I just finished watching this on the Sci-Fi channel a few minutes ago and decided it was just too funny to pass up reviewing on this site. First off, the title is the same as the title of a short (and, even as a fan, I'll admit rather boring) story by H. P. Lovecraft. One hint: Any movie based on anything by Lovecraft has lots of potential to be bad. Lovecraft just WASN'T MEANT FOR FILM.

For those of you who've read the story, the movie begins where it ends. That's right. Only the initial setup has anything to do with Lovecraft or his story. Which is ironic, considering the whole thing is frequently shown as "H. P. Lovecraft's 'From Beyond'." Apparently, some mad scientist fellow has made a machine that makes it possible to see an alternate reality, interwoven with our own. Fair enough. But the beings in this parallel universe can see us, too. He invites over his henchman (later our main character) and activates the machine. One of the extradimensional beasties bites his head off. Our protaganist escapes with a bite on his cheek, the bandadge for which he wears for the REST OF THE MOVIE. How bad a bite was it, really?

Our hero ends up in a mental hospital and somehow ends up with a Token Black Policeman and a Token Female Scientist Whose Father Was Also A Scientist. It's amazing how often one can deviate from so short a story. Apparently, Ms. Scientist/Doctor lady (I'm not sure exactly what she was) wants him to take her and her companion back to the house and show them the machine. Like any traumatized madman, he requires threats and cajoling beforehand but eventually becomes Mr. Hero. They return to the house. Our (insane) hero slips away and attempts to ambush Scientist Lady with an axe but is promptly stopped by Token Black Character. Characters in this film take turns calling each other's plans crazy or stupid, then making crazy or stupid actions of their own for the others to berate. One of the first of these is when Scientist Lady simply orders Token to let our schizo hero go. This done, the machine is fired up.

I neglected to mention that I found the sight of the completely headless chalk outline to be inexplicably hilarious.

"Listen," Schizo explains. "Don't move. They won't notice you if you don't move. Now, I'm going to stay by this switch. If they show up, I'm switching it off." However, none of this happens. All the characters move around like nervous butterflies. Schizo wanders a good distance from the switch. And then, as we probably all saw coming, the Mad Scientist fellow who made the machine shows up...naked. He says a few cryptic things about how he never in fact died but has moved on to become "something better." He suggests that his mad companion come up and touch him, just to see that it's real. Schizo's hands sink into him as though he were play-doh. The mad (and now inhuman) scientist roars, mutates, spurts goo, etc. Someone switches the machine off. The characters, seemingly unflapped by this experience which would have left myself and a great many of us screaming and gibbering if experienced firsthand, shrug and go to bed.

In the morning, a conversation ensues that proves that this movie holds at least one of the holy grails of a Bad Movie: if you find yourself screaming advice at the characters on-screen because they obviously don't have a brainstem between them, it's a Bad Movie. And I screamed to them. Oh, how I screamed. But the amusingly stupid conversation that ensued was definitely a highlight. Scientist Lady can never seem to figure out that turning on the machine is a BAD IDEA. It makes BAD THINGS HAPPEN. But she just keeps doing it.

For some reason, Scientist Lady goes up to switch the machine on. Schizo Hero attempts to stop her, but apparently her kissing him changes his mind completely. Try not to throw anything at your TV. She is, of course, attacked by Mad Scientist (who has now mutated further).

"What are you going to do to me?" she screams. "I'm going to kiss you," burbles the severely mutated Mad Scientist, reaching out with groping tentacles. That steak I had at the beginning of the movie was considering coming back up at this point. Our hero observes the two entangled ("Ah, zee language of love.") and instead of switching the machine off, decides to run downstairs and cut the power off in the basement. For no explainable reason, Token Black Character, wearing nothing but red underwear, comes bursting out of his room as Schizo descends the stairs and tackles him. The two go tumbling and land in a heap. A little eager for the football season, eh big guy?

They descend to the basement, which is flooded. Schizo cavorts merrily with a gigantic lamprey. Token, in an attempt to save Schizo (who the lamprey, tired of playing, begins to devour) runs in and, with a battle cry worthy of Conan the Barbarian('s mother), stabs it in the back with a knife. Still in his underwear. The lamprey succeeds in swallowing Schizo head first all the way down to his midsection before Token, deciding that the fusebox would be too far to run to, simply grabs several of the power cables and gives a good tug. The power cut to the machine, the Lamprey dissapears. Scientist Lady is saved from the romantic (?) advances of the mutated mad scientist. Schizo falls to the floor. Although he was almost completely swallowed by a creature, who ,it could be clearly seen, had a mouth rowed with jagged teeth, he comes out without a scratch but completely bald. Yes, apparently these beings survive in their home dimension by sucking the hair off their prey.

