I’m having a hard time with this one. The From Beyond movie poster and VHS box scared the crap out of me as a kid. Even now, having seen the movie and knowing there’s nothing as visually creepy in the film itself, the imagery disturbs me. Villain Ted Sorel apparently having his face melted off. Only he’s not. He’s growing into a huge flesh monster. The film goes all out with Sorel’s flesh monster, while admirably executed, it’s not convincingly executed. From Beyond can’t do with its budget what it wants to do with its special effects and director Gordon doesn’t quite know how to compensate.
Turning Barbara Crampton into an uncontrollable nymphomaniac for a fourth or fifth of the runtime is one of screenwriter Dennis Paoli’s solutions. It’s not a successful solution, it’s an unfortunate one. Crampton plays a compassionless psychiatrist charged with figuring out if crazy man Jeffrey Combs (who’s pretty darn good) is really crazy or if he and Sorel did figure out a way to activate the sixth sense.
From Beyond has a lot of neat ideas but Gordon and Paoli don’t translate them into any good ideas for the film. Even after it promises Crampton, Combs and a wonderfully affable Ken Foree in a haunted mansion, it doesn’t deliver. Crampton and Combs have no romantic chemistry, which gets to be a problem. Especially since–even though Combs can imply a creepy romantic chemistry–all Crampton is doing is a nymphomaniac trope. Sure, she’s being influenced by an enlarged pineal gland but it’s awful. It’s not disturbing because the special effects aren’t good enough. And, like I said before, Gordon doesn’t know how to compensate.
Good supporting performance from Carolyn Purdy-Gordon.
There’s a lot of good technical work on From Beyond. Editor Lee Percy does a fantastic job. Mac Ahlberg’s photography provides a visual continuity Gordon’s direction does not. Richard Band’s music is good. Even Gordon does well, just not when he’s doing the haunted mansion sci-fi stuff. He seems to be banking on the appeal of the cheesy special effects; From Beyond is supposed to be absurdly funny and Gordon just tries too hard to get there. In the end, it’s not absurd, it’s not funny, it’s just exasperating. And with a less than ninety minute runtime, exasperating is a terrible quality. Especially since there’s so much energy and enthusiasm (in so many bad directions).
Hell, I’m exasperated just trying to talk about it.
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CREDITS
Directed by Stuart Gordon; screenplay by Dennis Paoli, based on an adaptation by Brian Yuzna, Paoli and Gordon of the story by H.P. Lovecraft; director of photography, Mac Ahlberg; edited by Lee Percy; music by Richard Band; production designer, Giovanni Natalucci; produced by Yuzna; released by Empire Pictures.
Starring Jeffrey Combs (Crawford Tillinghast), Barbara Crampton (Dr. Katherine McMichaels), Ted Sorel (Dr. Edward Pretorius), Ken Foree (Bubba Brownlee), Carolyn Purdy-Gordon (Dr. Bloch), Bruce McGuire (Jordan Fields) and Bunny Summers (Neighbor Lady).
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