From Beyond

“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)

Raw Force

Cameron Mitchell had to be, without question, the Hardest Working Man NOT in Show Business.

His countless contributions to this site and associated book (Mine’s Bigger Than Yours! The 100 Wackiest Action Movies) cannot be discounted, and he came with a work ethic that made uber-prolific Vincent Price look like a dilettante.

In Raw Force, our man Cam, who has a whopping 244 acting credits to his name (7 of which have “kill” in the title), adds another cheapo action flick to the mix here. He plays a gnarly charter boat captain, Dodds, in this, a tale of a cursed island inhabited by the ghosts of dishonored warriors that’s visited by martial arts students, from of all places, the suburb known for cheesy live TV tapings, Burbank, California.

Call it a pilgrimage of sorts? Adventure tourism? Who knows?

Turns out the geography, Warrior’s Island, is not just a final resting place /Great Dojo in the Sky for disgraced combatants, but is also a haven for trafficking of all kinds, both animate and inanimate and is inhabited by cannibal monks. And for whatever reason, it has an ad in a glossy tourist brochure!

And the students, along with an assortment of rando tourists, have to battle their way back home, and best chimerical killers, piranhas, sleazy mercenaries, you name it.

And this film has more nudity than you can shake a phallic-shaped stick at.

Raw Force is an attempt at stuffing every possible kind of genre into a narrative – Kung-Fu/T&A/Zombie/Women in Prison/Cannibal – and it’s made on the cheap in the Philippines, so, of course, had to feature perennial portly local, Vic Diaz.

**3/4 (out of 5)