Product: From Beyond: Vampires [VHS]
Rating: 5.0
Grisly, claustrophobic, and very violent.
From Beyond, compared with the previous Gordon/Combs/Crampton collaboration, expands on the characterization, enriches the sci-fi quality, while losing a bit of humour and becoming even more horrific in the process.The Re-Animator has a more distinctive tone, but From Beyond is terrifying and imaginative in its own right. Jeffrey Combs is great as usual, Ken Foree (Dawn of the Dead) has a blast as the heroic, honest Bubba, and Barbara Crampton surprised me with a varied, compelling and determined lead performance that's the polar opposite of her more limited role as the sweetheart in Re-Animator. She walks off with From Beyond's best acting performance as Catherine, the obsessive scientist who learns that there's a price for too much ambition.Some of the horror FX are gruesome beyond belief -- the attack of the killer insects, the brain feasts, the final confrontation -- and crosses the line from horrifying to nauseous, but given the excessive nature of the script and the material, and the fact that most of the action takes place in one location, Pretorius' house, I can understand Stuart Gordon's decision to surpass even The Re-Animator in the gore content. (Gordon himself said that the MPAA threatened that he would have to cut about 70% of the film to qualify for an R)Worthy, intelligent horror, for the seasoned horror vet only.