FROM BEYOND (1986) Dir: Stuart Gordon U.K BLU RAY REVIEW

We have an epic 7 page review from Shawn Francis today, looking at the upcoming U.K Blu-Ray of the extremely bizarre H.P Lovecraft adaptation, FROM BEYOND. The Blu-Ray is released by Second Sight and comes with a host of special features as well as newly commissioned artwork from U.K artist and renowned horror poster creator, Graham Humpfries. The disc is released on 25/02/2013 or 02/25/13 for our American readers...Check Shawn's review after the jump...

Written By Shawn Francis

I was first introduced to the work of H.P. Lovecraft when I was in seventh grade. I was scouring a local bookstore for something good to buy when I ventured into an area I normally didn’t go, and came across one of his Del Rey editions. It was called, The Tomb And Other Tales. Even though I had never heard of this man in my life what prompted me to buy it was the cover art. A black and white picture of a man in the throes of agony totally encased in spider silk with a red spider clinging to him.

This struck many cords within me. At the time (still am) I was a big fan of giant insect and giant spider movies, and the latest one, I believe, I had seen around that time was Dan Curtis’s 1978 TV movie, CURSE OF THE BLACK WIDOW, where this woman literally transforms into a giant black widow spider and goes about creating the kind of havoc you would expect from such a creature. For some reason, I got it into my head the name of the book was Lovecraft, since it’s prominently featured, and was, obviously, about some kind of sinister spider creature.

I bought it, but when I got into the car and examined it more closely I saw it was a collection of tales from this author who had the name H.P. Lovecraft. I was not yet to be disappointed since I presumed the headlining tale, The Tomb, was the one that was about this spider creature. Well, I read it when I got home and saw no mention about spiders, spider creatures, or spider-women. In fact, some of the other tales didn’t have any mention of these things either. At least the ones I could understand since Lovecraft writes in an archaic language. And this archaic form of writing is why I didn’t initially latch onto him in the beginning.

Every few years after I would run into more of these Del Rey collections and with each one I began to see the genius within his tales, and his archaic writing style was less archaic in some of his more famous stories, which helped immensely.

I was a staunch Fangoria collector in the mid-80s and there were many noteworthy issues that alerted me to movies I had no idea were being made. One of these issues was #55. It was the photo down in the left hand corner that made me do a double take.

What the hell was this creature with a brain-like head and insect-like mandibles?!

Never had I seen anything like that in my life.

The caption underneath read, FROM BEYOND, Breeding Lovecraft’s creatures.

From Beyond?!

Lovecraft?!

Yeah, damn right I bought it.

By this time I was already familiar with Director, Stuart Gordon, thanks to his previous jaunt into Lovecraftian territory with his adaptation of RE-ANIMATOR (1985). But from what I read and saw of this From Beyond movie in that Fango issue, I knew this was going to be a much better adaptation than the one about Herbert West.

I have a vivid memory of one Sunday in October coming across the commercial for it and then going to school the next day and trying to secure a future ride, from one of my friends, to the movies for that coming Friday night. Sadly, despite talking one of my friends into wanting to see it (the only one among my circle of buddies who had a license) it did not show up at the local theater, or at the next closest one 35 minutes away at the mall.

Yes, I was beyond disappointed.

I ended up catching it on cable a year later, and taped it that very night as well.

When it came to the actual story the movie is based on I didn’t end up reading it until 1988 when I stumbled upon yet another one of those Del Rey books—The Lurking Fear And Other Stories—at a bookstore at the mall. I was a little taken aback that the tale only runs eight pages, and that Gordon’s adaptation was more of an inspiration rather than a loyal adaptation.

The tale is told from a first person point of view and we never learn anything about this person, not even a name, other than he’s a friend of this “crazed” scientist, Crawford Tillinghast, who previously was on the brink of a breakthrough with his research. This unnamed friend expresses alarm at what he’s going to do, and Tillingahst throws him out of his house in a rage. The tale actually begins months later after Tillinghast has sent his friend a friendly summons to come see him.

The scientist is now unhealthy looking and ushers his friend into the home, taking him up to his attic laboratory by candlelight. He has turned off the electricity, lies about why he did it and also lies about the whereabouts of his servants, telling his friend they quit three days before.

