The Pit and the Pendulum (1991)

Title: The Pit and the Pendulum (1991)

Director: Stuart Gordon

Cast: Lance Henriksen, Jeffrey Combs, Jonathan Fuller, Rona de Ricci, Mark Margolis, Stephen Lee

The casual movie watcher might not know who Stuart Gordon is, but for those gore hounds out there that enjoy their films gory and filled with nudity, Stuart Gordon is a house hold name, no, Stuart Gordon is a God! Early Stuart Gordon films were a special bunch, they all featured extensive amounts of gore, blood and nudity and a lot of them were based on or inspired by various H.P. Lovecraft stories. Good examples of the kind of gory mayhem that Gordon is capable of in his films are Re-Animator (1985), From Beyond (1986) and Dagon (2001), all three inspired in one form or another by the works of H.P. Lovecraft. Gordon could really go nuts with the gore in his films! Ever wanted to see a deformed human bite a chunk of flesh from a prostitute’s breast? Then you should see Castle Freak (1995), an obscure yet highly dramatic horror film. That’s the thing about those films that Stuart Gordon made with Full Moon Pictures, they were good, but they are so obscure! The reason for them being overlooked is because Full Moon films were made for a niche audience, a small group of people who appreciated them. Fans of Full Moon Pictures are the kind of audience that knows they are watching low brow entertainment, and they love it that way. Unfortunately, a lot of those Full Moon Films don’t enjoy very good distribution nowadays, many of them have kind of gotten lost in the shuffle. Save for getting them through Full Moon Direct, you probably won’t be able to get a hold of some of the more obscure ones, like Gordon’s The Pit and the Pendulum, a film that I had not seen for years, because I could never get a hold of it. I found it in one of those 8 horror film collections that Echo Bridge Entertainment has been releasing, and it was accompanied by 7 other totally unknown horror films; so you could say I found this copy of The Pit and the Pendulum by some sort of miracle. 

I personally always felt that Stuart Gordon was too good for Full Moon; a production company that specialized on making the cheapest kind of films imaginable. Still, even with all the budgetary constraints that accompany a Full Moon production, Gordon managed to make a couple of good films with them, namely Castle Freak (1995) and the film I’ll be reviewing today The Pit and the Pendulum, two of the best films Full Moon ever produced. But no worries, Gordon’s always worked best when handling small budgets and small stories. Sometimes, he’d get too ambitious for the budget he could get and the resulting film would end up being goofy. A good example of this would be RobotJox (1989), a film about giant robots that ended up being extremely goofy for various reasons, but mostly because it required a bigger budget. The Pit and the Pendulum was another one of Gordon’s ambitious projects that didn’t have the budget it required. The story takes place during the days of the Spanish Inquisition, which already means you’re gonna need a decent budget for sets and wardrobe of the era; unfortunately, the film was made with a mere two million dollars! This is probably the reason why some of the sets look completely half assed or unfinished, a disappointing aspect of the film. Roger Corman’s version of this story had better sets! And that was made in 1961! But incredible as it may seem, Gordon actually managed to make an interesting film none the less, goofy yes, aloof and filled with dialog that does not fit the era, but still, highly watchable.

The hero of the story is a bread maker named Antonio; a peaceful man selling bread in his little town, the problem comes when the love of his life, a woman named Maria is accused of being a witch! By orders of the Grand Inquisitor Torquemada, she is to be tortured and put to death. Now, Antonio must infiltrate Torquemada’s castle and save the love of his life from certain death. Can he make it in time to save her from a torturous death and escape the torture chamber alive? Or will he end up facing the horrors of torture himself?

