13 Nights of Shocktober: From Beyond (1986)

by A.J. 

This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month-long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. So, for the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some horror movie recommendations to help you celebrate Shocktober.

Night 11: Lovecraft/Stuart Gordon Night

“I saw you die” 

–“No. Not die. Just pass beyond”

From Beyond (1986)

One of the few filmmakers daring enough to adapt the unfilmable eldridge horrors of H.P. Lovecraft to film was Stuart Gordon. His most famous film is also perhaps the most famous Lovecraft adaptation, the 1985 cult classic Re-Animator. The following year he adapted another Lovecraft story for the big screen: the grotesque but entertaining From Beyond. Aside from Roger Corman and Edgar Allen Poe or Kenneth Branagh and Shakespeare, I can’t think of many other filmmakers so closely linked to a particular author. Gordon’s film naturally updates and expands the original Lovecraft short story but it feels true to the essence of Lovecraft's weird fiction. 

The stars of Re-Animator, Barbara Crampton and Jeffery Combs also have the starring roles in From Beyond. Crawford Tillinghast (Combs), a scientist charged with murder, agrees to recreate the experiment that really killed his mentor Dr. Pretorious (Ted Sorrel) in order to prove his innocence. Crawford’s psychologist, Dr. McMichaels (Crampton) and a detective, Bubba Brownlee (Ken Foree), return to the house where the original experiment was conducted; unsightly horrors from other dimensions await. The experiment involved a machine called The Resonator that enhances the senses so that a person can see and even interact with creatures that exist all around us but in another plane of existence. Crawford repairs The Resonator and instead of things going horribly wrong, they go horribly right. The Resonator also has an addictive quality, so Crawford and McMichaels keep revisiting the machine. They also learn that Pretorius still exists as an evil being in the other dimension and has become an inhuman monster. 

The flying eel-like creatures are very much like something from a Lovecraft story but they are on the tamer end of the horror special effects. All of the special effects are gross and scary in just the right way and still pack tremendous shock value. The mutating Pretorius-monster is grotesque and slimy and, unlike other movie monsters, doesn’t become less scary the more it is shown. When one character’s “third eye” becomes so enhanced that it pops out of their skull and moves like the false worm of an angler fish, it is truly disgusting, and perfect for the movie. There’s enough story and suspense to keep From Beyond from being just a geek show, but this film is not for the faint of heart.  

The characters are not terribly complex but they are not flimsy either. By far the movie’s biggest asset is Ken Foree who plays Bubba not like a character in a horror movie but as a normal person. He is terrified and perplexed by what he sees and experiences, can’t understand Crawford and McMichaals’s obsession with the other dimension, and doesn’t see the point in staying there longer. Combs is over-the-top , as he usually is, but this is what makes him believable as a mad scientist. Crampton gives a good performance but the film doesn't find anything too interesting for her to do aside from becoming possessed and suddenly and randomly being dressed in S&M bondage gear.

From Beyond does a great job of showing us how one of Lovecraft’s narrators would have ended up insane. There is definitely a sense of camp value but the film still takes the material seriously enough to be scary and horrifying. If anything the camp undertones of the first half of the film help you accept the plot and outrageous visuals. It meets you halfway instead of talking down to you like so many recent horror films.

From Beyond is streaming for free on Tubi, PlutoTV, and Hoopla.