Release Year: 1986
Country: United States
Starring: Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, Ken Foree, Ted Sorel, Carolyn Purdy-Gordon, Bunny Summers, Bruce McGuire, Del Russel, Dale Wyatt, Karen Christenfeld, Andy Miller, John Learner, Regina Bleesz
Writers: Dennis Paoli, Brian Yuzna (storyline), Stuart Gordon (storyline)
Directors: Stuart Gordon
Cinematographer: Mac Ahlberg
Music: Richard Band
Producer: Charles Band, Bruce William Curtis, Brian Yuzna

As Keith and Todd have already noted this month, it’s very difficult to adapt Lovecraft to the screen. You can pretty much guarantee that a concept like “unutterable,” “unimaginable,” or “incomprehensible” will play a dominant thematic role in any given story of his, and we haven’t yet worked out a way to defy our own senses onscreen so as to portray “impossible angles”. For what it’s worth, even the name Cthulhu, which most people pronounce “Kuh-THOO-loo,” and which Lovecraft sometimes advocated pronouncing as “KLOO-loo,” was meant to be a sort of guttural grinding noise wholly unsuited to the human vocal apparatus; thus, the name is merely a dim reflection.

I guess I’m pointing that out, despite that most of you probably already know it, because I think it’s easy to forget it sometimes in a world where you can get Cthulhu plush toys and “Cthulhu Saves… In Case He’s Hungry Later” bumper stickers. (Not that there’s anything wrong with either of those.) At the heart of Lovecraft’s fiction–or at least, his better fiction–is the idea that everything we take for granted as part of being human, everything that gives our lives meaning and stability, is nothing but a flimsy ruse, and should the veil be lifted the slightest bit before our eyes it would be infinitely worse than when mortals used to ask to see Zeus shortly before being burned to cinders by merely beholding his divine glory.

Ironically, his short story “From Beyond” illustrates that rather succinctly, despite that it’s one of his more mediocre efforts–not a terrible story, but then, nothing close to the sorts of visions he conjured at his best. The story depicts the narrator’s visit to an old friend, Crawford Tillinghast, who has invented a machine that he believes will stimulate dormant and unknown sense organs such that he will be able to see extradimensional creatures that live right at our elbows. You will not be surprised to learn of his success, but of course the narrator is, and he shares with us his experience of the different stages of the effects of the machine in increasing his perceptive faculties, right down to “inky” jellyfish which “flabbily” pulsate, physically moving through each other but also eating each other, and covering pretty much all space which to the human eye usually appears vacant and full of nothing but air. Of course, even less comprehensible horrors lurk in that other realm of the real, and the narrator is nearly exposed to them until he turns off the machine Chief Wiggum-style with a bullet.

So the choice of “From Beyond” as the source story for a movie is not necessarily an intuitive choice. It’s seven pages of things that the human eye cannot behold, and really it doesn’t have much “story” to it other than “I saw stuff and almost died, but then I shot the machine and lived, only to wish I hadn’t.” Other than the framing device, the whole story consists of sitting down in front of a machine. Character development consists of describing what a shriveled gargoyle Tillinghast has become. And, again, all of the visuals are meant to be literally impossible things which the eye is incapable of perceiving.

But then, Stuart Gordon and Brian Yuzna’s first choice was not this story. After the success of Herbert West: Re-Animator, the follow-up effort was originally slated to be Dagon. That didn’t end up happening, though, because Charles Band didn’t think that fish-people were sufficiently scary. With the potential for special effects in the mid-1980s for this crew, maybe he was right… but then, given that my experiences with Full Moon films have basically been a string of letdowns, I dunno if Charles Band is the authority I’d bow to in terms of what’s scary. Unless of course he were holding the purse strings, which I guess he was in this case… and he’d just directed/produced Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared Syn and Dungeonmaster (aka Ragewar), both of which are about as fun as weird movies get, so I’m sure that gave his opinion added clout. (Of course, neither film even approaches being scary, but… meh.)

Out of the possibilities that were offered as backups, Band picked “From Beyond.” It’s an interesting choice. Special effects in the 1980s were hardly up to the bizarre and immersive visuals described in the story; on the other hand, the basic premise was pretty simple, and it was short enough that the transmutation to a feature-length film more or less involved a minimal backbone of starting material and a lot of blank canvas upon which one could impose his own visions. That canvas was further maximized when the writers decided to use the short story as the prologue; by the time the film actually starts, the events in the short story have already taken place and we’re moving into what happens next.