Films about the inquisition make me so angry; I just hate the fact that the Inquisition even happened because it shows the extreme steps that the Catholic Church and the governments of the world took in order to spread Catholicism through the world. Basically they forced religion onto people; if you rejected Jesus you were tortured to death! It’s a nauseating idea; it’s something you should think about if you are a catholic! Catholicism is a religious organization with some really dark, evil foundations; it’s a religion that grafted itself and its ideas onto people’s consciousness via violence and death, which of course goes completely against what the bible and Jesus stands for. Back then the church was so powerful that whatever they said was law, and so, no one dared defy them. This type of thing went on in many countries; on this film it happened in Spain, but other films represent the same situations in American and England. This went on in the world until Catholicism became the biggest religion in the world. It is frightening to learn how religious fanatism can go this far; I mean, who the hell wants to be tortured to death by a bunch of religious fanatics? Back in those days, if you didn’t play along you would die. I often times wonder how I would have ended up had I lived in those days; probably tortured and burned at the stake! Other movies dealing with similar subject matter are Mark of the Devil (1970), The Conqueror Worm (1968) and The Crucible (1996). You might also want to check out Roger Corman’s The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) which starred Vincent Price. I mention these other films in case you feel like exploring these themes a little more. It truly is a sad page in human history.

But this is Stuart Gordon’s take on these themes, and well, the more gruesome aspects are not glazed over! These inquisitors were so freaking fanatical that if they discovered you were a heretic after you were dead, they would dig up your corpse and torture your freaking corpse! The Pit and the Pendulum has all the gore and nudity you’d expect from a Gordon film; there’s this whole scenes that’s all about the priests getting off on taking the clothes off a supposed “witch” just to grope and get a look at her body, I gotta say, nudity is kind of gratuitous on this film. And yeah, it has that goofiness that seems to be present in so many Stuart Gordon films. There’s an unevenness in tone, it starts out like a love story, then it’s this graphic film about the inquisition, but sprinkled with what comes off as unintended humor, especially when it comes to the dialog, which is sometimes too modern. So in that sense the film is all over the place. By far the worst part about the film is its leading man; Antonio as played by Jonathan Fuller. The guy looks too goofy to be a leading man, he made the film come off as a comedy at times, I just couldn’t take the guy seriously, he does not look like the hero type at all! Which is a shame because ‘Torquemada’ the inquisitor played by Lance Henriksen comes off as intensely evil; no holds barred the best thing about the movie is Henriksen. If you can believe it, even Oliver Reed shows up in this film for a couple of minutes as a cardinal sending a message from the pope; it’s kind of funny actually, a high caliber actor like Reed on a cheap horror movie like this one!  I guess he is on this one because of his involvement in Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971), yet another film about witches. Actually, Gordon had Peter O Toole in mind to play Torquemada, but I guess that deal never came through.  As for Gordon’s regular gang of actors we get Jeffrey Combs playing one of the Inquisitors henchmen and Gordon’s own wife, Carolyn Purdy Gordon playing a high class lady seeing the corpse of her husband defiled.

The interesting thing about this film is that even though it’s cheap looking and has copious amounts of goofy dialog, it’s still very watchable. It’s interesting to see Gordon take a departure from adapting H.P. Lovecraft stories onto film, which is what he is primarily known for; but with The Pit and the Pendulum he dabbles with Edgar Allan Poe, so in that sense it’s a change of pace for Gordon. Final words on this film here is that it’s not Gordon’s best, but it’s not his worst either. You're gonna see all sorts of torture devices on this one, so be ready for that! The film shows its budgetary limitations at times but keeps you interested because of its gruesome premise; let’s face it, the church torturing and killing people in gruesome ways just so they believe in Jesus is always a shocker, and if you know Gordon, then you know he is all about shock!

