Science has provided us with many beautiful things, including the device on which you are currently viewing this. Scientists have experimented and discovered numerous new discoveries that have aided mankind’s growth, but what happens when an experiment fails? Normally, the scientist would clean up his mistake and try again, but he will not be able to do so if he’s…dead.
The film From Beyond is a body horror film that was released in 1986. The story follows a crazed scientist who is obsessed with figuring out how to activate the pineal gland, which is located deep within the human brain.
In order to do so, he and his devoted helper Crawford develop the Pretorius Resonator, an unearthly scientific machine that, regrettably, backfires on them. An accident occurs, the insane genius scientist dies, and his helper is held entirely responsible. Is it true that he assassinated Dr. Pretorius? Is it possible that it was something altogether different?
A film of this nature has H.P Lovecraft written all over it, with all of its terrifying elements, and you would be correct in thinking so, given that the film is based on a short story penned by the man himself. The short story is only 7 pages long, and it was also adapted into a film called Banshee Chapter (2013). Dennis Paoli, Gordon, and Brian Yuzna wrote the film, which stars Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, Ken Foree, and Ted Sorel. Let us enter the slimy world of Dr. Pretorius’ most heinous creation.
Humans are such easy prey – From Beyond (1986)
This movie is nothing like anything you’ve seen before so buckle up and strap in for one hell of a ride. From Beyond is essentially an experiment in bringing 1980s horror trends to their logical conclusion and seeing if the horror audience is prepared to follow despite whatever is thrown at them.
The movie centers around Dr. Edward Pretorius and his assistant, Dr. Crawford Tillinghast, who are two scientists who have recently completed the invention of the Resonator, a machine that would allow them to see beyond the usual human range of perception.
It works, demonstrating the existence of pink floating worm-like organisms that appear to have no interaction with our physical reality unless they notice movement, in which case they will bite chunks of our flesh off, as happens to Tillinghast. He wants to put a stop to it right then, but Pretorius is insanely power-hungry and orders him to go on with it. Interesting to note here is that Dr. Pretorius is named after Henry Frankenstein’s previous teacher, Dr. Septimus Pretorius, who seduced Henry to the dark side in the novel.
Fortunately, during the mad experiment, the Resonator malfunctions and shuts down, but not before leaving Pretorius decapitated and Tillinghast with only enough evidence to persuade the cops that he’s a raving lunatic who murdered the older scientist without dropping a drop of blood.
This is when things get interesting. Crawford, who was being held in a psychiatric facility was due for evaluation to confirm that he was in fact, crazy but luckily for him, the psychiatrist who evaluated him, believed his story.
Dr. Katherine asks for a CAT scan to be done and when they find out that Crawford’s pineal gland is much larger than a regular human being and is growing, she decides that she wants to see it for herself. Katherine is played by Barbara Crampton and Studio executives were against Crampton being cast because they believed she was too young to play a psychologist.
Gordon, on the other hand, was adamant that Crampton be cast. Gordon had previously worked with both Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton on Re-Animator (1985). He believed that having a company of actors while filming Lovecraft films would allow the actors to know ahead of time that they would be asked to do all weird things, allowing them to adapt effortlessly to his direction.
Thus, Dr. Katherine, Crawford and a police officer named Bubba end up at the house, waiting to become victims of the resonator.
They start the resonator and Crawford is successful in making the two of them see that he was right, you can see creatures with the help of the resonator but this time, he did not only see creatures. They saw Dr. Pretorius step out of the shadows, asking them to join him, to see what he could see in the ‘beyond’. As he spoke to them, he slowly turned more and more into a slimy monster, resembling a squid-like creature. They realize that his consciousness had taken control of the creature that ate his brain. A panicking Crawford shuts off the Resonator, making Pretorius and the creatures vanish. They also discover a sexual aspect of the stimulation of the pineal gland which the movie plays on.
While this incident shocks them, it also alters their brains as Katherine wants to go back to the machine and ‘see more’, behaving like a maniac herself. When everyone sleeps that night, Katherine does go back and switch on the machine. But thankfully, Crawford and Bubba wake up on time and notice that something is wrong.
They go into the basement to shut down the source of power but encounter a giant worm-like monster with razor sharp teeth but they manage to defeat it and shut off the power. All of the worms and creatures and violence is VFX created. The production actually ran out of money before the effects for the finale could be completed, according to producer Brian Yuzna. The effects were generated by four different SFX teams, with John Carl Buechler creating the majority of the special effects.
Having had two close calls with this machine, Bubba takes control of the situation and decides they should leave before anything else can happen but little does he know, Katherine is already under the spell of the machine.
