From Beyond (1986)
Stuart Gordon
"It ate him...bit off his head...like a gingerbread man!"
I never got too deep into the writing of H.P. Lovecraft. I think I've got a pretty good understanding of the mythology and what he was interested in, but I've only read one or two of his short stories, and by the time I got around to it, I was old enough to care about the INSANE amount of eugenics style racism woven into each tale. It kinda takes you out of the story, and you begin rooting for the ancient ones to devour us all.
But we are all in luck, because his writing was given new life in the medium of film, with much of the bunk race science removed in favor of much better things like gratuitous nudity. Similar to Philip K. Dick (who was a much better writer, idea-man, and human being), Lovecraft had a couple of his stories adapted for the silver screen in the 1980's, although "adapted" may be too generous a term. Like Dick's four page short stories that were turned into 2+ hour sci-fi action epics, Lovecraft's simple tales of cheating death and exploring other dimensions were chopped and screwed into fun exploitation and body horror films in that blessed decade.
The most well-known is 1985's Re-Animator (directed by beautiful weirdo Stuart Gordon), a simple film about a darkly genius medical student (played by Jeffrey Combs) who, in his work with an Austrian mad scientist, has learned of a serum that reverses death. He injects some of the med school cadavers (and eventually his murdered med school professor) with the serum, and things quickly get out of hand. At one point a decapitated head, held up by its own body, performs oral sex on (or I guess gave head to) Barbara Crampton.
If you've never seen Re-Animator, it should absolutely be on your "must see" list. It's easily one of the best horror movies of the 80's, perfectly blending dark humor with great practical effects and a film noir aesthetic.
Rather than tread over the same ground again, Gordon moved on the very next year to make 1986's From Beyond (also loosely based on a Lovecraft story). He got Jeffrey Combs to play the scientist protagonist and 'must be comfortable with nudity' Barbara Crampton to play the female lead once again. The result? Well…
What's it about: Dr. Pretorius, a reclusive sex pervert who is also a science genius, and Crawford (Combs), his physicist assistant create a rift between our dimension and The Beyond using a device that looks like it was taken from a laboratory scene in some cheesy 1950's b-movie. Exposure to this rift causes Pretorius to lose his head and Crawford to suffer extreme pineal gland growth (because this is the gland that allows sight into the beyond, as we all know). A federal scientist, Dr. McMichaels (Crampton) and Bubba, her bodyguard (played by Dawn of the Dead's Ken Foree) want to recreate the experiment as a potential method to cure schizophrenia (???), so they drag Crawford back to the lab to reopen the rift. You can see where this is going.
What's interesting: Uh, like the whole thing? It's so fast paced and there's so much weirdness abound, you easily get sucked into the madness. But let's pick somewhere to start: the special effects.
I'm a cold stone sucker for practical effects, and From Beyond is a special effects team's beautiful interdimensional nightmare. When we get to see Dr. Pretorius again, in his newly evolved (or maybe devolved) form in the Beyond, he's more or less a dripping and misshapen corpulent manpile, with his mushed up head on a telescopic neck-like appendage. So that's cool.
Then there's a giant Tremors-esque grabboid monster that somehow gets into the basement of Dr. Pretorius' house and chews off all of Crawford's body hair. That's also very cool.
And then there's the scene where a bunch of tiny interdimensional termites eat Bubba's flesh away, leaving him a half-devoured, visceral blob on the floor.
Dang. Super cool.
Then there are the performances. Combs picks up right where he left off as a weird but likable scientist who quickly gets in way over his head. Nobody plays a weirdo quite like Combs (well, maybe Crispin Glover), and by the time his pineal gland has wormed its way out of his hairless head and he's sucking people's brains out of their eye sockets, you're hooked on his character. He's wonderful.
Barbara Crampton goes from buttoned up, Reagan era, businesswoman to thirsty af dominatrix leather momma so seamlessly and in such a short amount of time that it's entirely possible that Crampton's acting range is limitless. I also joked earlier that she must be comfortable with nudity, because she gets disrobed and groped by the afore mentioned corpulent manpile in a truly revolting scene. But nobody can pull it off quite like she can.