Tillinghast’s goal is to sit his friend down next his machine (Lovecraft never gave it a name, but Gordon certainly did), and show him what he has discovered. The scientist takes up a seat in front of him and while the machine is activating his buddy’s pineal gland and showing him what exists in a parallel dimension overlapping our own, he starts to turn sinister and begins to divulge what really happened to the servants, and why he kept the house in the dark.

Some “thing” came and “disintegrated” their bodies, and as he works his buddy up to an unheard state of fear, stating that these “things” are just over his shoulder, his unnamed friend, who always carries a gun with him now since getting mugged, shoots the apparatus thus putting an end to the horrors that were about to prey on him.

If you extremely familiar with Gordon’s movie, you can plainly see the film and tale are light years apart, but no so much that you can’t recognize the movie’s prologue as owing it’s creation to this particular source material. And lending credence to what Gordon has stated in many interviews that the rest of the movie is basically a sequel. Crawford Tillinghast (Jeffrey Combs) now becomes the “unnamed friend” for the movie, while Gordon creates a whole new pioneer into the unknown in the form of the equally and memorably named, Dr. Edward Pretorius (the late Ted Sorel) while redesigning Lovecraft’s “crowning cluster of glass bulbs” machine into an impressive strange piece of high tech art that uses tuning fork vibrations to activate the dormant psychic abilities of the pineal gland. Gordon even gives Lovecraft’s machine a name—the Resonator!

Once the “sequel” kicks in he introduces us to—gasp!—a woman, a psychiatrist by the name of Katherine McMichaels (Barbara Crampton), and a very blatant sexual vibe that takes shape in the Resonator being able to affect one’s sex drive while under it’s influence, not to mention giving his Dr. Pretorius an interest in hardcore bondage and sadomasochism.

Lovecraft was not a very “sexually expressive” writer, and rarely used women and/or sex in his fiction, Gordon was just the opposite, and one could make the argument that he was just reading between Lovecraft’s sexually repressed lines and simply bringing forth that which was already there to begin with, which he has stated in one of his many interviews he’s done over the years about why his adaptations get all “sexed up.”

Gordon also throws into the mix a detective by the name of Bubba Brownlee (Ken Foree) who’s been assigned to watch over McMicheals’ and Tillinghast as they all return to the scene of the crime in attempt to see if they can prove Tillinghast’s tale of slimy beings from beyond is true.

At some point, any movie dealing directly with any of Lovecraft’s tales has to, in some degree, show what the author was so deft at hinting at. The “unnamed thing” Stuart Gordon decides to showcase in the “sequel” comes in the form of another creature Lovecraft created in another tale, a Shoggoth, from his novella, ‘At The Mountains Of Madness.’ I personally find this appropriation and his interpretation of it a good fit for the rest of the movie. Ultimately Gordon’s version of FROM BEYOND may not adhere strictly to what Lovecraft wrote, but I do think he managed to imbibe it with enough of the author’s spirit to get the message across that this might be the kind of horror Lovecraft was truly seeing in his subconscious mind’s eye.

And in good Lovecraftian tradition the “unnamed thing” menacing the humans in the movie is never named, it’s only in Gordon’s included interview on the DVD and, I also believe, in the commentary where we learn that it was a shoggoth. And for those who have never seen this movie, or even heard of it until now, what does a Gordon interpreted shoggoth look like and what does it do? Think along the lines of Carpenter’s version of THE THING (1982) and then lace that thought with sex and you’ll have some idea what to expect when a brilliant sadomasochist gets “absorbed” into the body of a sentient otherworldly “amoeba,” and returns with a whole new biological form and purpose.

Like most endings to Lovecraft’s tales there are few if any “survivors,” and Gordon stayed true to that mandate. Madness and/or death are the only two things you can count on as the end result to any movie Stuart Gordon makes inspired by an H.P. Lovecraft story. And you can take that to the bank.

Second Sight has released the movie, region 2 locked, on DVD and blu-ray, and the 1.85:1 anamorphic transfer of the blu is gorgeous. I have never seen FROM BEYOND look this good. Ever. I have seen this movie countless times and when I watched it this time I found myself focusing on things I don’t normally focus on. Crampton’s blue eyes, when she’s first meeting Tillinghast in the asylum, will draw your attention more than ever before, so will the sweat stains on Jeffrey Combs’ shirt. I never noticed the momentary blur effect on the tuning forks when the eel is swimming around them. The various degrees of slime used to cover the creatures and abominations in the movie also stand out, not to mention the color palette in general. The remaster on 2007’s MGM transfer was stunning and made me love the film even more, but Second Sight takes it one step further, going above and beyond and turning the movie into a true piece of unmitigated eye-candy.

