Stuart Gordon was a famous American horror filmmaker especially during the 1980s. He was born in Chicago in 1947 and grew up acting and participating in live theater, which he studied at university. After that he created his own theater group, with very controversial performances. One of those is named The Game Show, it was actually used to attack the audience’s indifference. So members of the cast would come out into the audience where they had placed plants and start provoking the viewers on stage; each night ended with a riot by the audience. In 1968 he put on Peter Pan as a rebellious adaptation and went to jail for that with his wife. Apparently community members were not amused by naked actors and references to pixie dust being like LSD. By mid-80s, however, Gordon would eventually turn his attention back towards movies starting with Re-animator in 1985 followed closely by From Beyond (1986).
This is the story of Dr. Edward Pretorious (Ted Sorrel) and his assistant, Dr. Crawford Tillinghast (Jeffrey Combs), who live in a house that is inconspicuous in a calm estate. Pleasure is what Pretorius has been investigating since he was born. One of these methods is The Resonator which opens up the pineal gland through which other dimensions are seen that are not visible to normal human beings. True to his words, Tillinghast can see some eel-like forms flying around the room as soon as he turns on the machine. It bites him while one of them which makes him turn it off immediately thereafter. As Pretorius arrives, he orders them to restart it only for those creatures to appear like they are devouring him.
Tillinghast is arrested and accused of committing murder right away after that event occurs. He is taken into custody by Dr. Katherine McMichaels (Barbara Crampton) who happens to be a famous psychologist responsible for bringing back this lunatic person at the exact scene where this bizarre act took place. This woman will have with her Detective Bubba Brownlee (Ken Foree), who steadfastly refuses to buy into any of Tillinghast’s wilder theories regarding what happened during that terrible night. Their doubts vanish when Pretorius comes back, transformed beyond recognition as a monstrous thing desiring to make these intruders his new toys, splintering apart his sanity further and transforming himself even more grotesquely and horribly than before:
The film is roughly based on H.P. Lovecraft’s story named after it. The story is narrated through Tillinghast’s writing which is the common format used by Lovecraft. In a previous version, Tillinghast was a leading scientist who was killed by the beings he observed while employing the resonance wave machine. In the cinematic version, there is a lot of expansion in terms of its content with this making up for the first scene of the movie. After watching The Re-Animator, I feel From Beyond is more sexual and erotic picture compared to that gore fest. Sex appears more directly in this case, such as Pretorius’ BDSM room or Barbara Crampton wearing very revealing leather dominatrix outfit under machine influence.
What makes From Beyond so entertaining is its embrace of cheapness without sacrificing performances or production. Gordon is making a horror film, and he wants everything to be eerie and strange. He’s taking advantage of that body horror aspect of Lovecraft’s stuff quite well. It is clear that the budget was not huge, as strings and make-up effects are often shot around, but you don’t care because the final product is such an insane ride.
Combs is a natural at playing neurotic weirdos; some of these genre films have helped develop him as such. The intensity of his performances is outlandish, flirting with both camp and serious. He teams up again with Barbara Crampton, his partner in Re-Animator who seems to be perfect for this type of film. She fits Gordon’s horror sex-symbol genre as it combines the two but she’s not acting mindlessly like that at all. What Crampton gets is that she is playing a character who is built on top of tropes and yet expected to bring something new into the story. I found her character more compelling than Combs’. It’s not that Jeffrey doesn’t provide oddness.
It’s not a movie with character development or story line. All you need to know about the film is established in its opening scene; hence the remaining 86 minutes are just different incantations of this premise.15 I never really got Pretorius apart from a sadistic, wicked scientist but I didn’t need more information. Why does Tillinghast work for such a man? There is no explanation in the film, and it doesn’t bother me either. From Beyond is that type of movie that tries to create some mood and play around with their special effects by making use of what they have at hand like Gordon’s shocking theater works did.
The special effects of Brian Yunza, are as slimy as you want them to be. Every aspect connected with the alternate dimension has this slimy and sticky feel. There is a moment where one character’s pineal gland bursts out through his forehead and sucks peoples brains from their eye sockets which is pretty disgusting. This is combined with an insatiable lust that pervades the film making it a highly enjoyable tropic horror comedy. This shows that Stuart Gordon is really brave enough to venture into areas where other directors may not go thus proving him to have genuine love for horror films even in some instances they may look silly.
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