Bloody Good From Beyond

By RICHARD CORLISS

In the mail came the year's most original movie tie-in: a red plastic visor with a 4-in. protruding, well, sort of asparagus stalk. "Fun Facts and Myths About the Pineal Gland (The Gland of the '80s)" reads the press release. "Mad Doctor Edward Pretorious' invention stimulates the pineal gland and causes it to protrude and take on a personality of its own -- much like your official From Beyond Pineal Gland Visor . . . Wear it anywhere: the ballpark, parties, the shower (it's waterproof!)."

Like any good exploitation picture, From Beyond doesn't quite live down to its promotion. And like many a horror movie touted by the hip critical fringe, it falls just short of delivering on its artistic promises. Director Stuart Gordon has fun trying to slice it both ways, though. Fleshing out a story by Horror Aesthete H.P. Lovecraft, Gordon finds florid visual correlatives for Lovecraft's eldritch prose, then adds a heavy dose of '80s psychosexuality. One messy kiss from the late Dr. Pretorious (Ted Sorel), and a cool blond psychiatrist (Barbara Crampton) gets tarted up in dominatrix leather to revive Nerdy Genius Crawford Tillinghast (Jeffrey Combs) by any means at hand. Heady stuff.

Last year most of these same folks perpetrated Re-Animator, a dizzy, affecting parable of a grad student's revenge. The student's plagiarizing professor is beheaded (but not exactly killed), and the woman they both lust for can be revived from death only by becoming a zombie. From Beyond eschews such metaphysical satire for some fine gore effects and a hypersonic tone that raises horror to farce. No masterpiece here, just a bloody good entertainment. It's criticproof!