From Beyond – Avoid At All Costs! A Movie Review

I’ve been casting about for a decent movie based on H. P. Lovecraft’s stories, and well, it’s been slim pickings.

So I watched From Beyond yesterday, and most of my reactions were “Oh, you’re kidding me!” and wild laughter. The crew at MST3K would’ve had a field day with this thing.

After inventing a way for creatures from the fourth dimension to come into his own world, Dr. Edward Pretorious (Ted Sorel) suffers a gruesome decapitation at the hands of those he brought "from beyond." But authorities suspect his assistant (Jeffrey Combs) is to blame. Barbara Crampton co-stars as a beautiful psychiatrist brought in to help police solve the case in this classic 1980s thriller based on a short story by H.P. Lovecraft.

Yeah, when I read that blurb, I thought, “I…dunno.” Not a big fan of what I term ‘over-modernization’ (you know what I mean – they bring the characters up to date with the current time, including cutesy little commentary, all that idiocy).

Half an hour into the film, it began spiraling out control. Whoever re-fitted this movie was obviously on a steady diet of cocaine and late night horror movies. Absolutely hysterical insertions include:

1. A monster design that obviously was rejected from the ‘Lost In Space’ movie debacle
2. The lady psychiatrist dressing up as a dominatrix while under  the influence of the Resonator
3. Crawford Tillingford actually (seriously!) developing a taste for human brains (a moment of high hilarity ensues when he attacks the bitchy doctor in the hospital: he pushes her up against the wall, begins sucking on her face, turns, spits out an eyeball, and begins to slurp out her gray matter).
4. Crawford gets eaten by his former mentor, but manages to battle his way out of the digestive tract to save the damsel in distress

Utter and thorough dreck. Good for a few laughs, though, if you like awful movies.