FROM BEYOND (1986)

After director Stuart Gordon and producer Brian Yuzna made the cult hit Re-Animator, the studio gave them a larger budget to adapt another H.P. Lovecraft short story, back when his best known creation Cthulu wasn't yet a household name.  The plot is a mix of pulpy B-movie mad science with other-worldly cosmic horror of the mutant monster variety.  Dr Crawford Tillinghast perfects the Resonator device designed by his mentor Dr. Edward Pretorius, which stimulates the pineal gland in the human brain allowing subjects to perceive indescribable monsters all around them, but unfortunately also allowing the monsters to see the heretofore unnoticed people all around them.  Before you know it, tentacles are exploding out of places and people are sucking one another's brains out through their eye-sockets.  Damn you science!

Jeffrey Combs, of nine different Star Trek roles and the insane Agent Dammers in The Frighteners, plays the madness-plagued scientist who ends up under the care of experimental psychologist Dr. McMichaels played by Barbara Crampton (like Combs she was also in Re-Animator) and tough football player turned police sergeant named Bubba played by Ken Foree, best known as the badass in Dawn Of The Dead that didn't fold under pressure.  Combs is all sweaty manic tension right from the get-go, and Crampton goes through enough character transformations to stymie even a talented actress, so Foree serves as the skeptical and rational audience surrogate, a nice-guy tough-guy who isn't above cooking delicious-looking biscuits and gravy for the group or wrestling with a monster in waist deep water without bothering to put any clothes on.

The movie starts with the unspeakable horrors from an unknown dimension stuff pretty early.  It's only a minute or so in before somebody gets bit on the face by a floating glowing translucent eel thing, and since the whole director's cut is only 85 minutes long, it's not much longer after that before people's heads are bitten off, swarms of insects devour people down to their bones, gigantic swamp worms appear in the basement trying to swallow people whole, and somehow numerous things that make those disgusting abominations look like kittens.  There are more movies than you would think where somebody rips their own face off, but this might be the best it's ever been done. 

Sometimes in movies they have to make a fake puppet head and pretend its a real normal human head but it never looks right.  They cleverly avoid that here when a human head emerges from the torso of some beast, and they shoot the dialogue in closeup so (I assume) the actors body is out of frame and the integrity of the illusion of the humongous monster puppet is maintained.  The effects all around are very impressively gruesome, close to the same league as something like The Thing, so it's a shame the plot that surrounds them is regrettably thin; I almost feel like I spoiled too much of it but I since didn't mention all the bondage there's still plenty of surprises.

Any wacky trivia?

~ Gordon and Yuzna would develop a family-orientated project soon after this that still managed to contain a few of their signature recurring elements: a mad scientist working in a regular neighborhood, gigantic insect monsters, and the danger of humans eating other humans.  Originally titled Teenie Weenies, the film went into production at Disney with a tent-pole budget and longtime special effects artist Joe Johnston making his directorial debut; they considered numerous other titles (common practice) before settling on Honey, I Shrunk The Kids.

If, like the depraved hedonists depicted in the film, you want to see "more than any man has ever seen" this film might be right up your alley.

Why does science have to be so fucking scary?