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From Beyond: Limited Edition
[Blu-ray 4K]
Blu-ray ALL - United Kingdom - 88 Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (5th November 2024). |
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The Film
 Psychiatrist Dr. Katherine McMichaels (The Lords of Salem's Barbara Crampton) is brought in by the Boston District Attorney (Batman's Bruce McGuire) to determine whether physicist Crawford Tillinghast (Frightmare's Jeffrey Combs) is fit to stand trial for the bizarre death of his S/M enthusiast mentor Dr. Edward Pretorious (The Killing Hour's Ted Sorel) even though his head was never found and there was no blood on the axe that a crazed Crawford was wielding when arrested. Crawford tells Katherine that Pretorious had built a machine to stimulate the pineal gland – which he believed to be a dormant sensory organ embodying with “resonant vibrations”. The “Resonator” machine made visible creatures from another dimension, one of which Tillinghast claims bit off Pretorious’ head. A CAT scan of Crawford’s brain reveals that his pineal gland is enlarged. Dr. Bloch (Gordon’s wife Carolyn Purdy-Gordon) believes that the gland is pressing on his brain and causing the delusions, but Katherine believes that Pretorious’ experiment might have worked (or at least there is a connection between enlarged pineal glands and schizophrenia). She decides to recreate the experiment, and the district attorney releases Crawford into her custody under the guard of Sergeant “Bubba” Brownlee (Dawn of the Dead's Ken Foree). Crawford reluctantly repairs the machine and runs it only for the trio to discover that Pretorious’ sadistic mind has been incorporated into the creature that ate him and is hungry for more. Crawford shuts down the machine before they are harmed, but Katherine’s own curiosity (and her awakened sexuality due to the machine’s influence on the pineal gland which regulates the sex drive) causes her to turn the machine back on summoning back Pretorious and other creatures from beyond… After the success of Re-Animator, Charles Band's Empire Pictures signed director Stuart Gordon to a three-picture deal with another H.P. Lovecraft adaptation to follow up his debut film. Band was not interested in a sequel to Re-Animator nor was he interested in the people-turning-into-fish concept of Lovecraft’s “Dagon” which Gordon was developing (the project would be approached again by Band and Gordon for the unproduced “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” before Gordon and producer Brian Yuzna would eventually make Dagon in conjunction with the Spanish production company Filmax in 2001). Yuzna supplied Band with a couple other possible Lovecraft stories and he chose “From Beyond”. Gordon’s sophomore effort benefits from a larger budget, a longer shooting schedule, the contributions of three effects crews – headed by John Carl Buechler (Dolls), Mark Shostrum (Phantasm II), and Anthony Doublin (Bride of Re-Animator), and supervised by John Naulin (Deadly Blessing) – and the expansive (if stripped-for-parts) former Dino De Laurentis Studios at his disposal (not to mention the Italian technical crew including production designer Giovanni Natalucci). The film is more outrageous than Re-Animator, but the more serious approach makes the graphic gore and sexualized violence more disturbing – not unlike Gordon's later Castle Freak which was loosely based on Lovecraft's short story "The Outsider" – than anything seen in the previous film or Dolls despite the film's victimization by the MPAA (who Gordon believed were displeased that Re-Animator went out unrated). Much is made in the extras of the role reversal of casting Combs in the passive victim role and Crampton as the driver of the plot, and things do feel a bit off-balance but Crampton proves she can go just as nutso as Combs when required. Foree is more than just a name recognition actor here, providing a nice balance of toughness, sympathy, and appropriate comic relief; but – like David Gale in Re-Animator – it is Sorel who steals the show with or without layers of prosthetic make-up (if anything, Gordon and screenwriter Dennis Paoli give us memorable villains), and it might have been interesting to get more of a sense of what the beyond offers in terms of sensory experiences for his character. 