Rating: 3 out of 5

Stuart Gordon concocting a morbid scene

Fangoria Fright Fest Presents: Dark House (2010)

Title: Dark House (2010)

Writer/Director: Darin Scott

Cast: Jeffrey Combs, Diane Salinger

Review:

So Fangoria is putting out a bunch of horror films for Halloween Month (they call it Fangoria Fright Fest) and Dark House is the one that caught my attention. Why? Well, one of the reasons is that it’s a haunted house film, and I’m a sucker for those, and the other reason is that Jeffrey Combs is in it, and I’ve enjoyed Jeffrey Combs horror films since his Stuart Gordon days where he played Herbert West in the Re-Animator movies. Usually I tread carefully with straight to video movies because most of the time, there is a reason why these films didn’t make it to theaters. Most of the times its because they aren’t very good. But not all straight to video movies suck. Sometimes they are just not something mass audiences can consume, usually because they are too violent or gory. Another reason they get sent straight to video is because they are foreign films and studios don’t think they’ll make a profit by releasing a foreign film in theaters, they’d much rather remake it. And finally, sometimes, straight to video films are made specifically for the straight to video market, which is what these bunch of Fangoria movies are. A bunch of low budget horror flicks made for you to enjoy on Halloween. A gift from the folks at Fango, one of America’s leading horror magazines. So, how did this one fare?

Story revolves around a young girl named Claire who one day decides to venture into the spooky house on the block. I’m pretty sure we all know what that’s like, everyone has one when they are kids. So anyway, Claire decides to walk in to the old house hoping to impress her friends with her bravado. To show them she is a brave girl. Little did Claire know she would be walking into a full blown massacre! As she walks through the house she finds child after child dead on the floor! Soon after, she finds a woman destroying her hands on the kitchen sinks garbage disposal unit. Fast forward many years later, and this little girl is one screwed up young adult! She’s into acting now, trying to exorcise her demons. One day, during one of her acting classes, a sneaky looking showman offers her and her peers an opportunity to act in this new haunted house attraction that he is about to open. Problem is that as coincidence would have, this guy has made a haunted house attraction on the exact same house where Claire witnessed that massacre all those years ago! Will Claire accept the challenge and use this opportunity to face her fears? Or is she too scared that it will all be a little too much on her psyche?

What we have here ladies and gentlemen is a film that is a mix between the House on Haunted Hill (1959) and Silent Hill (2005). The House on Haunted Hill part of the film comes from the fact that the story has the protagonists locked up inside a haunted house. Jeffrey Combs plays the part Vincent Price would have played, welcoming a group of strangers and defying them to stay the night in the spooky home. Jeffrey Combs by the way relishes the part of the creator of this haunted house attraction. He apparently loves his job of spooking people. In a one part of the film he gives this whole speech on how important it is to give horror to the people, to give them that jolt of adrenaline to their bodies, to make them feel alive. So the whole house is rigged up to scare people. It has hundreds of hologram machines spread out through the house that project images of ghost and goblins, of creatures that go bump in the night. The holograms look incredibly realistic which he hopes will be the reason that this will be his best haunted house yet. This hologram element of the story gives the filmmakers an opportunity to show us a bunch of different looking ghosts, which I enjoyed. A lot of the ghost designs were pretty nifty in deed.

The Silent Hill part of this film comes from the fact that like Silent Hill, Dark House is a deeply anti-religious horror film. It’s the kind of film that isn’t afraid to say religion is messed up! And it can be dangerous when it falls in the wrong hands! It can mess up your life! It can harm you psychologically! And I dug that about it. It also reminded me a bit of Martyrs (2008) because its also about a girl who goes through hell because of a religious freak, only difference between this film and Martyrs is that Martyrs is a film that shocks, scares and stays with you long after you watch it. Dark House is just cheap Halloween fun, wich is not a bad thing and has its own validity. The main villain of the film, an evil ghost lady called Mrs. Darrode is very similar to the evil religious ghost lady in the Silent Hill film. You know the kind. She’s your basic bible thumper who sees demons and sins in everything in life; the kind of person that takes the bible and takes it way too personally. Kudos go to Diane Sallinger the actress who personified Mrs. Darrode. Her performance, along with Jeffrey Comb’s are two of the best things this horror flick has going for it. Because as far as Im concerned, the younger actors were not all that great. Especially Meghan Ory, the actress who plays Claire, the main character of the film. She didn’t pull through for me as far as her performance went. There were some dramatic and tense moments in the final half of the film where her acting didn’t pull through. Her performance wasn’t as intense as it should have been, to me she wasn’t really living it.

