From Beyond
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SOURCE:
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“From Beyond,” by H.P. Lovecraft
SCREEN:
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From Beyond, directed by Stuart Gordon
Look I’m standing naked before you
Don’t you want more than my sex
I can scream as loud as your last one
But I can’t claim innocence…
-Tori Amos
“Leather”
COMPARE/CONTRAST:
If we’re honest with ourselves, most of us will admit to being at least a little uneasy about sex. We think about it a great deal, and there are times we want it so badly we can hardly think of anything else—and isn’t that sort of off-putting? You get used to your body making demands which supersede the intentions of your rational mind; but when you get right down to it, most of what matters happens in the base of the spine, the impulses that drive us to decisions we can only justify after they’re made. Lust makes us vulnerable in ways we can’t avoid. The drive, with all its squishy, dangling moments, is both too intimate and too alien to be completely understood.
Most of us make some kind peace with this. After all, sex (or the idea of sex)(sigh) is exciting enough on the surface that there’s really no need to actually think about it; and some would argue that it’s the thinking that gets us in trouble. But then there are those who don’t have the luxury of reflex. The ones who can do nothing but think.
While it’s dangerous to speak for the dead, we can be reasonably sure that H.P. Lovecraft fell in the latter category. Sex itself, even of the most formal and oblique variety (ie, love), is a very rare occurrence in his writings, surfacing only in “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”—and since “Innsmouth” revolves around a particularly disgusting series of miscengenations, it’s not exactly a positive spin. Even beyond “Innsmouth,” however, the fear of sexual intimacy runs through nearly every short story the man produced.
It can be argued that Lovecraft’s central preoccupation was the horror of the Other. By translating his racism (and xenophobia, since xenophobia is just racism with a better Scrabble hand) into something far more potent and obscene, he transcended his limitations as a person and achieved something that resonates in even the healthiest of minds. Sex is just another extension of this concern. While its presence in his fiction is largely subtextual, it is the ultimate Other-dread. It represents an invasion of the horrid unknown on a most personal level. There’s something awfully–vulgar–about the goings on down in R’yleh land, with all those great chasms and tentacled beasties. It’s not something nice people talk about. It’s too damp.
“From Beyond,” the story that serves as inspiration for today’s review, is one of Lovecraft’s underachievers: short, somewhat generic, and sustained by a premise which, while compelling, never intrudes on the reader as successfully as his best writing. The plot is simple—an unnamed narrator describes his last encounter with the ill-fated Crawford Tillinghast, a scientist obsessed with expanding the limits of human perception.
From the beginning, the narrator is both intrigued and apalled by his friend’s work:
That Crawford Tillinghast should ever have studied science and philosophy was a mistake. These things should be left to the frigid and impersonal investigator, for they offer two equally tragic alternatives to the man of feeling and action; despair if he fail in his quest, and terrors unutterable and unimaginable if he succeed.
(Transcribing this, I can’t help but wonder what Lyz Kingsley of And You Call Yourself a Scientist would make of it. The logic fascinates me—does this apply to all scientific disciplines? Is there a certain level at which every possible area of study begins to yield poisonous fruit?
It’s a shame Lyz hasn’t done more Lovecraft. But then, it’s not like she needs to concern herself much over “feelings,” as anyone who’s faced her army of remote-controlled, flesh eating zombies can attest.
I miss my other leg.)
Back on topic—the narrator’s apprehensions, when voiced, lead to his expulsion from Tillinghast’s house. A few weeks later, however, he is invited back. It seems the good doctor has had a breakthrough, and is desperate to share his good fortune with a former friend.
In his efforts to go “beyond,” Crawford has constructed a machine which stimulates the pineal gland, giving him (and anyone else in the room while the machine is on) glimpses into the unseen world. The narrator agrees to sit in on a session, and soon finds himself witness to monstrosities undreamt of; thick wriggling creatures that fill every millimeter of the space around us. Crawford tells the narrator that he must stay absolutely still. If he doesn’t, he’ll attract the attention of even more dangerous fiends—because if the narrator can now perceive the beings around him, those beings can perceive him. And They are hungry. Always hungry.
Which might explain the absence of servants downstairs, but it doesn’t justify the growing predatory gleam in Tillinghast’s eye….
