his mentor Pretorius, which I liked, but by the end of the film it had all gone a bit too Freudian for my tastes, complete with extruding pineal glands flapping about in the wind like the world's most obvious phallic imagery...
Finally, here's something I thought I'd never say: I could see From Beyond actually benefiting from a remake, so it could fully utilise today's improved CGI. It could potentially even work in 3D...
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