From Beyond

Like many people, I was renting way too many horror videos back in the 80's and the distributors were more than happy to provide endless garbage to fulfil my needs. As a result, "From beyond" came as a suprising delight.

First of all, it was delayed in England due to censorship issues. (Always an exciting moment for a Horror fan!!) And second, it was from the Director of "Re-animator" and produced by Brian Yuzna. Two wonderfully diseased gentleman who were single handedly raising the bar of low budget horror with imagination, originality and, lots of Goo!!

"From Beyond" is loosely based on an H.P Lovecraft short story and usually Lovecraft is considered unfilmable because of his bizarre subject matter. But Gordon pushed the envelope of bizarre visuals in "Reanimator" and showed no sign of backing down with "Beyond"

It tells the tale of two scientists attempt to stimulate the pineal gland in the brain (thought by some to be the third eye of mythology) using a resonating sound wave. Their experiment are successful at first and they see what lives around us all the time, Invisible to humans until now!

Then "Something" comes and one Scientist dies horribly. The other is arrested but released in to the care of a psychologist and a cop and the three return to the experiment site and try to unravel the mystery of the scientists death.

Pretty straightforward so far. But once they get the old resonator running again. Those from the "other side" want to stay here and all hell breaks loose! There is so much weirdness here that I could go on for ages. Suffice to say, we have rogue pineal glands snaking about. Some flesh eating flies. Giant worms that use acid for saliva, a quick bout of S&M dress up and a lot of screaming and gloop.

The main bad guy, with the wonderful name of Pretorious is worth the price of the DVD alone. He slowly transforms into a Lovecraftian nightmare of manipulated flesh and lust, Fantastic!!

Jeffrey Combs is as intense, if not more so, than he was in "Reanimator" and Barbara Crampton does the bespectacled doctor to gorgeous screamer effortlessly.

Most guys who were teenagers back in '86 will remember the Black leather moment above all others but there is more than this in this deliriously overblown piece of '80's madness!