From Beyond

From Beyond (1986)

Runtime: 85 minutes

Directed by: Stuart Gordon

Starring: Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, Ted Sorrel, Ken Foree, Carolyn Purdy-Gordon

From: Empire Pictures

An incredibly erotic movie... including the sight of Ken Foree in tiny red bikini briefs.

There is a melancholy reason as to why I saw this film last night; John Carl Buechler was one of the people responsible for making the effects here look great for the small budget. He did that for many B movies in the 80's and 90's and also directed the likes of the 7th Friday the 13th (that being disappointing is more due to the MPAA than him) and Troll, which is much better than Troll 2. Well, a few days ago news broke that he has stage IV prostate cancer and well, the United States health care system being the way it is, his family is broke so they've had to use Go Fund Me to try and offset the massive costs. The horror community was affected by this sad news so already many thousands of dollars have been reached. From what little I've seen and heard from him on the likes of horror documentaries, he seems like a cool and nice dude so this happening to him is pretty awful.

From Beyond (based upon an H.P. Lovecraft tale) is pretty wild. Two brilliant scientists create a “Resonator” that engages the pineal gland to experience a sixth sense but that causes a crossover with a parallel dimension filled with grotesque sights. One of them dies so the other is accused of murder and locked up in a mental hospital. A young lady doctor starts to believe him so those two plus police officer Ken Foree try to duplicate the experiment, but things go REAL bad and there is body horror; what a year 1986 was for that, between this film and The Fly.

This was filmed in Italy at a studio Charles Band acquired (it did belong to Dino DeLaurentiis) and for only a few million bucks the movie still looks like a quality production and the only thing that looks dated is some of the optical effects. Like in The Thing, horrifying mangled creations are seen and they are terrifying. Credit goes to Buechler and the rest of that crew for making those creatures with limited resources. I also have to acknowledge the nice job that director Stuart Gordon did, along with the cinematography from Mac Ahlberg (at times the movie is bathed in neon colors) and the main cast of cult actors Foree, Barbara Crampton and Jeffrey Combs were the perfect level of over the top for this insane tale.

As I mentioned, this is pretty sexual as the film connected that gland with a person's sex drive; this includes some S&M, which I'll presume was involved in situations that were more loving and caring than the 50 Shades saga...