…Though naturally there were some changes. Jeffrey Combs plays Crawford Tillinghast, who in this film is the protagonist, a researcher who is merely acting as a semi-willing assistant to the villain. Dr. Edward Pretorius (Ted Sorel) is that villain, as the apparent allusion to Bride of Frankenstein would suggest. He has gone insane with his obsession to access other planes of reality, and then in the disaster contained by the prologue, he disappears, and Tillinghast is sent to a mental institution.

Barbara Crampton, playing Dr. Katherine McMichaels, ends up being his only hope of getting out, but the catch is that they have to replicate Pretorius’ horrible experiment. Of course, Crampton comes in done up more or less like a librarian, with the glasses, the prim look, subdued makeup, and her hair pulled back tightly. This more or less foreshadows nudity and ‘risque’ stuff like leather and/or S&M… and of course, all of that is delivered by the film.

To make sure, though, that nothing goes unnecessarily awry (which of course means it will) is Bubba Brownlee, an ex-football player and current cop who serves as the escort for Tillinghast, who’s still under suspicion of having murdered Pretorius. Brownlee is played by Ken Foree, who’s always a welcome sight on my TV screen. He’s not given a whole lot to work with here, in that his role basically consists of saying, “Are you crazy? Let’s get the hell out of here!” and “Damn, I’m hungry! Let’s get some food!” at various appropriate times throughout the film. On the other hand, those are probably the smartest things to say at a number of points in this movie, as well as maybe throughout much of life, so I guess Brownlee’s just a guy with his head screwed on straight, which of course leaves him sticking out like a sore thumb on the end of a cthulhoid pseudopod in a film full of Lovecraftian characters.

The experiment, of course, works, and while Tillinghast wants to get the hell out of the house, and Brownlee insists on getting the hell out, Dr. McMichael becomes obsessed with the need to see more, hoping that she can cure schizophrenia by demonstrating that schizophrenics just have overactive pineal glands. As she continues to repeat the experiment, it seems unlikely that her theory is correct, unless a leading symptom of schizophrenia is universally wanting to bang everything that moves. Despite that Pretorius, in a now pseudoplasmic and generally gooier form that defies the structural integrity of the human frame, makes horrifically unwanted advances on her as she turns on the machine again, Dr. McMichael becomes what we might call “preternaturally horny.” Think a slightly less creepy version of the possessed Dana Barrett in Ghostbusters and you’ll have the basic idea. Well, add leather and more of an S&M vibe. But although she’s hot and naked, there’s definitely a sense that something’s off (um… that is, besides her clothes).

The rationale by the moviemakers is that scientific understanding of the pineal has advanced since Lovecraft’s time, and it’s known to play a role in human arousal… hence, a machine whose vibrations excite and “develop” the pineal gland really gets Dr. McMichael going. Of course, this too is a significant departure from Lovecraftian writing overall. I’ve seen Gordon say in interviews that sex, usually very weird sex, is implied in Lovecraft’s writing albeit rarely seen; thinking back, I guess that is sort of true, and much of that is probably the influence of Arthur Machen. However, Lovecraft almost never even had a woman in his stories unless it was somebody’s black maid who had some odd bit of ‘ethnic’ (read: non-”Aryan”) folklore to relate that would help his academic male characters piece together an eldritch puzzle that they would soon regret piecing together. Anyone who’s read the “revisions” that Lovecraft did for other authors knows just how poor his handling of romance was… If you thought his dialogue was stilted, read a kissing scene that he wrote or rewrote for someone else. Yech. Famously described as an “adequately excellent lover,” whatever that means, by his reputedly beautiful wife, one of his biographers suggested that he was gay and/or hopelessly neurotic or both, and the other had no better rebuttal but that Lovecraft had a sex drive that helped to define the lowest ends of the human spectrum.

To put it crudely, no one really wants an hour-and-a-half sausage fest (not men, not women, nobody). And the reasoning is fair enough; if the pineal gland stimulates sexual arousal, then one might become more sensual. Hence, as they discuss on the commentary, sensation takes precedence over distinctions like pleasure and pain, and so S&M seems “natural.” Fair enough.

