This is the third film I’ve seen from minor horror expert Stuart Gordon – after THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM (1991) and EDMOND (2005) – but the first from his 1980s heyday; for the record, I’ve been interested in RE-ANIMATOR (1985) for years, have fairly recently acquired DOLLS (1987) and will perhaps eventually rent his sci-fi opus, FORTRESS (1993). Anyway, to get back to the film under review: once one gets past the outrageously repulsive make-up and special effects – which belie the fact that this is a 22-year old movie and would certainly have put me off completely had I caught it back in its day (although, I do recall coming across it in video stores at the time) – FROM BEYOND is a thought-provoking if single-minded sci-fi/horror piece which quite deserves its cult status.
Taken from an H. P. Lovecraft original – of whose work Roger Corman’s underrated THE HAUNTED PALACE (1963) is still the best cinematic adaptation – the film deals with a mad scientist (amusingly named Pretorius) who invents a machine which implants a sixth sense within anybody near it, thus enabling one to realize his most repressed and hidden desires: so the scientist is turned into a sadistic torturer of women, the nerdy female psychiatrist (investigating the latter’s beheading) takes a liking to fetishistic attire, etc. The lead is Gordon regular Jeffrey Combs (as the scientist’s assistant who is taken to a mental asylum after narrating the events leading to the latter’s demise) and, also on hand, is skeptical police officer Ken Foree (who, unfortunately, bows out too soon). It goes without saying that tampering with nature and science is not without its consequences and I’d venture to say that rarely have they been so disgustingly realized on screen – via indescribable, stomach-turning creatures (which are always invisibly floating around in our space but animate themselves through the use of the machine) which make the notorious effects for John Carpenter’s THE THING (1982) look positively tame.
Taken from an H. P. Lovecraft original – of whose work Roger Corman’s underrated THE HAUNTED PALACE (1963) is still the best cinematic adaptation – the film deals with a mad scientist (amusingly named Pretorius) who invents a machine which implants a sixth sense within anybody near it, thus enabling one to realize his most repressed and hidden desires: so the scientist is turned into a sadistic torturer of women, the nerdy female psychiatrist (investigating the latter’s beheading) takes a liking to fetishistic attire, etc. The lead is Gordon regular Jeffrey Combs (as the scientist’s assistant who is taken to a mental asylum after narrating the events leading to the latter’s demise) and, also on hand, is skeptical police officer Ken Foree (who, unfortunately, bows out too soon). It goes without saying that tampering with nature and science is not without its consequences and I’d venture to say that rarely have they been so disgustingly realized on screen – via indescribable, stomach-turning creatures (which are always invisibly floating around in our space but animate themselves through the use of the machine) which make the notorious effects for John Carpenter’s THE THING (1982) look positively tame.