In terms of adaptation, “From Beyond” is strictly one act. A faithful screen version would run no more than a half hour, and that’s if Crawford had a serious stutter and wanted to show off his etchings. If you’re shooting for much more than a punchline, you need to expand on the central premise—and if you’re making a movie, you need to find a way for Lovecraft’s standard unimaginables ("Oh god … I see it … the all-seeing eye, the endless awful shifting— Ooop, damn, I’ve been driven mad. Purple monkey butterscotch.") to be as effective visually as they are on the page.
Stuart Gordon, the man responsible for one of the few truly excellent Lovecraft adaptations out there (Re-Animator), chose a unique approach to the problem. Like Clive Barker’s Hellraiser, Gordon’s From Beyond seeks to exploit the connection between terror and physical attraction on a level that goes largely unvoiced in most genre films. But where Barker was using his own work—a novella already hugely concerned with the extremes of sensation—Gordon merged his intentions with the prim and proper musings of horror fiction’s greatest prude. The results, while not as consistently brilliant as his previous film, still make for an entertaining, freaky picture. And it’s got Barbara Crampton in fetish gear. Huzzah.
Instead of using the short story as the movie’s climax, the filmmakers (Gordon, producer Brian Yuzna and screenwriter Dennis Paoli) position an altered version of the events of “From Beyond” in the film’s prologue. Crawford Tillinghast (Jeffrey Combs) is now the name of the “narrator” figure, while the story’s Crawford has transformed into one Dr. Edward Pretorius (Ted Sorel), a fifty-something sado-masochist with a taste in old flags and chains. Crawford is living with the doctor and assisting him in his experiments; during the pre-credits sequence, we see them crossing that fabled line between Man and God Forbid. Crawford flees in mortal terror, and Pretorius (note the nod to Bride of Frankenstein) just plain loses his head.
Definite echoes of Re-Animator here, with Combs once again in attendance for an older colleague’s gruesome death; but while the sociopathic Herbert West manages to give authorities sufficient explanation to avoid incarceration, Tillinghast is so disturbed why what he’s seen that he’s promptly arrested and thrown in an asylum.
Enter Dr. Katherine McMichaels (Barbara Crampton). An expert in criminal psychology, she’s called in to determine whether or not Crawford is mentally capable to stand trial. After speaking briefly with him, she becomes convinced that his story has some elements of truth in it; his comments on the stimulation of the pineal gland especially interest her. McMichaels decides that the only course of action is for her and Crawford to return to Pretorius’s home. There, under the watchful eye of Officer Buford “Bubba” Stevens (Ken Foree), they’ll attempt to reproduce the experiments, both to clear Crawford’s name and satisfy Katherine’s curiosity.
Unsurprisingly, this is a Very Bad Idea. During the last abortive test, Crawford took an axe to the Resonator, the machine he and Pretorius used for their explorations; but it doesn’t take too long before he’s got the thing up and running again. Bubba makes some unsavory discoveries about the headless man’s private life—lots of S&M, lots of whipping, and everything on video tape—but that’s only a preview of the main attraction: the triumphant return of the man himself. Buck naked and apparently none the worse for wear, Pretorius appears before Katherine and Crawford while the Resonator is running. Crawford is confused, and Pretorius insists that Crawford “touch” him; when Crawford does, Pretorius’s skin sloughs off and he starts turning into something else.
Crawford turns off the machine, but the damage has been done. Something’s happening inside Katherine’s mind, and a compulsion she barely recognizes is growing. She becomes more and more interested in the Resonator and its potential; and she seems to be increasingly more sexually aware. Despite the objections of Tillinghast and Bubba, she re-activates the machine, and in the ensuing carnage, Crawford is devoured by a monstrous worm in the building’s basement. When the Resonator is turned off, Crawford re-appears, covered in bruises and completely bald. Apparently, this is a turn on for Katherine; while Crawford lies unconscious in Pretorius’s old rec room, his psychiatrist becomes entranced with the dead man’s “toys,” ultimately putting on a dominatrix outfit. In perhaps the movie’s signature scene, she straddles Crawford and starts rubbing him up and down … and down … and down…
It’s supposed to be a good thing that Bubba breaks up the scene before things get too serious, but I’ll be damned if I can explain why.
Things get worse, as Pretorius (or whatever it is that’s calling itself Pretorius) has now figured out a way to turn on the Resonator himself. Can Katherine, bald Crawford and Bubba stop him before he oozes in to our reality? And more importantly, do they really want to? And even more important than that, will Crampton ever get back into that fetish gear?
