From Beyond: Unrated Director's Cut (DVD)

Fans of director Stuart Gordon have been waiting for this uncut, completely restored version of H.P. Lovecraft's From Beyond for years: 21 of them, to be exact.

As a lifelong fan of the horror genre and a professional in the field for many years, I was sure I had seen this film somewhere along the way and simply forgotten it. But no. From Beyond is pretty unforgettable, I've come to realize! Wow. Where else will you see Jeffrey Combs bearing a phallic unicorn-horn, Barbara Crampton trussed up in S&M regalia, and Ken Foree stripped to skeletal remains, all in the same movie?

From Beyond (not to be confused with Lucio Fulchi's The Beyond, from the 1970s) was Gordon's follow-up film to his splashy debut the year before, Re-Animator (which also starred Combs and Crampton). In this story, Dr. Edward Pretorius (Ted Sorel) and his eager assistant Crawford Tillinghast (Combs) activate a very sci-fi looking device they call The Resonator, which is designed to stimulate the human pineal gland via sound waves. What's the pineal gland, you ask? Well, it's the so-called "third eye" and rests behind the forehead.

It's also got sex on the brain. The ultimate pleasure promised via the machine's meeting with the gland drives Pretorius so crazy that he ultimately unleashes a supernatural space creature who partially kills and partially assimilates him. This freaky morph is augmented by now-cheesy practical effects (think contemporaries: John Carpenter's The Thing, or David Cronenberg's The Fly, but with a smaller budget) — they're akin to Re-Animator, but since that movie was supposed to be a comedy and this isn't, they don't work as well.

With Pretorious dead and Tillinghast seemingly delusional, it's a trip to the local laughing academy for the survivor. Meanwhile, The Resonator sits inside the abandoned house, and a sexy young psychiatrist (Crampton) finds herself in the grasp of its irresistible hold. As the formerly uptight blonde undoes her bun and then bares her buns in a leather bondage bustier, a former football player named Bubba Brownlee (Ken Foree) wrestles her to the ground to save her from the malevolent machine before succumbing to its deadly rays himself. Tillinghast, freed from the asylum and sporting a weird glandular growth, charges to the rescue shouting dialogue like this: "Alright. Come and get me, you eunuch! This time, I'm not running away!"

Imaginative and surreal — and certainly a prime example of classic 80s horror — From Beyond is definitely worth a look. The re-added scenes, brutally stripped away back in the day by the Ratings Board, fit in seamlessly. Finally, we can see the famous eye-sucking scene in its entirety, not to mention the fact that the print's totally restored and presented in widescreen.

There's a brand-new commentary with Stuart Gordon, producer Brian Yuzna, and stars Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton; The Director's Perspective featurette; The Editing Room: Lost and Found featurette; a Photo Montage; and Storyboard to Film Comparisons with an introduction from Gordon, who speaks on the importance of storyboarding for very low-budget films. I watched all of the extras, and I must say that I couldn't have asked for anything more — it's a really well-rounded, fat-free presentation.

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