For that matter, no harm no foul on adding nudity, especially if it’s principally that of Barbara Crampton, but this goes to show how much this movie was a creation of the moviemakers; Lovecraft offered a platform from which to jump, but although I really enjoy the film, in terms of a sensibilities standpoint it’d be hard to call “Lovecraftian.” While the original story of “Herbert West: Re-Animator” was basically burlesque, loaded with terrible humor, much of which was very racist (oh look–he’s comparing large black men to gorillas! Ha… ha… *cough*), “From Beyond” is just kind of a mediocre and very straight-laced tale of a machine and the metaphysical window it opens onto the jellyfish that we apparently breathe every day. When it comes to Re-Animator, there’s sort of a natural dark, physical humor to the business of the dead (and or undead) human anatomy, hence the sort of natural humor in most zombie movies. From Beyond, however, adds the humor, and the sex, and the copious gore all on its own. While people are also eaten, or somehow disappeared, by the extradimensional creatures in the story, all that remains behind are their empty clothes.

The special effects for the film are, actually, quite impressive. There’s lots of weird stuff that happens to human flesh here; it melts, or grows, or stretches impossibly and takes on eldritch forms… There’s a lot of blood, too, and some rather large monsters that are pretty impressive in their artistry and execution as props. The creatures and effects in some ways feel too physical and earthly to be Lovecraftian, but on the other hand, they’re pretty damned cool. Although it’s probably unnecessary to mention it, I’ve long preferred the view of J.L. Borges on translation–i.e. it doesn’t transfer, it multiplies–and hence, although I think it’s fun and informative to compare the movie to the story, I don’t feel as though departure from the “original” should result in criticism unless the filmmakers did a terrible job and the story offers clues regarding how it could have been done better.

So while my ideal version of From Beyond would be more surreal and a little closer to Lovecraft’s original story, it would also probably have much more narrow appeal and a greater likelihood of failure as a movie both financially and artistically. What Gordon and co. have given us is a movie unto itself which is hard not to enjoy, since it’s not just loaded with gore, nudity, dark humor, and general all-around weirdness, but all of those things are executed with care and intelligence.

I feel no need to summarize the whole plot for you, but suffice it to say that things continue to spiral further and further out of control until a final showdown goes down at the Pretorius house. Lives are lost, battles of a sort are fought, and Pretorius begins to be able to turn on the machine from the other side–it’s not really discussed openly, but we can presume this would risk the creation of a portal that could turn the world inside-out with pink light, or at least get everyone eaten by metaphysical jellyfish and eels. Or raped by the Dr. Pretorius blob.

If you’re looking for a film that faithfully captures the feel of Lovecraft’s writing, then you’re likely to be disappointed (note: this is if “faithful” to you speaks of the ideas behind Cthulhu, rather than simply having something squid-headed appear at some point). However, if you’re just looking for a fun and interesting part of the Lovecraftian legacy, From Beyond is a unique and underrated film about the dangers of playing with one’s pineal gland using vibrating machines and mood lighting. Jeffrey Combs portrays a more fearful character than his over-the-top Herbert West, but he’s still in fine form as the increasingly-insane Crawford Tillinghast. Barbara Crampton shows fine versatility in going from the straight-laced young psychologist to a laced-corset-wearing scantily-leather-clad sex symbol to a woman hellbent on ending the madness. And Ken Foree… man, Ken Foree could have played the driver of an ice cream truck and still made the guy seem like an affable and level-headed badass. In fact… if he were alive today, I’d probably write exactly that script with him in mind, and then file it away with all of those stories I’ve never published.

So From Beyond‘s source material is less well-suited to the over-the-top approach that Gordon and co. adopted in Re-Animator, and I’d say that in the final analysis, it’s probably less successful as a film that way. On the other hand, From Beyond stands on its own as a creative and worthy piece of Lovecraftiana, managing to take a middle-of-the-road piece by Lovecraft (am I going for the record of “most hyphenated phrases in one review?) and turning it into a movie that’s probably a lot more enjoyable and memorable than the source of its inspiration. Now if only we could get more new Lovecraft adaptations out of Gordon, rather than constant talk about extending the Re-Animator franchise…