“Dripping with mucus and goo” is about as close as you’d get to an endorsement from the famously horror-averse, Roger Ebert (who actually liked Stuart Gordon’s companion piece, Re-Animator). And it’s a pretty fitting descriptor for one of the slimiest films ever made.
From Beyond takes Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein into another dimension – literally, as a bonkers researcher stimulates human pineal glands to traverse alternative universes, all in the service of discovering a sixth sense.
The loony consciousness-expanding Dr. Pretorius (an obvious Bride of Frankenstein nod) deploys a very Universal Horror-like machine to tap his third eye. And it’s called The Resonator, which looks like one of those science museum orbs and sprouts tuning forks.
And speaking of outgrowths, post-stimulation, the doc shoots a proboscis out of his forehead proclaiming, “The greatest sensual pleasure there is is to know the desires of another.”
His underling/research assistant Dr Crawford Tillinghast (A-type uber-nerd as portrayed by Jeffrey Coombs), meanwhile, starts to hallucinate weird, floaty creatures and is instantly committed to a psych ward.
It’s there, that a CT scan reveals a stimulated pineal too, and the doc and a psych staffer accomplice, Dr. McMichaels (stunning scream queen Barbara Crampton) return to the Pretorius home to rebuild the Resonator device.
Now, From Beyond is a film that resonates with this reviewer. It’s funny, gory, gross and basically epic, a shade less good than Stuart Gordon’s other H.P. Lovecraft adaptation, Re-Animator, to which it’s oft-compared.
What’s amazing is that the Roman film crew cut its teeth on Leone and Fellini films (!) The cinema business is a strange beast and this is a strange film. In the best possible way.
**** (out of 5)
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