Aside from a bit of bad acting, the film also had one major let down for me and its in terms of continuity. When all is said and done, some things wont make a hell of a lot of sense, specifically when it comes down to the chronological way in which certain things happened, which felt like careless filmmaking to me, as if the script wasn’t really that well thought out. As a result the film has giant unresolved plot holes. It’s the kind of film that has a plot that’s so messy, that they have to bring in two cops (whom we have never seen through out the film) to explain to us how everything really went down. Another thing that let me down was that the technology that was supposed to bring the holograms to life was supposed to be advanced and state of the art, yet the graphics that are supposed to represent the computer program look so cheap that we are constantly reminded what a low budget production this is. This wasn’t a big thing for me, as this is something to be expected in straight to dvd low budget films like this one. Actually, given the budget, I think these folks got away with a fairly decent looking horror film.

Overall, this film has a few flaws, but what it has in flaws it makes up in fun. It felt to me as if I was watching an episode of Tales from the Crypt. You know, fast paced and entertaining. It has a glimpse of depth to it with the whole anti-religious angle. One scene has a little girl grabbing a bible in her hand and saying “No More! No More!” as if saying, “no more religion!” Then she goes and throws the bible in the fireplace, the rest of the kids do the same. That’s ballsy if you ask me. The film has its message, and it has some cool looking ghosts. Jeffrey Combs and Diane Sallinger save the day with their performances, I just wish that writer/director Darin Scott (Tales from the Hood (1995)) had constructed a less muddled screenplay.

Rating: 2 ½ out of 5

 

Parasomnia (2010)

Title: Parasomnia (2010)

Director/ Writer: William Malone

Cast: Patrick Kilpatrick, Jeffrey Combs

Review:

There is something about movies dealing with dream logic and nightmares: they lend themselves perfectly for a horror film. I think it’s the notion that anything, no matter how outlandish or crazy can happen within the realm of a dream. Usually, when things are happy in a dream, that happiness can reach almost unrealistically heights of bliss. Sadly, the same intensity goes for bad dreams. For when something bad things happens in dreams, suddenly we find ourselves right smack in the middle of a full blown nightmare. And then, who the hell knows just where our minds will take us? This is the notion that William Malaone’s Parasomnia plays with.

Laura's dreamworld isnt a pretty place!

The film tells the story of Laura Baxter, a young girl who suffers from a sleeping disorder called Parasomnia. This is a condition that causes the person who suffers from it to practically sleep their lives away, waking up only briefly on sporadic occasions. Laura sleeps on her hospital bed as life slips by her unnoticed, like a modern day Sleeping Beauty. Meanwhile, Danny Sloan (an art student) is in the same hospital visiting a friend of his. While there, he sees Laura sleeping profoundly on her hospital bed. He is instantly mesmerized by her beauty and immediately falls for her. Problem is, the patient next door, a mad man whose hypnotic abilities have marked him as a danger to society has other plans for her. “She is mine!” he screams from the padded room across the hall. What does he mean by this? And will Laura ever wake from her sleep?

I love films that deal with dream logic because in the dream world, anything goes. And when it comes to horrifying images, well, the dream world offers a filmmaker the opportunity to turn up the volume as far as freakishness goes. On Parasomnia, director William Malone was inspired by the work of Polish artist Zdzislaw Beksinski. One look at this artist’s gallery of paintings and computer generated artwork and one can instantly see his influence on the visual outlook of Malone’s film. That dark, surrealistic and downright nightmarish visual language that Parasomnia offers obviously stems in part from this artists body of work; which is fantastic for a film dealing with the dark dream world in which Laura spends most of her time in. The images that Malone conjured up in Laura’s dream sequences are one of the highlights of the film. The images consist of lonely landscapes filled with dark clouds and giant revolving mirrors, very unique and unsettling.

