“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”
It has been ninety-nine years since these words appeared in an essay for the long-gone magazine, The Recluse, and they’re from one of the great forefathers of modern fear fiction, H.P. Lovecraft. These words of harsh truth are a core trait that has led us down some dark paths throughout our less-than-favorable history. With the many positive things science has brought us, it has yielded more failures than the greedy hands of human ambition can quantify.
These are the characters found in his stories. Sharp minds of curiosity that overstepped their boundaries, and paid a grim price with no hope of recourse from any divine intervention. The only gods you’ll find in the realm of Howard Phillips Lovecraft are the ones you don’t want to meet, and the foolish mortals trying to play God. Tonight’s movies are a perfect example of the latter, and they’re also two adaptations of Lovecraft’s allegedly “unfilmable” stories. Now, take my hand, and let us sail the black seas of infinity…
Re-Animator (1985)
We begin with one of the best horror movies of the 1980s and one that is celebrating its 39th birthday today! The dearly departed horror legend, Stuart Gordon (Dolls, The Pit and the Pendulum, Fortress, Castle Freak), made his directorial debut on October 18th, 1985, with Re–Animator, a loose adaptation of the 1922 Lovecraft story “Herbert West–Reanimator.” It also introduced two actors who went on to become icons of the genre (and beloved fan favorites), Jeffery Combs and Barbara Crampton. For those who haven’t seen this, now is the time to pay attention. Class is about to begin!
The brilliant Dr. Herbert West (Combs) returns Stateside after studying abroad in Switzerland with his recently deceased mentor, Dr. Gruber (Al Berry). He chooses the highly esteemed Miskatonic University to continue his research into defeating humanity’s biggest weakness – dying! To him, the natural stage of bodily expiration is a disease. Something that is a mere affliction to be treated, and reversed. Sounds insane, right? The thing is that the good doctor has actually figured out the cure!
Well…almost! The reagent that he developed brings the dead subject back to a waking state of consciousness, but they’re also a mindless zombie-like revenant that kills everything in sight. It’s not perfect, but still a step in the right direction, and he needs the school’s resources to continue his work. Teaching at Miskatonic is renowned researcher, Dr. Carl Hill (David Gale), and he now has a particularly eager student signing up for his course.
Dr. Hill is a personal friend of the medical school’s dean, Dr Halsey (Robert Sampson), and his big claim to fame is a theory that the human brain remains active for “6 TO 12 MINUTES!” before it’s permanent lights out. West claims to have surpassed that time limit while in the middle of a classroom lecture, and he accuses Dr. Hill of stealing his theory from Dr. Gruber. Not only does this earn him an automatic failing grade from a salty snake who got caught, but it gets his name tossed to the top of the Dean’s S—t List.
Luckily, West is able to find somewhere to live. He rents a room from a fellow med student Daniel (Bruce Abbott), and quickly turns the house’s basement into his own personal laboratory. Daniel’s “bubble-headed coed” girlfriend (Crampton) is immediately creeped out by West, but that ceases to be relevant when he finds out that she’s the dean’s daughter and the two of them have to keep their relationship on the down low from dear ol’ daddy-o. The living situation is tolerable for West, but then Daniel’s cat catches an unexpected case of death…
Until he gets a little too full of himself, things get out of hand, and the whole thing explodes in a lovely red gush of practical gore. Body parts are severed, bitten off, rearranged, and given new lives of their own. Where the original story is more serious (and a lot darker!), Re-Animator has more of a comedic element, but it only makes for a better watch.
Jeffrey Combs brought his character to life and cemented his place among the other greats of cinematic suspense. David Gale shows why he is always an ideal go-to villain, and then there’s Barbara Crampton. I would say more about the horror goddess, but I’m probably going to get in enough trouble after the next feature. Death is only a disease, and the cure is over on Prime.
Here’s the trailer:
From Beyond (1986)
“We see things only as we are constructed to see them, and can gain no idea of their absolute nature. With five feeble senses, we pretend to comprehend the boundlessly complex cosmos, yet other beings with a wider, stronger, or different range of senses might not only see very differently the things we see, but might see and study whole worlds of matter, energy, and life which lie close at hand yet can never be detected with the senses we have,” is what Lovecraft says in his 1934 short story from which this next feature was adapted.
It is something that most people don’t stop to think about in their limited, three-dimensional existence, but it gets scarier the more they do. That’s the kind of fear that unfolds in Stuart Gordon’s follow-up to Re-Animator, From Beyond. He returns with Jeffery Combs, and Barabara Crampton for a movie that takes body horror to levels beyond our dulled senses. The errors continue in the trials of scientific advancement, and this blunder is one for the eons.
Dr. Edward Pretorius (Ted Sorel) has developed a machine called the Resonator. This infernal contraption gives people (who are within close range of it) the ability to see beyond our normal perception of reality. When his assistant, Dr. Crawford Tillinghast (Combs), activates the machine, a bunch of hideous monstrosities appear, and float around in the air.
One of them takes a bite out of Crawford, and he urges Pretorius to turn the machine off, but Pretorius isn’t trying to hear that noise. He claims that the machine is giving him an “orgasm of the mind,” but his big climax ends up being an axe to the neck, and Crawford is arrested for the murder. Instead of jail, Crawford is committed to a psychiatric ward, and put in the care of Dr. Katherine McMichaels (Barbara Crampton).
After hearing his side of what led to Pretorius’ death, she gives him a brain scan and notices that his pineal gland (aka our Third Eye) has grown. Dr. McMichaels is convinced of Crawford’s innocence and gets him out of the hospital so he can take her back to the house to prove it. They are chaperoned by the lead investigator in Pretorius’ death, Detective Bubba Brownlee (Ken Foree), and the case is about to get a lot stranger for this Dick named Bubba.
Upon returning to the house, Crawford shows Katherine his Resonator, and she helps him rebuild it. He reactivates the machine, and the freaky fish ghosts reappear, but they’re not alone this time. A terribly deformed, and apparently still living Pretorius appears in the attic, and regales the terrified threesome of a world beyond that is more pleasurable than normal reality. So pleasurable, in fact, that his flesh falls off at the touch, and he doesn’t scream in agony!
This new Pretorious is ready to spread the pleasure around and watch it mutate. Where the last movie is a gory jam session, this one leans more into the deeper, weirder areas of Lovecraftian lore. The only place where ghostfish are not to be laughed at, or ignored. Jeffery Combs goes through his own transformation, and you’ll wish he was only injecting cadavers with glowing green liquids.
Speaking of glowing, Barabara Crampton steals the entire show and shows why she’s still one of the hottest sirens in shock cinema. Let’s just say that there’s a scene in the movie that has to be one of the most rewound moments in VHS history.
Another amazing adaption of the old scribe’s weird tales, and it’s one of his best. From Beyond is available for free on Prime, where the rewind button always works. And finally, watch the trailer:
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