Stuart Gordon’s From Beyond wastes little time. After treating the audience to approximately thirty seconds of Jeffrey Combs turning dials, flipping switches, and typing away at a computer, the film gets aggressively weird at a rapid pace and remains cranked up to eleven until the end credits roll. I’m talking neon pink ghost eels wriggling through the air, Combs in a (not totally unconvincing) bald cap sucking brains out through eye sockets, Ken Foree grappling with an enormous lamprey while wearing nothing but a pair of red briefs, Barbara Crampton clad in leather bondage gear, and plenty of slimy, writhing tentacles (yes, all of this is rather suggestive—which is, of course, entirely by design).
Needless to say, I greatly admire the movie’s sheer audacity. Its plot and themes are the perfect blend of classic H. P. Lovecraft and quintessential Brian Yuzna: mad science meets inexplicable supernatural phenomena; physical transformations, psychological decay, and the gradual erosion of humanity, conventional morality, and social norms; body horror and existential dread par excellence. Dare I risk admitting that I preferred it to Re-Animator? From Beyond is everything that an ‘80s splatter flick should be—gleefully grotesque, unapologetically absurd, and utterly captivating.
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