Sadly no on that last count; much like Re-Animator’s infamous “head giving head” scene, the bondage outfit lingers on in memory long after its brief moment has past. Still, it’s a pretty great moment, and a fairly shocking one at that; while From Beyond is full of truly excellent monster make-up (lotta goo, lot of giant tube worms), the air of sexual deviancy is perhaps its most surprising element, if only because it’s not something you expect to see in this sort of film.
When we learn early on that the pineal gland, in addition to moderating what we see, is also connected to the sexual impulse (busy ####ing gland), it’s inevitable that there will be at least some level of naughtiness on display. Crampton’s lascivious entry into the world of S&M is at once over the top and entirely logical; it’s the sort of great scene only a horror movie can give you, and it’s made all the more powerful because it’s the transgression of a taboo.
At its heart, horror is an intensely conservative genre. We fear death and misery because of what they are, but also because they represent a change in the acceptable status quo. Horror revolves around the danger of that change—a monster isn’t just a physical threat, but a psychological one, especially a monster that exists outside our understanding of the natural world. While From Beyond isn’t exactly a whole-hearted embrace of sexual sadism, it does unmoor us enough by speaking to the private urges that we try to hide; urges which make the danger of change largely an internal one.
It’s not a perfect movie, despite these excellent qualities. There’s no question it’s an enjoyable one; even apart from the bondage scene, there is some inventive creature work, and the plot itself remains unpredictable and involving through-out. The acting is solid: Crampton is as game as ever, although I find her first scenes as the apparently “repressed” doctor (ie, her hair is in a bun and she’s wearing glasses) unconvincing. Ken Foree is probably the most obviously comic character, but he never sinks into caricature. And Jeffrey Combs is, of course, excellent—although it’s strange to see him play a somewhat “normal” character.
That actually brings me to one of the movie’s few flaws—while it has a sense of humor, unlike Re-Animator, it lack a particularly strong driving force. Where Herbert West managed to be both the hero and the villain, here we have the grimacing, grunting Pretorius in the baddie role, spouting one liners and drooling while his body mutates into some new horror. It’s just not as memorable; gone is Combs’ arch wit and iconic misanthropy. The heroes are far too earnest to be much better. There’s a moment near the end when Katherine bursts out with an “I love you, Crawford!” and I still can’t tell if it’s intentionally a joke. It certainly feels like a joke. While Re-Animator’s conclusion is surprisingly affecting, here, we just leave feeling vaguely creeped out. Oh, and thinking about handcuffs.
The pacing is slightly off, too. I watched the newly released “Director’s Cut” DVD for this review, and while it’s been a while since I’ve seen the original, it looks like they just added in a few more gore scenes. Much as I love gore, at times it feels sort of self-indulgent, especially in the last act—a couple of murders are largely gratuitous, as once you’ve seen once person get their brains sucked out through their eye socket, you’ve probably seen them all.
There’s also a weird bit in the climax when Katherine somehow gets ahold of a homemade bomb. Now, I have no problem with anyone wanting to blow stuff up, but this is a seriously professional looking bomb—five or six sticks of dynamite wired together under a digital clock, all neatly arranged and organized. Is this a talent of hers the screenplay forgot to mention? Is it the work of a former patient? Or did she just put on her leather doodads and seduce someone into building it for her? (If it’s the last, damn them for not including the seduction scene in the final cut.) Realistically it would’ve made more sense for her to show up with a can of gasoline and a box of matches; having an explosive device straight of a Chuck Norris movie is stretching credulity.
But these are just minor quibbles. While it’s never a particularly scary film, From Beyond is a ton of fun, and its willingness to go as far with its premise as it does raises some intriguing issues. Our sexual yearnings are generally a mystery, operating at a subconscious level where we can only judge the stimulus and not the response. But if someone (or something) were to start manipulating those impulses, how would we know? If I woke up tomorrow morning with a sudden lust for brunettes dressed like turn of the century carnival barkers—and if that afternoon I ran into just such a woman—should I be suspicious? Grateful? Who knows how far things might go. We can’t control what we find attractive, we can only control how we respond to it; and if even that control is taken away, what manner of creature might we become?
According to Stuart Gordon, it would probably involve laytex and a lot of grunting. I can live with that, even if Lovecraft most likely couldn’t.
SOURCE: QQ.5
SCREEN: QQQ
It looks like we have a new contender for TMBOLWTWHHTMIHESI.