Second Sight included the PCM stereo as well as the DTS-HD 4.0, which was included on MGM’s 2007 DVD. I listen to all my movies on a pair of cordless headphones and found the PCM stereo to be crisper. With the 4.0 track I need to turn the volume way up to make out dialogue.

English subtitles for the hearing impaired have been included.

Before I move on to the extras, I want to state this is the Unrated Director’s Cut, the same cut MGM used, with the inclusion of the eye eating scene, a little more of Combs eating those brains, a bit more footage of Dr. Bloch (Carolyn Purdy-Gordon) trying to pull out Tillinghast’s uncooperative pineal gland with her tweezers, and more explicitness from Crampton’s ripping out of Comb’s pineal gland with her teeth.

All the extras from MGM’s DVD have been ported over, but before I get into them, Second Sight created four featurettes just for their edition, and I’d like to talk about those first:

‘Stuart Gordon On From Beyond’ (20:24) starts off with him taking questions after a screening of the movie, then moves into a one and one interview with him elsewhere in the theater as he talks about the movie, Lovecraft and his career. The featurette ends back at the screening with his wife joining him near the stage to answer a few questions as well. Most noteworthy is that he says John Carpenter’s THE THING (1982) was a big influence for this movie.

‘Gothic Adaptation—An Interview With Writer Dennis Paoli’ (16:02), here Paoli talks about his childhood friendship with Gordon, where it took him, why they can’t get any of their movies funded nowadays, and that large sections of the FROM BEYOND script were never filmed because the stuff they wanted to put in was too expensive. It was mostly showing more of that dimension that overlaps ours, which Lovecraft describes in the tale.

‘The Doctor Is In—An Interview With Barbara Crampton’ (14:28), here Crampton talks of how she got into acting and dissects her roles in RE-ANIMATOR (1985) and FROM BEYOND. She states FROM BEYOND is the one she likes better, as it concerns her character’s arc, and that she loved doing the scene where she put on the leather bondage outfit.

‘Monsters & Slime—The FX Of From Beyond’ (20:43) talks with three of the artists who worked on the film, John Naulin, Anthony Doublin and Gabe Bartalos, and they pretty much dissect what they did for the movie. Most revealing reminiscence comes from Naulin who tells how an accident with one of the studio’s doors in Rome resulted in him getting two of his fingers severed. I won’t spoil the details but a happy ending resulted when the Pope’s standby surgical team spent 5 hours reconstructing them. See religion is all that bad. Nowadays you couldn’t even tell anything had happened to them.

Now onto the features that have been ported over from MGM’s 2007 DVD. First up is ‘Reflections With Stuart Gordon: A Director’s Perspective’ (8:52) this is Stuart looking back on the movie, how it got made, lost footage, battles with MPAA, etc. DAGON (2001) was supposed to be his follow up to RE-ANIMATOR (1985) but Charles Band nixed that idea when he couldn’t wrap his mind around the concept, and that the footage he specifically took out of the movie before he ever submitted it to the MPAA is long gone, (i.e. thrown out).

‘The Editing Room—Lost And Found’ (4:45) is a short featurette on the process it took to integrate the footage MGM asked Gordon to cut out back into the film.

‘Interview With The Composer’ (4:33) is basically that, an interview with Richard Band who created the score for the movie.

‘Photo Montage’ (4:40) a nice collection of behind-the-scenes photos taken during production.

‘Storyboard To Film Comparison’ (1:22), the shortest featurette in the collection has Stuart Gordon showing some of the storyboards he used and giving advice to filmmakers about how to utilize them for maximum potential..

And last but not least a full length, jovial and informative commentary with Gordon, Producer, Brian Yuzna and stars, Jeffery Combs and Barbara Crampton.

Of all the Lovecraft adaptations Gordon, Yuzna and Dennis Paoli have collaborated on—RE-ANIMTOR (1985), FROM BEYOND (1986), CASTLE FREAK (1995), DAGON (2001), DREAMS IN THE WITCH-HOUSE (2005)—FROM BEYOND has always, and will always, be my favorite. And this properly remastered blu-ray transfer is the perfect punctuation for this adaptation.