I loved Banshee Chapter, which was inspired by a H. P. Lovecraft story titled From Beyond, but it is not the first film to adapt the story for the big screen. From Beyond, a movie released in 1986 and starring the iconic Jeffrey Combs, was the first. I love Combs so From Beyond was added and took priority in my queue. I still prefer Banshee Chapter to the now dated From Beyond, but for classic 80s horror, From Beyond satisfies and shocks.
From Beyond starts with a mad scientist and his assistant, Tillinghast, played by Combs, then adds a psychiatrist and a cop into the mix to investigate whether murder has occurred or if the experiment inadvertently discovered the origins of mental disabilities. The experiment stimulates the pineal gland and makes people see into other dimensions with unusual side effects. If Combs is your voice of reason, something has gone terrifically wrong. From Beyond is an apocalyptic tale complete with a spooky house with the building number 666. When facing the transformed who urge the untransformed to “touch me,” it is like a perverted reprise of the resurrected Jesus to Thomas uttered by an anti-Christ bringing destruction from another dimension to unwilling disciples.
From Beyond’s special effects are dated, but fun in a 1980s way. From Beyond felt more like a movie by David Cronenberg or Clive Barker’s Hellraiser than Lovecraftian though there are definitely Lovecraftian influences in both filmmakers’ work. The horror is rooted in the body and is extremely sexual, which many viewers may find disturbing, but I thought there was some interesting commentary on gender roles that could not be accomplished without the sexual horror component.
S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S
In the 1980s, professional women wore suits that mimicked the style of suits for men. There were shoulder pads and efforts to desex a woman in order to be professional. Professional equaled being male. There is a mini-war of the doctors, and both are female, which is unusual. Initially the older doctor seems to have more in common with Nurse Ratched and seems dismissive, even barbaric. The younger doctor is more relatable, but the patients respond to her in an aggressively, aberrant sexual way. The younger doctor dispassionately observes them engaging in their compulsive sexual fetishes, including furiously masturbating. Or is she?
As From Beyond unfolds, I thought that her interest was less professional based on her eagerness to follow through with Dr. Pretorius’ experiment, which seems insane considering that ended with one man going mad and another without a head. She reveals that because her father was mad, she wanted to examine the possible origins of madness, interaction with other dimensions, but isn’t it really a journey to discover if she is mad too. She is personally invested and has more in common than Dr. Pretorius. She keeps her freakiness in the closet. Her motto is, “There is always more to see.” She has no boundaries and is eager to put herself, her patient and others in danger to satisfy her desires. It is not a long walk to donning leather S&M gear just like Dr. Pretarious floated around shirtless in a silk robe. Eventually with the help of others, she is able to resist her desire to seek the oblivion of her body in an effort to seek the ultimate pleasure. The real horror is the nightmare of the professional woman. To be stripped of her professional trappings to be revealed as a hysterical, sexual woman with no credibility. The cop’s initial sexist assumption was not wrong: she is the patient!
What makes From Beyond provocative is the idea that the machine that helps you perceive other dimensions only amplifies your existing predilections. Before encountering the machine, Tillinghast is just an observer of Dr. Pretarious’ impotent, but sadomasochistic sexual desires. He has no interest in the young doctor even when she changes into leather. When he is transformed, he looks more like a baby with no shirt or hair, reduced to wailing. He is the only person not seen as a sexual being. Even the cop sleeps in tight red underwear, but I think that he does that regularly, not because of the machine’s influence.
From Beyond did not do a great job conveying that the transformed human beings wanted to eat people’s brains. I did not figure it out until Tillinghast ended up in the insane asylum again. I did not realize that the harm was so specific though the hint was when Dr. Pretarious lost his head, but I was thrown off when the cop died.
Unlike Banshee Chapter, the characters in From Beyond do not face the threat of invasion and destruction by beings from other dimensions. The threat in From Beyond is the unleashing of their destructive desires and abandon of reason that leads them to the other dimension.