Getting My Feet Wet Again, with the Wettest Movie I Could Find

"Beyond Midnight Movies" Comes Back..."From Beyond

I: "This guy was into some weird shit..."

It's funny how life works out sometimes, isn't it? And I feel that thought in itself is a bit of a cliche, but I guess that it is one for very good reason. 

When I last did anything with this blog, it was nearly two full years ago. No one read it then, for the most part. And more than likely no one will read it now, because why would they?

But I guess I need to write something, and maybe even finish it, because I want to. Not for anyone else but me. 

And you, if you're reading this.

And if memory serves, I started with a Lovecraft review last time...

So I suppose a brief explanation, then I'll get right into the goop.

Two years ago, there was a health crisis sweeping the globe. You might have noticed it. During the time now referred to as "Lockdown", I started this little blog as something to do. I kept at it for a while, but like a lot of things in my very strange little life, I lost interest and focus and was not able to pick the damn thing back up.

Then my mom died.

Then we had to sell the house I grew up in.

Then I had to find a place out there in the wild for my partner and our dog.

Then I quit my job.

Then construction in the building we're living in forced us into staying at a shitty hotel for the next few weeks.

Now I'm here, trying to find a thing to focus on and write that isn't someone else's idea of what I should be doing with my now ample time. So here we are. 

Along on this little hotel adventure (paid for on my apartment building's dime, might I add), we brought my shelf of Desert Island movies. Amongst their contents?

Oh just a few old faves... Time Bandits, Young Frankenstein, Predator, Conan the Barbarian, Beastmaster, The Mummy, The 'Burbs. Just some essentials... oh and today's subject. 

As you may recall...I'm into some weird shit.

II: The Desert Island reviews, part one: "Humans are such easy prey..."

Now: What makes a movie worthy of a "Desert Island" spot? It's not just anybody that gets the nom. For me, it always comes down to one key component before any other: Re-watchability. I must be down for this movie any damn time. For example, someone says Predator?

I say:

Lookin' GOOD, Dutch...

Different things can make each film on my Desert Island shelf re-watchable. For instance, I love rewatching Predator for all the ways it subverts the Slasher genre, placing Arnold as cinema's most unlikely Final Girl. And Young Frankenstein has the distinction of being funnier every time I watch it.

So what's special about From  Beyond?

Well, that's all down to one and only Big JC...

And you better believe he's comin'...

That's right, I mean JEFFREY COMBS...

He features in several of my Desert Island films, as Re-Animator is also on that list- but this one is a special favorite. He may have specialized in horror as playing villains and creeps, but this was a rare outing for him to really play a hero for most of the film's runtime, albeit a tragic one.

In From Beyond, he plays Crawford Tillinghast, a Miskatonic University alum who is doing some research with his mentor, the name-as-film-reference Dr. Pretorius, on a machine called the Resonator. What's the Resonator DO, you ask? 

Well... according to the text, it stimulates parts of the brain (namely the pineal gland) to allow us to see things we normally can't perceive. And in so doing makes us vulnerable to the machinations of those unknowable and formless beings that come... FROM BEYOND...real cosmic horror shit. 

But in the sub-text? Well, it makes you horny. 

VERY horny.

So it's less a Resonator and more a Hentai-Powered De-Repression Machine...

Sorry, what...?

What's Hentai....?

Ask your mother.

III: "It *bit* off his head...like a ginger bread man..."

So let's just dive right in there!

Part of the fun of watching this movie for the first time is reveling in just how far it goes, every scene another turn in a rather stomach-churning game of one-upsmanship that leaves you wondering what the hell they're going to pull next.

This is a big part of the reason director Stewart Gordon had the idea of using a lot of the same actors from film to film in his series of Lovecraft adaptations, and in his filmography in general, coming from a theater background and being accustomed to a 'company' of actors who knew his style and what strange antics may be asked of them. In other words, Hey if we already know that Barbara Crampton is down for having a severed head between her legs in Re-Animator, then the gooey shenanigans of this film are going to be fine!

