The success of Stuart Gordon’s Re-animator (1985) did what no other H.P. Lovecraft adaptation had done before and raised the writer’s profile higher than it had ever been before. Gordon followed it with an adaptation of the short story From Beyond, written in 1920 but not published until June 1934 in The Fantasy Fan magazine. It proved to not be quite as good as Re-animator but it is a huge amount of gaudy and very messy fun.

Scientist Dr Edward Pretorius (Ted Sorel) has built a machine, the Resonator, that stimulates the human pineal gland, causing anyone exposed to its influence to perceive different levels of reality. His assistant, Dr Crawford Tillinghast (Jeffrey Combs) is bitten by one of the strange, worm-like creatures that also manifest around the machine and Pretorius is driven mad by the Resonator. While experimenting with the machine, Crawford flees in panic and Pretorius is found decapitated. Arrested on suspicion of murder, Crawford is confined to a psychiatric ward under the care of psychiatrist Dr Katherine McMichaels (Barbara Crampton), who discovers that his pineal gland has become unnaturally enlarged. McMichaels has Crawford released and takes him back to Pretorius’ house accompanied by Detective Bubba Brownlee (Ken Foree) who is working on the case. They rebuild the damaged Resonator and activate it, causing a naked Pretorius to materialise in the house along with many more of the creatures. Pretorius has found his way to a world where human physical pleasure is greatly increased and attacks his unwanted visitors. Believing that the Resonator could be a vital key to solving various mental illnesses, McMichaels becomes affected by the machine and is herself treated as schizophrenic at the psychiatric hospital. Meanwhile, Crawford, like Pretorius, has developed a craving for human brains…

Awash in neon pinks and livid purples, Gordon seems to have made a very conscious decision to make From Beyond look as different from its predecessor as possible. It’s also a slower paced affair, Gordon focussing on conjuring up a sickly, hallucinatory ambience rather than just wave entrails in our faces again. There are still plenty of terrific physical effects courtesy of make-up effects artist Mark Shostrom and various effects houses supervised by John Buechler. We eventually get the parade of rubbery grotesques that we expect and when they arrive, they’re not always convincing, but they are highly entertaining – eyeballs are sucked out, teeth are clamped around exposed pineal glands, mad scientists mutate into brain-sucking monsters and the slime flows by the bucket load.

The most striking visuals come courtesy of Mac Ahlberg’s trippy lighting the hallucinatory visual effects that make From Beyond one of the most psychedelic of all 80s horror films, with its wild giallo-esque lighting palettes, mind altering practices and glimpses of a nightmarish world beyond our own. As an adaptation of the original, it will leave scholars and fans of Lovecraft alike disappointed – the entirety of the short story is done with by the time the extended prologue is over, and the film goes off on its own merry way taking a few of the author’s ideas with it but essentially taking his name in vain (it was the loose inspiration for Blair Erickson’s 2013 film Banshee Chapter).

But that scarcely matters to anyone but the most devoted of Lovecraft fan. It’s a more ambitious film than Re-animator and although it doesn’t always rise to meet those ambitions, one can’t fault it for trying. Performances are as much fun as anything else in the film – Foree, from George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978) is great, if a little under-used, Combs refines the crazy scientist schtick he developed in Re-animator and Crampton gets the film’s most beloved scene – under the influence of the Resonator the previously uptight and serious McMichaels is found by Brownlee clad in leather fetish gear writing around on an unconscious Tillinghast. When Brownlee points out that he told her to “get dressed,” she purrs “I did…” Foree gets eaten alive by a swarm of trans-dimensional insects, Tillinghast is consumed by Pretorius and an insane McMichaels is last seen screaming “it ate him!” before, presumably being carted off to the psychiatric hospital again, this time for good.

From Beyond splits opinion between those who struggle with a level of sexuality that Lovecraft himself would likely have disapproved of, and those who can get behind its wild ambitions. It is the epitome of that scourge of 80s horror, the rubber monster film, but it’s all done with such gleeful abandon that one can easily overlook some of the less successful special effects. The story has been adapted many times since, since, not only as Banshee Chapter (albeit very loosely in that instance) but also several times as short films that aren’t necessarily any more faithful to the original. From Beyond‘s producer, Charles Band, oversaw a sequel of sorts in 2021, The Resonator: Miskatonic U, directed by William Butler (they share a vague “created by” credit) which tries to mimic the look of Gordon’s film and casts A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)‘s Amanda Wyss in the Crampton role, but it ended up impressed virtually no-one.

From Beyond didn’t click with audiences the way that Re-animator did, costing Charles Band’s Empire Pictures $4.5 million but taking back less than $1.5 million at the US box office, though hits reputation flourished on video where it picked up a cult following and has remained something a favourite ever since. Some have suggested that the failure of From Beyond contributed to the downfall of Empire though that’s simply not the case – that same year, the company scored a huge hit with Troll and the company stayed afloat for another couple of years, finally going under in May 1988 (Band bounced back with a new company, Full Moon Features that continues turning out ultra low-budget genre films to this day).