Video
Released in the United Kingdom theatrically by Vestron Pictures uncut and then with BBFC cuts for the VHS release, From Beyond also suffered from cuts for an R-rating in the United States for its theatrical and home video releases. When MGM got the rights to the Empire Pictures library through the Epic Entertainment library – consisting of a number of bankrupt companies including one of Empire's theatrical/video distributors Trans World Entertainment put together for sale by Credit Lyonnais – they remastered the film and restored the trims for their 2007 DVD. That HD master was Shout! Factory's stateside Blu-ray and Second Sight's British Blu-ray (initial pressing of which came in steelbook packaging). Vinegar Syndrome's 2023 4K UltraHD/Blu-ray came from a new 4K restoration which is also the source for 88 Film's region free 2160p24 HEVC 1.85:1 widescreen (HDR10) 4K UltraHD disc and 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray. The new restoration is a significant step up. As a low-budget film with the luxury of sound stage sets, lighting and exposure were always well-regulated, and the new transfer better renders both the shadows and the highlights where whites once bloomed in visible light sources and off of sweaty and slimy skin. The slimy creature effects are bathed in color gels but the resolution reveals more details in the creature effects – not always to their advantage as some look more rubbery including the teeth of the basement sandworm creature which jiggle slightly when it opens its mouth. The superior detail also reveals the blended foundation make-up on some of the actors as well as the seams of some of the prosthetic effects. The workprint gore trims that were cut back into the film and matched to the interpostive during the first MGM HD master look coarser next to the surrounding negative footage here, particularly as the camera pushes in on the eyeball sucking scene (although we do not now if these bits were upscaled or rescanned). 
Audio
MGM included a Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround rendering of the Ultra Stereo track along with a 4.0 track which appears to have been decoded from the 2.0 rather than sourced from the LCRS stems since music and effects do bleed into the center channel. Shout! Factory and Vinegar Syndrome dropped the 4.0 track in favor of a 5.1 upmix while Second Sight included the 4.0 and 2.0 tracks. 88 Films includes the 5.1 upmix in DTS-HD Master Audio as well as the 4.0 and 2.0 tracks in 24-bit LPCM. Viewers without surround systems or those taking the disc along for portable viewing should be advised that the 4.0 track's dialogue sounds more recessed in the mix than the 2.0 and 5.1 tracks when downmixing but is fine otherwise (presumably the upmixing algorithm for the 5.1 track enhanced the dialogue dialogue and other mono frequences which sound louder when downmixing). Optional English SDH subtitles are also included, and at times these are helpful in separating the content of the dialogue from the pitch of the performances, revealing some interesting concepts. 
Extras
88 Films has commissioned a new audio commentary by authors and critics Kim Newman and Sean Hogan which is wide-ranging, covering Gordon's filmography – noting the gradual toning down of humor throughout his Lovecraft adaptations, which all started out as projects developed for Empire realized later including the Masters of Horror episode Dreams in the Witch House – the influence of Videodrome on the film's combination of sadomasochism and body horror, as well as the question of whether Hellraiser is a remake or based on the Lovecraft short story replacing the Resonator with a puzzle box. They also discuss the methods of adapting Lovecraft's stories (long or short) which contain little in the way of narrative, exchanges of dialogue, or female characters, as well as observing that the film re configures the narrative of Re-Animator, making Crampton's McMichaels the Herbert West character while the mad scientist Tillinghast of the story becomes the hero and his negative traits become those of Dr. Pretorious (added due to Gordon's affection for Bride of Frankenstien). They also discuss Lovecraft's fears and phobias and how his fans and proteges have contended with them, and how they have been addressed in more modern adaptations and homages like Lovecraft Country. While 88 Films has not carried over the Paoli track recorded for the Shout! Edition, it does include the original MGM audio commentary by director Stuart Gordon, producer Brian Yuzna, actress Barbara Crampton, and actor Jeffrey Combs. Gordon mentions that one trim that could not be restored was an extreme bit of Pretorious' S&M proclivities in his first scene (in the finished film, his bedroom partner is not seen or ever mentioned). It is revealed that several of Natalucci's sets were redressed for Dolls which was filmed right after (the Pretorious house exterior was actually based on the historic landmark that inspired Lovecraft’s "Dreams in the Witch House" was a forced perspective model). Gordon also amusingly recalls his mother's reaction to the script, which she deemed pornography. The commentators – it’s sometimes hard to tell the difference between the voices of Yuzna and Combs – also point out the contrast in Mac Ahlberg's cinematography of the psychedelic pink lighting to the neon green of Re-Animator's color scheme. Much is made of the idiosyncrasies of shooting in Italy including technicians speaking during takes since most Italian films were still shot wild with a guide track and dubbed in post, interacting with Italian-speaking crew and extras, as well as working on freezing sets (either De Laurentis sold the studio heating and air conditioning equipment or it was stripped by the creditors when the producer fled to America). They speak warmly of their co-stars whether absent (Purdy-Gordon and Foree) or no longer with us (Sorel), and manage to riff on some perceived flaws in the film without ruining the viewing experience. It is obvious they all enjoy the film even if it was not always the most pleasant experience for some like Combs spending a large of his screen time either in prosthetic make-up or playing unconscious.  