Katherine dresses up in a leather suit and gets on top of an unconscious Crawford while Bubba readies their truck so that they could leave the hell-house. Funnily enough, the leather dominatrix attire worn by Barbara Crampton in this scene was sold at a yard sale. Barbara Crampton was questioned in 2016 by an interviewer if her teenage children had seen this and her other early films. Crampton had responded that they had not, but that their friends had seen all of it on the internet and had taunted her son about the black leather costume in particular, prompting her to show him the films she had made.
Bubba comes back to see Katherine in her leather suit and forces her to come back to her senses when the resonator comes to a life controlled by Pretorius from The Beyond and bugs descend on Crawford and Katherine.
Bubba manages to save them, losing his own life in the process. At this point, they see an extremely deformed version of the creature and as they try switching off the machine, Crawford’s pineal gland enlarges and pops out through his forehead. Seeing this, a shocked Katherine desperately tries to shut down the machine and is successful using a fire extinguisher.
They are rushed to the hospital and their mental state is checked however; the story does not end there. Turns out that Crawford now likes eating brains and with that distracting the hospital staff, Katherine rushes to the house to destroy the machine with the help of a bomb. Seeing her run off, Crawford follows and the climax takes place where it all started and eerily enough, the address of the house is 666 Benevolent St. There is a showdown between Pretorius and Crawford where the former eats the latter but Crawford’s consciousness remains in the creature and as their internal battle tears it apart, the bomb explodes, destroying it all, leaving behind a traumatized Katherine.
Like Roger Corman’s Poe adaptations, Gordon was interested in the potential of developing a series of Lovecraft films with the same cast. In 1995, Gordon, Jeffrey Combs, and Barbara Crampton collaborated on a third Lovecraft adaptation, Castle Freak, a direct-to-video film. Gordon would go on to direct adaptations of two more of Lovecraft’s writings, the film Dagon in 2001 and H. P. Lovecraft’s Dreams in the Witch-House, the second episode of the Masters of Horror television series, in 2005.
Pretorius Creature Explained
This movie is a vile exploitation film in which severe gore and bodily horror are inextricably linked to violent sexuality. In fact, Dr. Pretorius hammering a nail into an unwilling female’s tongue in the first scene was cut out because it was simply too much. This gnarly creature that Dr. Pretorius transforms into after being eaten by it and having his consciousness transferred into it, is the main villain of this movie and because of how gross and tough it is to look at, this one is definitely worth a mention.
We do get a little bit of backstory into who Dr. Pretorius was as a person apart from the obvious scientific maniac angle. We see that he was into BDSM and that it was often non-consensual which seems a little like the pleasure-pain dynamic that is there with Pinhead and the rest of the Cenobites from Hellraiser. When he does appear as the deformed monster that can change its bodily shape, he still talks about pleasure, saying that the greatest sensual pleasure in the world is to see inside another person’s mind.
The creature also takes a liking to the beautiful Dr Katherine and keeps trying to come in physical contact with her. This could be the reason why Katherine was affected by the resonator to such a degree, unlike both Bubba and Crawford, when she was exposed to it for the first time. Crawford also tells Bubba in a scene that Pretorius loved beautiful women.
Having seen the backstory of this maniacal scientific genius, there is increased understanding about the creature he turns into. Pretorius from ‘The Beyond’, is the true main character of this film as everyone else spends the entire film reacting to him and his creation. Post his transformation into the creature, he is shown as a horrible exaggeration of human lusts and cravings, both sexual and otherwise.
Still, Gordon clearly understood that the sexual aspect will give us the most fright and catch the most attention, and they play on that. They do so in the depiction of all aspects of the creature, starting with the worms’ mouths which have a distinctly vagina-with-teeth design, along with the final form of the Pretorius monster, which looks like a slimy, wrinkled phallus with a deformed human head.
The physical appearance, as we have already noted, changes from one scene to the next which means that it can shapeshift and change its biomass according to how it wants to present itself.
However, what remains constant is that it is somewhat of a humanoid entity that has pinkish wet slime-like skin and transforms from a version that looks like Dr. Pretorius to a hunch-backed phallic entity with long tentacles and tendrils while are also wet and slimy. It also has sharp teeth along with having superhuman strength and by the climax, we see the pineal gland emerge from its forehead, looking like a third eye, completing the alien-like look.
We see the creature appear again and again and the movie definitely makes use of the shock factor that the creature brings, looking worse with every progressing scene. With how horrifying the creature looks, it is not surprising that obtaining an “R” rating from the MPAA, according to Gordon, was a difficult task. He quoted them as saying that the first version of the picture had “ten times too much of everything” when he first showed it to them. He was eventually able to get away with making minor changes to the film rather than eliminating full segments.
It definitely looks like a Lovecraftian monster with its tentacles and slimy body. However, the creature is not all-powerful and gets destroyed by Crawford and the bombs planted by Katherine.