This piece of Polish art from artist Zdzislaw Beksinski, allows us to see the films visual influences

Parasomnia has similarities with a couple of films, some of the are: The Cell (2000), Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and Lord of Illusions (1995). It is similar to The Cell in the sense that the film spends a lot of its time inside of Laura’s dream landscape. She is a prisoner of her own mind. She sleeps and she cant wake up, and everything is made worse when we learn that the madman known as Byron Volpe is tormenting her in her dreams, kind of like a more threatening and evil version of Freddy Krueger. I don’t think its a coincidence that the actor who plays Byron Volpe (Patrick Kilpatrick) is the same actor who played the villain in The Cell. Parasomnia and The Cell are movies dealing with the same kind of structure and themes. On Parasomnia Patrick Kilpatrick plays Byron Volpe, a villain whose hypnotic powers are so strong, they have to put a bag over his head so no one will make eye contact with him. He has to be restrained in a padded cell with a gag over his mouth because one word out of his mouth, one look into his eyes could send you into a chain of events leading to your death. I thought this was an awesome villain, extremely formidable. He is powerful even when under restraints! It brought to my mind the villain in Clive Barker’s Lord of Illusions, yet another film in which the villain has extremely powerful mind controlling abilities.

Thematically speaking Parasomnia speaks about the dangers of handing ones mind over to a madman selling dark dreams and lies. Illusions that can enter our minds and render us powerless, like Laura sleeping in her hospital bed unable to do anything about her life. In Lord of Illusions, Nix (the films villain) is a religious leader who controls the minds of his followers and lies to them in order to use them for his own dark purposes the same way Byron Volpe does on this film. In Parasomnia, the villains’ powers reside in the words he uses which alludes to the power of words and ideas and how they can enter our minds to paint of a landscape of what is “the truth”. The right words and ideas can manipulate our view of the world, and twist it, taking it far away from reality or truth. A good speaker can make us think and do horrible things, much like Hitler did in his day, much like many religious leaders have done as well. I found it extremely interesting that the person who comes to save Laura from her dark sleep is an artist. Usually, in films (and in real life as well) artists are liberals who don’t subscribe to any religious or political point of view. I think this is one of the messages that the film is trying to put across. The idea that art can set us free from mental slavery. The idea that through the exploration of our feelings and the expression of our inner self through art we can really get to know ourselves, who we really are instead of being who others want us to be. I definitely enjoyed the films themes in this sense.

Cabinet of Dr. Caligari anyone?

But by far, Parasomnia’s biggest attraction are its images. There are long passages in the film where not a word is spoken, where we are simply meant to dive into the dark world that Malone has created which feels like a mix of something that Clive Barker and Tim Burton might have cooked up after watching the German expressionism film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). Speaking of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Parasomnia also has some similarities with that film, especially when we see that both films deal with a powerful hypnotist who controls a somnambulist and makes it do his bidding, in fact, at one moment, the villain places Laura inside of a coffin, same as Dr. Caligari does with his sonambulist. The grand finale of the film falls within the realm of the campy and the theatrical, resembling something out of The Abominable Mr. Phibes (1971). Parasomnia is a visually interesting film, Malone brings back that sort of dark gothic imagery he showed us in House on Haunted Hill (1999) where images seemed to be in fast forward at times, resembling something out of Adrianne Lyne’s Jacob’s Ladder (1990). The whole film is like one long dark dream, interlaced with a psychological thriller. Recommend it if you are in the mood for a film with a strong stylistic and visual sense.

