- Directed by Stuart Gordon
- Written by Brian Yuzna, Dennis Paoli, H.P. Lovecraft
- Stars Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, Ted Sorel
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 25 minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3D9O9vrDjw
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This was really excellent, with practical effects that have held up well. It’s from a very short H.P. Lovecraft story, but they manage to flesh it out into an entertaining full-length movie.
Synopsis
Crawford Tillinghast works on his computer at the high-tech lab. The big glowing ball in the center lights up, and the huge tuning forks do their thing. He sees some kind of translucent eel-like thing swimming around the forks, but then it jumps down and bites him. He cuts the power and it vanishes. Where did it come from? From Beyond!
He runs downstairs and tells his partner Dr. Pretorius that the machine worked. Pretorius turns it on and acts strangely. “Can’t you feel it? In the mind? In the mind! I want to see more than any man has ever seen! Something’s coming!”
Meanwhile, a neighbor lady calls the police about the noise and her little dog runs straight to the big house. She follows the dog up the stairs toward Tillinghast’s lab. Tillinghast runs outside and is grabbed by the police, but Pretorius is dead. Credits roll.
Dr. Katherine McMichaels and the detective come to see Dr. Bloch about Crawford Tillinghast’s condition. They want to see if he’s competent to stand trial for Pretorius’s murder. Crawford’s a physicist at Miskatonic University. They were trying to stimulate the pineal gland to open awareness of… things. He explains that the theory worked, but then they saw creatures from beyond. He says something from the other side bit off Pretorius’s head like a gingerbread man.
Katherine wants to do a CAT scan on Crawford to see what’s wrong with him. The pineal gland is oversized; Bloch thinks it’s a tumor, but Katherine thinks it is growing naturally. That would support that Crawford’s experiments worked. She wants to recreate the experiment with Crawford’s help. The detective just wants answers, so he gives her the go-ahead.
They meet Sergeant Buford Brownlee, who will “look after” Crawford. The three head back to the Pretorious compound. They find Pretorius’s sex dungeon, where he made amateur porn. They also find the resonator, but it’s not beaten up too badly. Crawford repairs the machine surprisingly easily.
He warns them not to move once the field is turned on, because “they” might see you. He switches it on, and it goes like before. Bubba sees the creatures first, and one of them bites him. Suddenly, they hear Pretorius’s voice calling to them. He says he didn’t die, he just passed beyond. He then peels his face off, and it’s not pretty. He jumps at them, and Crawford turns the machine off, making the things vanish.
Katherine wonders if the expanded pineal is related to schizophrenia somehow. She wants to experiment more with the machine, but Bubba and Crawford aren’t into that. That night, she sneaks in and turns the machine on herself. Crawford runs up and demands that she turn it off, but she kisses him instead. The machine makes her horny for some reason.
Pretorius appears, and he’s a slimy, half-melted, perverted mutant now. Crawford runs to the basement to kill the power down there, but there’s another monster in the basement. These monsters all seem to want to eat someone’s head. Bubba pulls the plug and both Katherine and Crawford are released. She’s fine, but he’s lost all his hair.
Katherine thinks about things and comes to the conclusion that she needs to run the experiment alone next time. Bubba says she’s acting like a junkie. She goes upstairs to the bondage dungeon and admires the equipment. Before long, she’s wearing a full BDSM suit and admiring herself in the mirror.
Bubba walks in. “I told you to get dressed.” “I did,” she answers. Suddenly, magic happens and the wires in the basement reconnect to the power and the machine upstairs activates. Crawford wakes up; he can hear that it’s on. Bubba runs upstairs to turn it off, but the machine shocks him. Katherine and Crawford try, and it shoots bugs all over them. The bugs eventually eat Bubba.
Then they spot Pretorius, who came through somehow. He’s barely human and has many tentacles. He tells Crawford that he’s changing and evolving and that he should let it happen too. Crawford’s head splits open, and a third eye pops out. Katherine sprays the machine with a fire extinguisher, but that doesn’t help for long.
She takes Crawford to the hospital, where Dr. Bloch tries to remove the worm in his forehead. Dr. Bloch thinks Katherine has lost her mind, and that’s what she tells the detective. Bloch orders electro-shock therapy.
Crawford wakes up and starts wandering around. Dr. Bloch catches him in the pathology room eating brains. He attacks her and eats her brain.
Katherine also breaks loose before they can zap her and she heads back to Pretorius’s place again. This time she takes a great big time bomb (where did she get that in the middle of the night?). As she comes downstairs, Crawford grabs her and chains her up in the bondage room. She bites his pineal gland off.
The machine switches on and Pretorius returns. He and Crawford fight while Katherine enlists the aid of the little eel-things to bite through her bonds. She runs, but Pretorius has tentacles everywhere. Crawford starts to rip his way out of Pretorius as time runs out. Katherine jumps out the window just as the bomb goes off.
The old neighbor lady comes over to help and finds that Katherine has completely lost her mind.
Commentary
Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton previously worked with director Stuart Gordon on “Reanimator” (1985). The main lab set is really interesting and pretty cool. The resonator prop especially looks believable.
The special effects and creature work is just about the best of all the non-CGI films, ranking right up there with “The Thing” (1982) or “Hellraiser” (1987).
It’s really, really good.