“Humans are such easy prey.”
As Re-Animator made explicitly clear, Stuart Gordon’s films are not for the faint of heart. They’re horror films only nominally; they are horrific, certainly, but they seem to bridge the gap between comedy and Italian giallo movies. Unabashedly sexual, exploitative, and confrontational in their gore, Gordon’s trilogy of H.P. Lovecraft adaptations, of which From Beyond is the second part, plays almost like mainstream Troma films. You can’t discuss ’80s horror without Gordon’s name coming up, and From Beyond helps to show why. While it doesn’t have the name recognition or longtime cult status of Re-Animator, it surpasses that film in terms of sheer fright.
Much like The Fly, From Beyond kicks right into gear, eschewing any long setup or explanation. It leaves the viewer in a kind of daze. The cold open to the film is a hell of a way to begin. Crawford Tillinghast (Jeffrey Combs) fiddles with some switches and computers, then switches on a machine. The resonator, as it’s called, is an impressive prop, grandly seated in the center of the room, topped with a purple dome not unlike a Tesla coil, and well as four forked receivers piercing the air. A wind starts blowing inside, then things appear: otherwordly, spectral eels, swimming around the tines of the forks. The graphics here don’t look dated; rather, their lo-fi holographic presentation adds to the effect that we’re looking at something we’re not ready to see. Crawford rushes to tell his partner, Edward Pretorius, that the machine is working. Edward refuses to shut it off, even as Crawford begs him to. Soon, Crawford has buried an axe in the resonator, next to which lies Edward’s headless body. Crawford is arrested and taken to a mental hospital.
It would seem that From Beyond has nowhere to go from here. After all, isn’t this the end of the story? Men undone by their own hubris? That’s definitely how a lot of Lovecraft stories end, but Gordon wants to wring this thing dry. That’s a feature, not a bug. Some people slight Gordon for twisting and contorting Lovecraft stories to fit whatever story he wants to tell (1995’s Castle Freak, which we’ll probably cover next year, is a frequent recipient of this criticism). But I admire him for it. To take a seven-page story and turn it into an eighty-five-minute movie is no small feat. What differentiates Gordon from schlock peddlers like Roger Corman, Lloyd Kaufman, or Zalman King is the artistry with which he approaches his work. Gordon is more akin to a John Waters or a James Gunn. From Beyond may be gory, and, yes, schlocky, but there’s nothing random about the chaos.
Crawford is soon remanded into the custody of Dr. Katherine McMichaels (Barbara Crampton, another Gordon regular). Rather than condemn Crawford to a lifetime of medication and electro-shock, she decides to recreate the experiment; if she sees what happened, it will not only clear Crawford’s name, but show that he’s not insane. They’re joined by a cop, Buford “Bubba” Brownlee (Ken Foree), who’s there to remind Crawford that he’s still in custody. Foree’s performance matures throughout the film, which is a good thing, because when we first meet Bubba, his irreverence doesn’t fit the tone of the film.
The experiment is a success – if you could call it that. The lead-up to it foreshadows the rest of the film. At first, Crawford is too traumatized to even enter the house (address: 666 Benevolent Road), but as he repairs the resonator, his obsession grows. “We can start in the morning,” Katherine tells him. He replies, icily: “I’ve started.” Once the resonator is on, though, the terrible knowledge overcomes his obsession with progress. It has an interesting effect on Katherine, though: the rational woman of science is awestruck at what she sees. The next morning, she wants to repeat the experiment by herself.
From Beyond has a tough job, in that it has two protagonists, both of whom need to have agency and interiority. Luckily for the film, Combs and Crampton have terrific chemistry, and we’re equally invested in both of them. It’s frightening to watch Katherine repeatedly fail to learn her lesson, as she falls more and more under the resonator’s spell. But, as Lovecraft stories constantly remind us, there are some things we are not meant to know or see. We see this most potently in the return of Edward, no longer human, but having “passed beyond.” He’s now an eldritch monstrosity, who can peel off his own face, revealing the writhing mass of tentacles beneath.
The effects in From Beyond haven’t aged a day. The prosthetics and makeup recall the best work of David Cronenberg or John Carpenter. The music by Richard Band (also the film’s producer) works perfectly, all spooky chimes and drums. What really sticks with the viewer is the horrific implications. We don’t see much of what the resonator reveals, but what we do see is maddening. Here, you can see influences on Stephen King’s work, especially The Mist or Revival. It’s the idea that there is something of an afterlife, some world we can’t know about, but one that we are in no way equipped to process.
It would be unnecessary to indulge in rote recitation of the plot (go watch the movie!). What’s so impressive about From Beyond is that it finds a way to ratchet up the insanity until it becomes almost claustrophobic. For an eighty-five-minute movie, there’s a lot of story here, none of it pleasant. This is a film that knows exactly what it is, which is what makes Stuart Gordon films so singular in their genre.
10/1: Hellraiser / The Invitation
10/2: Splice / Banshee Chapter
10/3: Jennifer’s Body / Raw
10/4: Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist / Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2
10/5: Kill List / A Field in England
10/6: Halloween II / Halloween III: Season of the Witch
10/7: A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge / A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
10/8: Ginger Snaps / Creep
10/9: Cube / Creep 2
10/10: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) / The Ritual
10/11: Hell House LLC / The Taking of Deborah Logan
10/12: Re-Animator / From Beyond
10/13: Beetlejuice / Sleepy Hollow
10/14: Idle Hands / The Lords of Salem
10/15: The Ring / Noroi: The Curse
10/16: I Know What You Did Last Summer / The Monster
10/17: Night of the Living Dead / Train to Busan
10/18: The Devil’s Backbone / Southbound
10/19: Event Horizon / Dreamcatcher
10/20: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari / The Bad Seed
10/21: Eyes Without a Face / Goodnight Mommy
10/22: The Strangers / The Strangers: Prey at Night
10/23: In the Mouth of Madness / The Void
10/24: The Amityville Horror / Honeymoon
10/25: Gerald’s Game / Emelie
10/26: The Monster Squad / Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
10/27: Veronica / Jacob’s Ladder
10/28: High Tension / You’re Next
10/29: The Innkeepers / Bug
10/30: The People Under the Stairs / Vampires
10/31: Saw / Saw II
About Author