 

Rating: 3 out of 5

H.P. Lovecraft's From Beyond (1986)

Title: From Beyond (1986)

Director: Stuart Gordon

Writers: Dennis Paoli, Brian Yuzna (based on short story by H.P. Lovecraft)

Cast: Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, Ken Foree

Review:

From Beyond was Stuart Gordon’s second feature film, it’s the one he made after Re-Animator (1985). Usually when a director is given the opportunity to direct a second film, they will try to do everything better than they did in their first film. The second film is a directors opportunity to wow audiences a little more, and say “see? I know how to do this! I can do it on a regular basis!” And essentially, this is exactly what Gordon did with From Beyond. With this film Gordon was trying to be gorier and scarier. He tried having more action, more special effects. And for all intents and purposes I think Gordon achieved this with From Beyond. There is this ongoing debate amongst horror fans to try and decide which of these two films is Gordon’s best, as much as I love Re-Animator to death, I lean towards From Beyond being Gordon’s best film and I’ll state my reasons why during this review.

Dr. Tillingast working on The Resonator

From Beyond is a film based on H.P. Lovecrafts short story of the same name. It tells the story of Dr. Crawford Tillingast (Jeffrey Combs) who is a laboratory assistant for one Dr. Edward Pretorious, a mad scientist of sorts who has built a machine called The Resonator which stimulates your pineal gland and enhances your emotions and feelings. Suddenly, you feel everything that much more acutely. So you can imagine what this machine will do to your sexual desires! It enhances them to uncontrollable levels. The Resonator has many other side effects. For example, you will see creatures from other dimensions suddenly appear before you and trust me, they are not very nice! In fact, they are hungry for human flesh and will have no problem taking a bite right out of your face! . The use of The Resonator to stimulate the pineal gland will also turn you into a junky! You become addicted to the machine and will want to experience the intense wave of emotions and pleasure over and over again. One final detail, using The Resonator will also make you hungry for human brains! Will anyone ever destroy the damned thing?

Great thing about From Beyond is that it reunites the same creative team that brought us Re-Animator. Stuart Gordon as a director and Brian Yuzna producing. These two guys worked together on many horror films after this one, they brought us films like Dagon (2001) Dolls (1987) and Castle Freak (1995). Can’t blame them for wanting to exploit the greatness of H.P. Lovecraft’s horror stories. They are perfect for translating into horror films because they always play with the idea of the unknown. The supernatural, the horrifying. Many of his stories talk about creatures from other dimensions that defy descriptions. “Old Gods” and things that are beyond our human comprehension. Stuart Gordon and the rest of his creative team obviously love Lovecraft’s universe and have dived into it on more than one occasion. So we got a movie here that’s made by Lovecraft fans for Lovecraft fans. From Beyond also brings together two Stuart Gordons regulars: Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton, who would get to work together yet again in  another excellent Stuart Gordon film: Castle Freak. To top things off, Gordon is a horror director known for some of the grizzliest moments ever commited on celluloid, so rest assured my gore loving friends, you will be pleased in that department!

One of the side effects of using The Resonator, you have to eat brains!

From Beyond reminded me a bit of Frank Henenlotter’s Brain Damage (1988) because it plays with themes of drug addiction and loss of control over ones actions. In Frank Henenlotter’s Brain Damage the main character encounters a small creature that injects an addictive blue liquid into his brain that gives him intense sensations and makes him experience the world just a bit differently. Unfortunately, the creature has to feed on human brains! From Beyond is a lot like that. You have a machine that when turned on will give you intense pleasure, will make you do things you would normally never do, and when you turn it off, and come off the high, you feel used, dirty and ashamed of yourself. This is what happens to Barbara Crampton’s character: Dr. Katherine McMichaels. She starts out all nerdy and clean cut, but when out of curiosity she decides to experience The Resonator, well, then we see her turn completely slutty and overtly sexual. In one scene, while still under the influence of the machine, she dresses up in S&M gear and starts to seduce Jeffrey Combs. When she snaps out of it, she can’t believe what she’s done and ends up being ashamed of her actions. So what we have here is a film that talks about addiction, and how it can change a person. One moment you are a fully functional thinking human being and the next you are a person who can only think about your next fix!