Pictured: Just some folks on their way to some innocent good times... 

And thus, the film starts off with a bang, when the first successful test of the Resonator is ruined by Doc P deciding to just IMMEDIATELY take things way too far (which we learn over the course of the narrative is just his natural tendency), turning the big bastard up to 11, and attracting more than the strange eels and jellyfish that exist just out of phase with the rest of reality, invisible to us without the kooky contraption... as he puts it: "Something....is COMING."and in a way that implies he might be too. Like I said, this movie is just comically horny in certain sections.

Anyway, that Something does indeed Come along and just...well, we don't see precisely what happens, but when the cops show up to the noise complaint made by a nosy neighbor, all they find is a headless corpse, a lot of blood, and a grad-student with an axe...

This is where the adaptation of the original seven page short story stops and the film goes into it's own take on further exploring this tale of uncharted territory and hidden desires being made manifest, and it's also where my vagaries stop and my SPOILERS start, so from here on out if you haven't seen this gory, gooey gem, and want to? Go do it, or just be warmed that the fun of the first watch is NOT being ready.

So from here, the film is carried largely by the three leads assembled in the minutes after that opening: the trio of Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, and Indiana native Ken Foree as Crawford, Dr. Katherine McMicheals, and policeman "Bubba" Brownlee. They are headed back to the house where it all went down after Katherine busts him out of the mental ward he's being held in. I honestly can't think of what real-life investigation would be conducted like this, but the character has her reasons for wanting to go about it this way.

Now, a quick aside towards our leads: the chemistry between them all is fantastic, and the team really has some fun in their bizarre adventures together that make me wish that this had been a Lovecraft-themed "Monster of the Week" show in the vein of Kolchak: the Night Stalker or The X-Files instead of just a movie, despite how much I love the core premise. I'm just a sucker for the Paranormal Procedural though...

 Next time on FROM BEYOND!: Crawford has
to explain why his search history is just 'tentacles' over and over again!

Now, where this film does show it's flaws is in the kind of loose, unstructured feeling that the movie has in this middle third, which can make summing it up difficult because we do kind of just roll from one set-piece to the next. It has an almost improvised feel to it, that I think is unavoidable due to the nature of what our characters are trying to do: figure out how this machine works, why it does what it does, and what it has to do with the death of Dr. Pretorius. But where it excels is coupling the themes of repression, madness, addiction, and going too far with top-notch creature work and gore effects.

Of which there are so, so many. 

 

SO

MANY

...AND WE HAVE WORM-SIGN!!!!

And if you are like me and absolutely adore practically shot and built creatures, make-up, and puppets? This literal monstrosity is always a good time, no questions asked.

And while, like I said, the best of the film is bogged down in a sort of formless "and-then" style of storytelling, it keeps a bit of its unpredictability in re-watching because of it, at least for me. 

Will I ever be as shocked by Jeffrey Combs kneeing a doctor in the gut, biting out her eye and greedily slurping out her brain as I was the first time? (In which witnesses can attest I pressed myself back into my chair while gleefully screaming "OH MY FUCKING GOD!")

In a funny way, the film mirrors the strange transformations being taken on by certain characters: the way that Pretorius becomes a creature capable of twisting and remaking his flesh, as his will dominated the monster that ate him, subsuming it into his own twisted, perverse, sadistic sense of self, the film becomes whatever it likes from one scene to the next, a dark comedy one moment, a gonzo creature feature the next, a campy bit of erotic titillation after that, then a sad, twisted love story with a tragic ending (but still wet and goopy to the last, er Drop...).

Let me get you a towel...

And as a last note, on my latest re-watch, it finally clicked why the villain creeps me out beyond the obvious: fucker reminds me of Jordan Peterson. But that's fodder for a much longer article that I'm not interested in writing...

That's all for this one. More a straight-forward review than I usually do, but don't worry- I've got something more substantial coming down the pipe, and I don't just mean all the junk food I've been living off of in this goddamn hotel room...

NEXT TIME: The Riddle... of Steal?