From Beyond is not an official sequel to Stuart Gordon's classic, Re-Animator (that would be Bride of Re-Animator), but it is a sequel in spirit. They're both loosely based on an H.P. Lovecraft story. They both star Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton. Finally they're both really gross and horny movies with a twisted sense of humor. H.P. Lovecraft wishes he ever could be this icky. He seems like a kind of humorless sexless man from his fiction. Plus, Stuart Gordon's take on the material cuts all that racism. So yeah, Stuart Gordon is better at Lovecraft than Lovecraft. There, I said it.
If you love practical gore effects, From Beyond is not merely a gem, it is a goldmine. No, it is El Dorado. From Beyond should be in the same conversation as The Thing or The Fly for wonderfully disgusting body horror perfection. I made my sister watch this with me. And before the movie started I had to quote Pinhead and said, "we have such sights to show you". You are in for a ride. You might need a shower afterwards from all the slime and perversions.
From Beyond is about Dr. Crawford Tillingast (Jeffrey Combs), a scientist locked in a loony bin because he is suspected of murdering his partner, Dr. Pretorius (the very hairy Ted Sorel). Dr. Katherine McMichaels (Barbara Crampton) believes Tillingast's crazy story about exploring alternate dimensions and growing the pineal gland to create a "third eye". She forces him to restart the Mad Science at Pretorius's house, whose address is amusingly 666 Benevolent Street. Turns out Pretorius has become one with the sensual pleasures "from beyond". The machine has a stimulating side-effect, because Katherine and Crawford are pretty damn horny for each other, and the demons are way horny for Katherine.
Oh, also Ken Foree is hanging around in a Browns jersey. It is always nice to see Ken Foree, but he does not get a lot to do in this movie.
From Beyond then starts going off the rails even further, as if it ever was on rails to begin with. There are killer fish floating around from beyond our universe. Pretorius's flesh begins to mutate and melt. You can push his shoulder inwards like it is playdo. Yuck. Stuart Gordon here inspires a generation of hentai artists by wrapping tentacles around helpless red-faced women. People grow tentacles out of their foreheads which gives them a craving for brains. Katherine dresses up in an S&M outfit and dry humps a sleeping guy. Ken Foree wears only a speedo and fights a sandworm in the basement. From Beyond has everything. Any bad taste idea you can imagine, it is probably in this movie. Chow down.
I will say what keeps From Beyond from being just an absolute masterpiece is a few limits of budget here or there. 90% of this movie is set in one bland house set with only four actors. There is a particularly bad miniature of 666 Benevolent Street that they keep using and staging actors in front of. The characters do actually develop, but mostly so Stuart Gordon can have them do weirder shit. None of the characters feel finished though. That isn't on the actors, everybody is great in this. As an effects movie, From Beyond is great. As Lovecraftian mindbending horror, it is overshadowed by In the Mouth of Madness, Annihilation, and yeah, even Event Horizon.
But none of those have S&M dry-humping, so From Beyond's place in history is unquestionable.
Next Time: The very unloved The Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977).
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