But don’t take From Beyond for a preachy film, because it isn’t. Its main purpose is to entertain us with its fantasy, and with its gore and effects, and there are plenty of those! You see, Dr. Pretorious, the creator of The Resonator gets taken to another dimension when a creature bites of his head! His head melds with a creature “From Beyond” so Dr. Pretorious suddenly becomes two beings in one. And every time Pretorious returns from the other dimension, he looks less and less human, which basically means we get to see a bunch of cool transformations, creatures and make up effects! This is one of those movies that was made when latex and make up effects reigned supreme, so every time Dr. Pretorious comes from his dimensional travels, he looks more monstrous!

Dr. Pretorious after returning from another dimension

My only gripe with this movie is that sometimes, the Pretorious creature wasn’t pulled off so well. This is a problem that the filmmakers of Slither (2006) also had. In Slither we encounter a creature called the Grant Grant monster, a giant fleshy mess of a creature that looks cool but is ultimately not that menacing because it looks so static. Same thing happened in From Beyond. The Dr. Pretorious creature looks cool, but it doesn’t look like it can move, it looks like a puppet that doesn’t have much mobility and as a result, the performance of the creature looks stiff and clunky, not like something that is alive, not like something that can hurt you. This translates to loss of believability to me. You kind of disconnect because you know you’re just watching a clunky looking puppet. But the thing with this movie is that I’m having so much fun with it that I don’t care, I love the make up effects and the gore. I just wish they had pulled off that creature slightly better. Other creatures look awesome, like this giant worm thing that Dr. Tillingast and Bubba (Ken Foree) have to fight off in the house’s basement, while trying to turn off The Resonator. The worm thing looks like one of the worms from Dune (1984) only smaller. This giant worm thing grabs Dr. Tillingast by the mellon and sucks on his head! Pretty cool sequence! Like I said, there’s lots of gooey fun in store for you guys if you like that sort of film with lots of monsters and creatures coming from other dimensions.

"Humans are such easy prey..."

This is one of those movies that’s constantly trying to wow you and amaze you and I love that about it. Stuart Gordon knows that the worst thing a horror movie can be is boring, so he always builds his horror movies on a frenetic pace. From Beyond is never boring, and its always going over the top with everything! One of the many things that is over the top about this movie is its performances. Jeffrey Combs once again plays the crazy scientists searching for that truth, that new experiment that will put him on the map. Unfortunately, with Dr. Pretorious’s Resonator machine he seems to have bitten off more than he can chew. He plays the wacky crazy doctor, his transformation is extremely grizzly, not gonna spoil it for you. But it’s always a treat to see Jeffrey Combs playing the crazy guy in a horror movie. Check out The Frightners (1996) if you don’t believe me! Barbara Crampton plays a nerdy doctor, who’s curious for the machine and its effects. Once she gives the machine a try, she goes from nerdy to slut in 0.5 seconds! She shows a little more skin than she did in Re-Animator, but in the movies defense I will say that her nudity actually goes with the story, because The Resonator enhances your sensual side. Finally, we got Ken Foree who plays the conscience of the team, the one trying to make sense of it all, always trying to do the right thing. So we got a good cast rounding up the film.

The Resonator reminded me of the dimensional portal in the Phantasm films because they also worked with sonic vibrations. Cool thing about The Resonator is that whenever it was turned on, it cast these purple flashes of light that gave the film its own unique color palette, appropriately otherworldly. Everything is made that much more exciting thanks to the musical score composed by Richard Band. It is a very cinematic score and reminded me of the good old days when films had that kind of music to them. In closing I’ll just say that there are many gory delights in store for you in this film. It is fast paced, over the top and simply put: tons of fun! I wish Stuart Gordon would give us another gory film sometime soon!

Rating: 4 out of 5