THE RESONATOR: MISKATONIC U (2021)
From Beyond was meant to be a part of a series of Lovecraftian horror movies but it is now getting a sequel, over two decades later.
A new movie with a title like The Resonator: Miskatonic U and a studio like Full Moon Films behind it, it’s easy to assume this is a sequel to Stuart Gordon’s 1980s classic film From Beyond. The Resonator: Miskatonic U has been combined into a seventy-minute movie for release on DVD and Blu-Ray. It was originally shot as two episodes of a proposed series for Full Moon’s streaming service.
Crawford Tillinghast is the protagonist of the story, and he is attempting to duplicate and perfect his late father’s scientific achievements. So far, all it’s gained him is a beheaded pal from the other side, brought into our reality by the resonator. However, Tillinghast’s situation becomes exacerbated when he finds that the prototype of his creation has not only released vicious and deadly monsters into his world but has also altered his own reality.
The Resonator unfolds with apparent expertise in story-telling and direction; all the important information is laid out in an entertaining manner that should ideally make both Lovecraft enthusiasts and devotees of From Beyond, extremely happy and satisfied. As Crawford, Oliver gives a more nuanced performance than Combs’ barely restrained megalomania. Despite the fact that Oliver is a muscular redhead who bears a little physical resemblance to Combs, he manages to channel his persona, even though it is more akin to the role Combs played in Re-Animator.
College drama, mad scientists, and supernatural horror are intermingled with a healthy dose of T&A in William Butler’s film. It’s not the sequel to From Beyond that anyone expected, but considering the way Charles Band has taken the company, The Resonator: Miskatonic U is probably what should have been expected.
In any case, it might be for the best. It’s a tall order to expect anyone to equal the work of a team like director Stuart Gordon and authors Brian Yunza and Dennis Paoli. It was probably a sensible decision to take it on a completely new path.
Story-wise, it serves as both an extension and a remake of the film. The resonator device is of course the same and the function of the resonator also remains the same it opening up a doorway into ‘The Beyond’ and giving us the same pinkish creatures that we saw in From Beyond. One of the main differences is that this movie places the experiments in the hands of Crawford this time around, instead of Dr. Pretorius and gives us something that is more current with the times in terms of college life and drama.
The cast is excellent, the special effects are fantastic, the soundtrack is fantastic, and the whole thing is rather disturbing. It’s classic Charles Band with a modern Full Moon twist, and it’s worth seeing just for that. If you are interested in the world of ‘The Beyond’ and want to know more about the creatures that exist in that paradigm along with what exactly lures people into that world, making humans easy prey, then this movie will definitely pique your interest. Gordon, to whom Resonator is dedicated, I believe would have approved. It’s obvious that it’s a Lovecraft fan, and it ticks off most of the requirements. In a macabre manner, it is weird and hilarious.
The Resonator: Miskatonic U is available to stream on Full Moon’s streaming service in two versions: as two distinct episodes or as a feature film. On November 9th, 2021, it will be released on DVD and Blu-Ray. For additional information about this film, you can visit Full Moon’s website or Facebook page.
From Beyond Sequel
The Resonator: Miskatonic U serves as the sequel to the body horror fantasy that is, From Beyond. After over 20 years, The Lovecraftian Universe that was explored by Stuart Gordon has finally gotten a comeback. While From Beyond did not do well in the box office when it was released, it has since then become somewhat of a cult classic.
Stuart Gordon is definitely remembered by fans for his contribution to the horror genre and that love can definitely be seen on screen in the first few frames of the film where the production team dedicates the movie to Gordon.
This sequel serves as a modern reimagining of the original movie. It takes place on the fictional college campus of “Miskatonic University” in Arkham, Massachusetts, where all kinds of weird and otherworldly phenomena have been reported in Lovecraft lore. This is one that fans will definitely appreciate and is also not a bad watch at all. In fact, if you’re into the horror genre in general, this movie should really catch your fancy.
Both the movies have scenes that will make your face turn away, a universe that will excite you and make you wonder about the many possibilities and monsters that are dangerous and grim to look at. When it comes to body horror, these movies get it right. Both the movies have relatively simple special effects and VFX but that only adds to the grim and gory feel of the environment that the movies are trying to create.
Before you go ahead and watch The Resonator: Miskatonic U, make sure that you definitely watch From Beyond. From Beyond is the source material, it is the film that inspired the sequel and you simply have to bear witness to Stuart Gordon’s genius when it comes to visually impactful body horror, as he has demonstrated he can do superbly, all throughout his career.
While the movie is quite old, don’t let that fool you because human greed for power and a quest for the unknown, which is the central philosophical thought around which both the movies revolve, is something that is constant, no matter when you watch it. I mean, wouldn’t you want to sample the resonator and its powers at least once?