COMPARING THE FILM TO IT'S SOURCE MATERIAL (From Beyond (DVD))

Member Name: MrQuomps

Product:	From Beyond (DVD)
Date:	09/08/08 (23 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fun, excessive cinema

Disadvantages: For Lovecraft purists it offers little

A COMPARISON WITH THE BOOK, FOR HP LOVECRAFT ENTHUSIASTS

From Beyond is based on HP Lovecraft's very short story of the same name.
The fact that the story is so short, approximately nine pages, means that there is not that much to transfer to screen. Basically the film covers the material in the short story within the first few minutes of the film, before the credits. This is where two doctors of physics Crawford Tillinghast and Edward Pretorious unlock a sixth sense experience things beyond normal conception.
The character of Crawford Tillinghast in the book relates more closely to Edward Pretorius for these opening minutes. He has a keen interest in opening gateways to new sensations to be experienced via the awakening of the usually dormant pineal gland.
In order to stimulate the pineal gland the scientists have to switch on a machine of their own invention called a "resonator", which Lovecraft described as a "...detestable electrical machine, glowing with a sickly, sinister violet luminosity."
Once the machine is powered up and the pineal gland is stimulated strange creatures become visible which normally lie outside of human perception. In the film they appear as the "...inky, jellyish monstrosities" mentioned in the short story, but fall short of:

"Indescribable shapes both alive and otherwise were mixed in disgusting disarray, and close to every known thing were whole worlds of alien, unknown entities."

The creatures in the film are represented as a sparse scattering of eels and jellyfish.

The film elaborates greatly on the short story and soon becomes a gory, excessive affair, where the main concern seems to be sex. A Dr Katherine McMichaels has been added to the tale, she is young and attractive and soon becomes addicted to the stimulation of her pineal gland and the sexual arousal that comes with it, no doubt enjoying the "...delicate torture of [her] whole body." as Lovecraft put it.
The sex driven narrative is a long way away from anything Lovecraft would pen particularly scenes like Dr McMichaels dressing up in skimpy fetish latex and wallowing in sexual ecstasy astride a prostrate Crawford Tillinghast

The film also takes the idea of the enlargement of the pineal gland a little too far when it bursts through the head of Crawford Tillinghast and protrudes from his forehead like a snake until the recently-lucid Dr McMichaels bites it off in a rather castrating manner.
There are many more excessive additions to the original text, like Crawford Tillinghast sucking peoples brains out through their eyeballs for example, that all mount up to a rather over-the-top film which lost any Lovecraftian feel to it in the opening minutes. Typically the climax to the film is a bomb blowing up the resonator, half the house and whatever was left of Drs Tillinghast and Pretorious.

Lovecraft elements, other than those already mentioned, that appear in the film include; the house situated on Benevolent Street, the Miskatonic University is mentioned, Jeffrey Combs' Crawford Tillinghast is a fantastically paranoid intellectual - a typical Lovecraft character.

Had From Beyond been a five minute film it could have been deemed Lovecraftian and possibly a successful adaptation. Unfortunately it is feature length and, as with Re-animator but to a greater extent, the film leaves behind the material on which it is based and finds footholds in sex, gore and excess.

Summary: If you're looking for Lovecraft horror/sci-fi, look elsewhere