DRIVE-IN SATURDAY

DRIVE-IN SATURDAY

STILL EEL

by Edouard Dauphin

A year ago in these pages, The Dauphin urged all but the faint-hearted and vomit-prone among you to go see ReAnimator, first-time director Stuart Gordon’s deliriously bloodlogged hommage to the work of horrormeister H.P. Lovecraft. But, as Emilio Estevez might say (if I ever permitted him to speak in my presence), “that was then, this is now” and this year it’s The Dauph’s unpleasant duty to warn you away from Gordon’s follow-up film, From Beyond, the viewing of which is about as dull a way to pass some time as anything short of reading your watch warranty.

OK, campers, to be fair, Re-Animator was a pretty tough act to follow. Not only was it the best picture of 1985 (and a whole hour shorter than Out Of Africa\), but it was chock full of memorable images that can still bring a smile to The Dauph’s ennuye face. Who can forget Rufus, the once dead black cat, re-animated into a meow-mix thrasher in Herbert West’s laboratory? And then, of course, there was the splendid sight of the stripped and bound ingenue pleasuring a severed head in an activity that’s illegal in 25 states and the District of Columbia.

That particular actress, Barbara Crampton, and Jeffrey Combs, who played the crackbrained West, are re-united in From Beyond, which is also based on a story by Lovecraft. This time out, though, director Gordon is less interested in blood and guts goofiness than he is in flying fishes, pea soup-like slime and the kind of special effects any high school senior could duplicate in his basement with a good chemistry set.

From Beyond finds Combs playing Dr. Crawford Tillinghast, a grimfaced physicist whose mentor, Dr. Pretorious, has his head twisted off by beings from another dimension. Crawford is accused of his murder, but manages to convince Katherine McMichaels (Crampton), an asylum psychiatrist, that Pretorious died because of a self-built machine called a Resonator whose purpose is to stimulate the pineal gland. Yes, readers, that penile-like little organ we speculated about in biology class—sometimes referred to as the third eye. Seems the pineal activates the sixth sense and turns us on sexually to boot. Why, even Jimmy Swaggart has a pineal gland!,

Naturally, since this is a horror film, Crawford and Barbara make tracks for Pretorious’ house to give the Resonator a work-out. They take along officer Bubba Brownlee (Ken Foree), a bugeyed bruiser of a cop with “Victim” written all over him. Crawford cranks up the Resonator, a jellyfish swims out of the air and bites Bubba, then dead Dr. Pretorious nuts in an appearance, first as a man, later as a mass of protoplasm.

After Crawford turns off the Resonator, restoring normalcy, Bubba wants to leave, but, of course, they decide to spend the night. Katherine can’t sleep. She keeps thinking about that Resonator. She decides to turn it on by herself. Back comes Pretorious, accompanied by a 24-foot long lamprey eel. Crawford wakes up —it’s hard to get a good night’s sleep when elongate fish are making sucking noises—and tries to rescue Barbara from Pretorious’s clutches, but winds up in the mouth of the eel instead. Luckily, Bubba disconnects the Resonator and the monsters vanish. Does our heroic trio then get out? Not while that Resonator’s around and there’s bondage equipment in the closet!

That’s right. Katherine flips out and transforms herself from a prim, bespectacled Buttermilk to a sexy vision in black leather who looks like she’s ready to form a tag team with Wendy O. Williams. She turns the/Resonator up to full throttle/tries to jump on a startled/ Bubba’s bones, then zeroes in on Crawford, whose forehead has begun to sprout a pineal gland. Wait a minute. Maybe I should stop right here. I think I’m making this movie seem a lot more interesting than it really is.