The discs also include a quartet of new interviews. In "Don't Bite the Pineal Gland: Jeffrey Combs on From Beyond" (30:40), Combs recalls that although Re-Animator had been well-received by audiences and critics, it did not open any doors for him and some casting directors even looked down on the film. He realized that his role in From Beyond would be more of a challenge because he was not the driving force in the film but the put-upon one, renewing his respect for his co-star in the previous film Bruce Abbot while Crampton also got to show more of her range as the film's equivalent of Herbert West. He has anecdotes about shooting on the freezing Dino De Laurentiis sound stage, enduring weeks of prosthetic make-up (the pineal gland was puppeteered not radio controlled) and gallons of goo, as well as working with Foree and Sorel (who collapsed after being in the monster suit for several hours). In "All Aboard the Love Machine: Barbara Crampton on From Beyond" (35:54), Crampton also recalls that the film did not lead to more work and the attitude of some industry people to the film. From Beyond's larger budget also meant a larger paycheck for her as well as shooting in Itay. She admits to not being familiar with Lovecraft at the time, but realizing that his works were about the fears of his characters and that Gordon and Paoli provided the narratives. She had no issues with playing a character who goes from uptight to sexual, but she did have to play up the more "mature" side when people behind the scenes expressed concern that she was too young for the role. In addition to her impressions about Gordon, Yuzna, and Charles Band, she also recalls Band's father Albert who had been the on-set producer and directed her in Robot Wars where she was able to get a job for her friend and later soap star/reality star Lisa Rinna. In "Back from Outer Space: Ken Foree on From Beyond" (31:20), Foree also recalls that Dawn of the Dead did not open doors for him despite its worldwide distribution and constant festival and midnight movie showings. In the interim, he had done a lot of network television in addition to working in a chauffered car service with co-star Scott H. Reiniger, so auditioning for From Beyond was looking for work rather than making a horror comeback (although he does observe some scenery chewing in his performance). He recalls the shooting conditions in Italy and bonding with Yuzna and his family (Yuzna's children were enrolled in school in Italy during the productions of this and Dolls). While he describes his experience with the effects as unpleasant, he seems to have more sympathy for Combs and Sorel who had to endure more. In "Monster Unleashed: Brian Yuzna on From Beyond" (32:45), Yuzna recalls inking a three-picture deal with Band during the Cannes showing of Re-Animator and the search for a follow-up story. Yuzna found "From Beyond" and "Dreams in the Witch House" while Gordon recommended he read "The Shadow Over Inssmouth" and they developed them with Paoli while Ed Naha developed Dolls. Yuzna felt that Gordon should have his sophomore slump on Dolls rather than the Lovecraft follow-up so the former was shot before Christmas and the latter after the holidays during which the crew redressed all of the sets. Of the film's casting, he does mention that he wanted to bring in more of the Re-Animator cast but there was no role for Abbott and Albert Band pushed back against casting David Gale as Pretorious. He also discusses the effects, including ones that he would have liked to have redone. Also ported over from the MGM disc is "Reflections with Stuart Gordon: A Director’s Perspective" (8:51) in which he theorizes that the more repressive societies produce the more extreme horror films as an outlet using the Reagan and Bush eras as examples. He also emphasizes the importance of detailed storyboards (and sticking to them) when on a limited effects budget (so some effects creations only needed to be partially built to suit specific angles), and describes the finger-wagging chastisement he got from an MPAA member over the brain-sucking scene. In "Lost and Found" (4:46), Gordon describes how the trims editor Lee Percy saved in anticipation of an extended video version were thought destroyed until MGM Technical Services’ James Owsley called him over to identify the contents of a single can of workprint. Also on hand is Ascent Media colorist John Dunn to briefly describe the challenge of matching the scratched and greasepaint-marked workprint trims to the internegative (including how one shot seemed impossible to reintegrate until it was discovered that it had been inadvertently transferred in reverse. Also ported over is an interview with composer Richard Band (4:33) in which he describes the score for the film as not having any themes but consisting of a handful of motifs. He also reveals that the film's original main title track was not well-received so it was turned into the end title track and Gordon created a new composition for the main titles after the film was edited. While the MGM DVD included storyboard comparisons, 88 Films makes the experience a bit more interactive using your remote's angle function to toggle back and for the between storyboards and footage from the film for four scenes. The disc also includes the theatrical trailer (0:59) and a stills gallery (3:21). 
Packaging
The first pressing includes a silver wrap rigid slipcase with two new artworks by Ilanimation Studios, four collectible art-cards, and a double-sided foldout poster.
Overall
Stuart Gordon's follow-up to cult hit Re-Animator in From Beyond is bigger with more splashy special effects but there is some wasted potential in terms of character and thematic potential.
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