Cold Fusion Video Reviews

• Directed by Stuart Gordon
• Written by Stuart Gordon, Dennis Paoli, and Brian Yuzna, based on the short story by H.P. Lovecraft
• Starring
  • Jeffrey Combs
  • Barbara Crampton
  • Ken Foree
  • Ted Sorel
• Produced by Brian Yuzna
• Executive produced by Charles Band and Bruce William Curtis

And now, to open with a statement that I’m sure will offend hordes:

This movie was almost really good. But not quite.

Following the previous year’s success with Re-Animator, Executive Producer Charles Band decided (as he usually does), “Hey! Let’s do it again!” So he again put leads Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton in a Lovecraft-based movie directed by Stuart Gordon and produced by Brian Yuzna. Too bad lightning didn’t strike again.

In the attic laboratory of Dr. Edward Pretorius, he and his assistant Crawford Tillinghast (Combs) are working on a resonator which will stimulate the pineal gland, which, Dr. Pretorius believes, is a dormant sensory organ. The experiment works; first Crawford sees flatworm-thingies swimming in the ether around him, then Pretorius… well…

We next find Crawford in a state mental institution, where he’s to be evaluated for Pretorius’ murder — seems that by the end of the night, Pretorius’ headless corpse was left on the laboratory floor, with no head to be found. Crawford’s only explanation: “It bit off his head.”

The psychiatrist doing the evaluation is Katherine McMichaels (Crampton), a “whiz-kid” who’s made many enemies in the field of schizophrenic studies. After a CAT scan shows that Crawford’s pineal gland is abnormally enlarged, she insists on taking Crawford back to the house to recreate the experiment; perhaps there’s some hallucinatory effect to explain his alleged behavior. Accompanied by a cop named Leroy “Bubba” Brown (Ken Foree of Dawn of the Dead; let’s see — he’s a level-headed black cop, what are the odds he lives into the final reel?), they go back to the scene of the crime.

There, Crawford shows them more about Pretorius the man, specifically that he was heavily into S&M and other pain/pleasure stimulations. As Crawford says, “The five senses weren’t enough for him; he wanted more.”

“More” how, you ask? They find out when they get the machine back into working order, and Pretorius appears, accompanied by more of the ethereal flatworms and jellyfish — a Pretorius who mutates his body at will, trying to draw them into “the other side” where he is.

By the next morning, Crawford and Bubba are willing to get the hell out, but McMichaels is fascinated by the possibilities. Obsessed, really. She wants to “see more — feel more” — exactly the same words Pretorius used before losing his head…

There’s the very real germ of a good movie in here, and for the first two thirds said germ is allowed to grow: The idea of all-consuming hedonism, or sensory pleasure that goes so far beyond the normal senses that pain, pleasure, and all other sense are merged into one. Unfortunately, that whole motivating force gets lost in the last half hour, and instead we have Crawford running around with a bald and misshapen head (he ends up looking like Kryten from Red Dwarf), with his extended pineal gland sticking out of his forehead like an eye on a stalk, alternately eating people’s brains and moaning about what he’s done.

All of this leads up to a denouement with more bodily excretions and tissue than anything this side of Dead Alive, and a pressing question: Where exactly does a psychiatrist get a charge of dynamite, detonator attached, in the middle of the night?

I will say that the creature designs, expecially the continually mutated Pretorius, are well done (designed by Neal Adams, of all people), though the execution sometimes lacks. The worst offender is the later incarnations of Pretorius, in which his head supposedly extends on a stalk horizontally from the mass of his body; thanks to bad framing, the actor’s real neck is visible in practically every shot.

As with most Lovecraft adaptations, From Beyond has to jettison the text’s ambience of cosmic dread as being too ponderous for a full ninety minutes; but whereas Re-Animator managed to fill the void with a wonderfully tacky tastelessness, From Beyond doesn’t quite manage to find anything to fill in the gaps.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 5
• breasts: 2
• explosions: 1
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• characters named Bubba: 1
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 2
  • Guest of Honor Jeffrey Combs is obviously a regular in the ST universe, with two recurring roles (Weyoun and Brunt the Ferengi, including one episode in which he was both) plus two other guest shots on DS9, and a guest role on Voyager
  • Ted Sorel (Pretorius) was “Kavel” in the 1st-season DS9 episode “Duet”