From Beyond

Rating: Three shoggoths out of five

Nutshell: A random protagonist visits Crawford Tillinghast, a scientist who has manufactured a machine that enables humans to sense other dimensions with dormant sensory organs.

Commentary: This story is a quick, simple read, with a fairly standard Lovecraftian plot. It gets three shoggoths because of its use of the pineal gland as a dormant sensory organ. The story does not have enough meat to it, but it spawned a film anyway.

Best Quote: "I have harnessed the shadows that stride from world to world to sow death and madness."

Film: The movie version of this tale was created by the same team that brought us the delightful Re-Animator movies, which were also based on a work by H. P. Lovecraft. Their effort with From Beyond is not nearly as pleasing as the Re-Animator films, but it is still a fair diversion.

The film's plot differs greatly from the short story. Instead of being the villain, the Crawford Tillinghast character is turned into a protagonist, and a new mad scientist character is introduced. Other new characters are thrown into the fray (including a love interest for Tillinghast and a black cop). Really, the only thing that remains the same between the story and the book is the machine and the pineal gland theory.

The film would wind up being average Cinemax two-in-the-morning-on-Saturday sort of fodder, if it weren't for some nice touches. The movie wastes no time diving into action. Jeffrey Combs is great fun (as always) to watch as Tillinghast (though not as much fun as when he played Herbert West). There are a couple wonderful one-liners ("It bit his head off... like a ginger bread man!"). There are some nice brain-sucking sequences. And perhaps most surprising of all, both male and female viewers get an equal share of skin viewing (its not much, but at least its equal!).