Of all the holidays celebrated worldwide, no single day is more loved by the UTG staff than Halloween. With the arrival of the year’s best month, the time has finally come to begin rolling out a plethora of features and special announcements we have prepared in celebration of our favorite day, including the one you’re about to read.

Now in its third year, 31 Days Of Halloween is a recurring feature that will run throughout the month of October. The hope and goal of this column is to supply every UTG reader with a daily horror (or Halloween-themed) movie recommendation that is guaranteed to amplify your All Hallows’ Eve festivities. We’ll be watching every film the day it’s featured, and we hope you’ll follow along at home.

[Warning: the material within is likely NSFW]

Day 1: From Beyond (1986)

In 1986, just a year after his highly popular Re-Animator, director Stuart Gordon churned out yet another amusingly disturbing H.P. Lovecraft adaptation in From Beyond. Starring Re-Animator leads Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton, the film also featured the always awesome Ken Foree (Dawn of the Dead, The Devil’s Rejects) and Ted Sorel (Network). From Beyond wouldn’t see quite the commercial and critical success as its predecessor, but it remains to this day as one of the goriest and most deranged cult favorite horror films of all time.

Meshing heavy elements of science fiction, medical science and gruesome body horror, Gordon continued with the themes found in Re-Animator and applied them to the twisted tale found in From Beyond. The story revolves around a device called The Resonator, which was created by Dr. Edward Pretorius. The highly elaborate machine allows anyone within its vicinity to see beyond the normal perceptible reality. The film opens with Pretorius’ assistant, Dr. Crawford Tillinghast (played by Combs), turning on the machine, only to find himself (literally) face to face with a bizarre and disturbing eel-like creature swimming through the air. After being attacked and bitten by said creature, Tillinghast rushes to find Dr. Pretorius to inform him that the machine does indeed work. Pretorius quickly becomes obsessed with wanting to see ‘the other side’ as much as possible and this of course sets off a grisly chain of events resulting in injuries, deaths and a sickening transformation.

Even with its ostensibly campy, ’80s b-movie feel, the acting throughout From Beyond is top notch. Jeffrey Combs’ intrepid and exuberant gravitas is on full display while the beautiful Barbara Crampton (Chopping Mall, You’re Next) continued to prove her worthiness of the ‘scream queen’ title and bloody crown within another stellar collaboration with Gordon and Combs. The late Ted Sorel played a perfect turn as the film’s antagonist with great gusto and superb creepiness in a transformative role that gives Goldblum’s Brundlefly a run for its money and no doubt had a heavy influence on James Gunn when it came time to create 2006’s Slither.

Having been made in the mid ’80s with a less than desirable budget, it’d be safe to say that the visual effects are lacking. The practical effects with make-up, prosthetics and (puppetry? animatronics?) are genuinely well done and disturbingly grotesque but the digital post work could be considered laughable by today’s standards. However, even as you may giggle at the sight of the floating eels or a specific flying creature in the film’s third act, they really don’t take away from the pure chaos and insanity seen onscreen. According to Gordon, it was originally a feat just to secure an ‘R’ rating for the film as the MPAA had explained that there was simply “ten times too much of everything.”

Simply put, From Beyond is a ton of fun for fans of sloppy body horror à la early Cronenberg. It’s messy and easily has the ability to churn stomachs but it also possesses elements of dark comedy and relies heavily on science fiction and, of course, 1934’s short story of the same name written by the great H.P. Lovecraft. Furthermore, as with Re-Animator, Gordon worked with medical advisers to ensure that the procedures and actions taken by doctors and nurses in the film were accurate, so even within a world of purely surrealistic nightmares, there is some form of realism on display.

If you think From Beyond sounds like something you could enjoy, or even just handle for that matter, I highly recommend it as a film to spend some time with this Halloween season. You can rent it or buy yourself a copy on DVD or Blu-ray through Amazon. The trailer below should give you a good idea of some of the macabre madness you’ll find in From Beyond.

Editorial written by: Brian Lion
Last year’s Day 1 film: Re-Animator

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Brian Leak

Editor-In-Chief. King of forgetting drinks in the freezer. Pop culture pack rat. X-Phile. LOST apologist.

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