From Beyond (1986)

(On Cable TV, May 2020) I should like—no, I should love From Beyond. In theory, it’s everything I like best about 1980s horror films—off-the-wall premise, Lovecraftian plot elements, wild use of practical effects and makeup, go-for-broke weirdness, over-the-top melodrama, nudity, a sense of fun bigger than the gore, Stuart Gordon directing, Brian Yuzna writing, Jeffrey Combs starring, multidimensional terror and body horror packaged as one, some comedy, some science fiction. If I had to put together my ideal fictional 1980s horror film, it would look a lot like From Beyond. And yet, the result just isn’t where it should be. The pacing is off, the horror seems almost too restrained, and it doesn’t quite seem funny enough for the material. I mean—I still enjoyed From Beyond (it does get admirably gloopy toward the end, not bloody), it’s just that it didn’t feel as if it made the most out of its ambitions. Still, it’s rather over-the-top fun if that’s your thing—and it is my thing.

(Second Viewing, In French, On Cable TV, February 2021) It hasn’t been that long since I first saw From Beyond, but my willingness to see it a second time has as much to do with it being caught on my DVR as it has with an underappreciated facet of 1980s horror films. The more I watch some of the wilder horror films of the decade, the more I’m struck by how, even limited by practical effects, those movies weren’t afraid to go for pure inspired madness. In From Beyond, we have a wild concoction of body horror, science-fictional nonsense, slimy gloopy creatures, nudity, gore, mutated horrors, dark comedy and explosions and I have to wonder — Have I been watching the wrong movies, or has this streak of utter madness disappeared from the current horror corpus? Why aren’t we using CGI to have some more of that fun? I’m not generally an advocate for gore, but gore is the least of what made films such as From Beyond (or Reanimator, or Evil Dead, or Braindead, or…) — it’s rather the goofy sense of fun with horror/SF tropes, the generous heaping of nudity and humour, the demented scientists and likable protagonists. I feel as if the latest crop of horror films is either far too serious for its own good, unadventurous in its use of special effects despite near-infinite capabilities, and just plain boring in how it simply goes back to the same sources of inspiration. Maybe those films exist and they’ll re-emerge as cult classics in a few years. But there’s a reason why From Beyond and its close equivalents have aged so well for horror fans: in many ways, they’re simply not making them like that any more.