Before:
After:
This ties into the major subtext of the film: tapping into this metaphysical pineal third sight also unlocks each of the characters libidinal desires. Pretorius becomes (somehow) even more of a horrible sex monster than he was in our corporeal dimension, Crawford becomes insatiably drawn to brains and knowledge (and has a very penile pineal gland that probes about, searching for fresh brains), and McMichaels wants to dominate the male world that has dominated her for so long in her professional life, hence the hypersexual dominatrix getup. Thanks to tapping into the beyond, each are free to wallow in their own sexual filth, unfettered by societal norms or even the laws of physics. This is why undertaking this dangerous experiment becomes irresistible for them.
Overall, I think the most interesting thing about the film is its fearless approach to the subject matter. Any old director could make a movie about an interdimensional terror that's either a creature feature or a blood-and-guts slasher, but Gordon and his crew instead drill into the psyche of the film's characters and torture them. Crawford develops an insatiable hunger for human brains, McMichaels becomes a sex-crazed maniac, and even Dr. Pretorius's manpile waxes philosophically and sensually about the weakness of human flesh, and the power he has in the fleshless realm beyond. It's a lot for a 90 minute film to bite off, but this is why I love horror as a genre. So much weirdness can be taken at face value that you're left with the experiences of the characters. And here, the experiences are mind rending.
Other films I thought of: Re-Animator is the most obvious choice, because all of the same principle players were involved and obviously there are a lot of thematic similarities. Then there's The Void, which involve a secret Lovecraftian cult summoning ancient blob monsters in the basement of a rural hospital. But that one isn't nearly as much fun. The misshapen body horror stuff isn't quite at The Thing levels, but it's in the same ballpark at least.
Miscellany: I really want a Miskatonic University shirt.
Recommendation: Holy shit yes. Are you kidding? Did you even read what I wrote?
Remarkably Good
"It ate him...bit off his head...like a gingerbread man!"
I never got too deep into the writing of H.P. Lovecraft. I think I've got a pretty good understanding of the mythology and what he was interested in, but I've only read one or two of his short stories, and by the time I got around to it, I was old enough to care about the INSANE amount of eugenics style racism woven into each tale. It kinda takes you out of the story, and you begin rooting for the ancient ones to devour us all.
But we are all in luck, because his writing was given new life in the medium of film, with much of the bunk race science removed in favor of much better things like gratuitous nudity. Similar to Philip K. Dick (who was a much better writer, idea-man, and human being), Lovecraft had a couple of his stories adapted for the silver screen in the 1980's, although "adapted" may be too generous a term. Like Dick's four page short stories that were turned into 2+ hour sci-fi action epics, Lovecraft's simple tales of cheating death and exploring other dimensions were chopped and screwed into fun exploitation and body horror films in that blessed decade.
The most well-known is 1985's Re-Animator (directed by beautiful weirdo Stuart Gordon), a simple film about a darkly genius medical student (played by Jeffrey Combs) who, in his work with an Austrian mad scientist, has learned of a serum that reverses death. He injects some of the med school cadavers (and eventually his murdered med school professor) with the serum, and things quickly get out of hand. At one point a decapitated head, held up by its own body, performs oral sex on (or I guess gave head to) Barbara Crampton.
If you've never seen Re-Animator, it should absolutely be on your "must see" list. It's easily one of the best horror movies of the 80's, perfectly blending dark humor with great practical effects and a film noir aesthetic.
Rather than tread over the same ground again, Gordon moved on the very next year to make 1986's From Beyond (also loosely based on a Lovecraft story). He got Jeffrey Combs to play the scientist protagonist and 'must be comfortable with nudity' Barbara Crampton to play the female lead once again. The result? Well…
What's it about: Dr. Pretorius, a reclusive sex pervert who is also a science genius, and Crawford (Combs), his physicist assistant create a rift between our dimension and The Beyond using a device that looks like it was taken from a laboratory scene in some cheesy 1950's b-movie. Exposure to this rift causes Pretorius to lose his head and Crawford to suffer extreme pineal gland growth (because this is the gland that allows sight into the beyond, as we all know). A federal scientist, Dr. McMichaels (Crampton) and Bubba, her bodyguard (played by Dawn of the Dead's Ken Foree) want to recreate the experiment as a potential method to cure schizophrenia (???), so they drag Crawford back to the lab to reopen the rift. You can see where this is going.
What's interesting: Uh, like the whole thing? It's so fast paced and there's so much weirdness abound, you easily get sucked into the madness. But let's pick somewhere to start: the special effects.
I'm a cold stone sucker for practical effects, and From Beyond is a special effects team's beautiful interdimensional nightmare. When we get to see Dr. Pretorius again, in his newly evolved (or maybe devolved) form in the Beyond, he's more or less a dripping and misshapen corpulent manpile, with his mushed up head on a telescopic neck-like appendage. So that's cool.
Then there's a giant Tremors-esque grabboid monster that somehow gets into the basement of Dr. Pretorius' house and chews off all of Crawford's body hair. That's also very cool.
And then there's the scene where a bunch of tiny interdimensional termites eat Bubba's flesh away, leaving him a half-devoured, visceral blob on the floor.
Dang. Super cool.
Then there are the performances. Combs picks up right where he left off as a weird but likable scientist who quickly gets in way over his head. Nobody plays a weirdo quite like Combs (well, maybe Crispin Glover), and by the time his pineal gland has wormed its way out of his hairless head and he's sucking people's brains out of their eye sockets, you're hooked on his character. He's wonderful.
Barbara Crampton goes from buttoned up, Reagan era, businesswoman to thirsty af dominatrix leather momma so seamlessly and in such a short amount of time that it's entirely possible that Crampton's acting range is limitless. I also joked earlier that she must be comfortable with nudity, because she gets disrobed and groped by the afore mentioned corpulent manpile in a truly revolting scene. But nobody can pull it off quite like she can.
Before:
After:
This ties into the major subtext of the film: tapping into this metaphysical pineal third sight also unlocks each of the characters libidinal desires. Pretorius becomes (somehow) even more of a horrible sex monster than he was in our corporeal dimension, Crawford becomes insatiably drawn to brains and knowledge (and has a very penile pineal gland that probes about, searching for fresh brains), and McMichaels wants to dominate the male world that has dominated her for so long in her professional life, hence the hypersexual dominatrix getup. Thanks to tapping into the beyond, each are free to wallow in their own sexual filth, unfettered by societal norms or even the laws of physics. This is why undertaking this dangerous experiment becomes irresistible for them.
Overall, I think the most interesting thing about the film is its fearless approach to the subject matter. Any old director could make a movie about an interdimensional terror that's either a creature feature or a blood-and-guts slasher, but Gordon and his crew instead drill into the psyche of the film's characters and torture them. Crawford develops an insatiable hunger for human brains, McMichaels becomes a sex-crazed maniac, and even Dr. Pretorius's manpile waxes philosophically and sensually about the weakness of human flesh, and the power he has in the fleshless realm beyond. It's a lot for a 90 minute film to bite off, but this is why I love horror as a genre. So much weirdness can be taken at face value that you're left with the experiences of the characters. And here, the experiences are mind rending.
Other films I thought of: Re-Animator is the most obvious choice, because all of the same principle players were involved and obviously there are a lot of thematic similarities. Then there's The Void, which involve a secret Lovecraftian cult summoning ancient blob monsters in the basement of a rural hospital. But that one isn't nearly as much fun. The misshapen body horror stuff isn't quite at The Thing levels, but it's in the same ballpark at least.
Miscellany: I really want a Miskatonic University shirt.
Recommendation: Holy shit yes. Are you kidding? Did you even read what I wrote?
Remarkably Good
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