Schizo passes out and is laid out in a room with a poster that looks like something from the Rocky Horror Picture Show, a leopard spotted blanket, and what honestly looks like S&M gear dangling from the ceiling. Apparently, the house's secrets are deeper and darker than just the machine. Scientist Lady wanders in, and, after fondling the gear, stumbles into a closet where she finds a genuinely alarming outfit. Ok, wait. Stop camera. WHY is there a suit of dominatrix gear in a mad scientist's closet? Did he moonlight as Mad Melissa on weekends? WHY is there a matching pair of high heels in there? And I'd ask a third why, but I don't think I or anyone else wants to know why she suddenly decides to put this black leather get-up on, or whether or not it has anything to do with the tether and handcuffs dangling from the ceiling. She crawls onto Schizo's bed and just sits astride him for a few minutes until Token comes in. He scolds her for this as if he's caught her doing this before. Just smile and nod, people.

A scene or two later, the machine, apparently realizing that maybe the characters might wise up a little, switches itself on. The characters run up, frantic to get it turned off again. They are repelled by electric surges. So Token seizes an axe and severs a wrist's width of cables. Nope, still no go. A swarm of insects attacks (I think) maim two of our characters. Token drops his flashlight. For some reason the insects turn and attack him. He falls to the ground. The insects leave. As his companions run toward him, the camera shifts angles and suddenly reveals that he's been chewed down to his very fake looking skeleton. Apparently, the effects of being bitten by these things take action AFTER they leave. Or not. Whatever.

Mad Mutant Scientist shows up. One thing you've got to admit, this guy is actually pretty scary looking. He looks kind of convincing on the screen (even if a little too slimy) and confronted in real life he'd be a sanity shatterer that would make Howard Phillips Lovecraft proud. Somehow, he activates Schizo's "pineal gland." If I remember, that's a part of the brain. But apparently for this guy it results in a third eye springing out of his forehead. Schizo comments that his new vision is "so beautiful." Cut to a shot of his perspective. If you consider seeing everything in shoddy, grainy colors vaguely remiscent of the Predator's heat vision (but much worse) to be beautiful, fine. Scientist Lady succeeds in briefly stopping the machine with a fire extinguisher. It reactivates for a moment, and then another blast seems to quiet it.

Now, somehow, our characters have ended up in a hospital. Maybe Mad Scientist phoned an ambulance for them? Scientist Lady is now barely coherent, and Schizo's been shut up in a room, unconscious. A short argument ensues between Scientist Lady and someone whom I presume was a superior of hers. She is turned over to a sadistic nurse, who sends her in for electroshock therapy. Schizo wakes up, rises from his bed, and, using his Third Eye, wanders into the pathology lab. He is found there in the next scene, next to some now empty buckets that once contained internal organs. The nurse attempts to comfort him and lead him outside. But his Grainy Technicolor Vision shows him what's inside her head: A BRAIN! He then tears into her head with his teeth like a kid going for the toy surprise in the cereal box. I was angry at this point. How come he had to devour the only readily apparent brain in this whole wretched movie?

Scientist Lady is about to be electro-shocked by a doctor who looks like he's having wayyyy too much fun, when an orderly comes bursting in, saying that something's gone wrong and they need his help. The orderly leaves, and the creepy doctor starts to remove the straps holding her to the bed. Even as he is undoing one of them, she suddenly grabs a light fixture and bashes his head with it. Was he removing them a little too slow for you, miss?

Schizo escapes after a few more brain eating sessions. Scientist Lady follows suit. She ends up at the house, where she wires up some dynamite, sets the fuse to the obligatory "long enough to allow for the climax but just barely" time and leaves it by the machine. Apparently, Radio Shack sells time bombs and timers in most cities.

She is jumped by Schizo, who ties her up with the gear in the Rocky Horror Picture Show room. Mad Scientist shows up (barely recognizable as ever having been human). Schizo, who cannot seem to make up his mind about whether he's a Good Guy or a Bad Guy, berates Mad Scientist, as he jeers in typical villain fashion over how he is going to "join his mind with hers" for no readily apparent reason. You know, through this whole thing, I have never figured out what it was that our dear villain really wanted to do. It seems like he just wants to scare people and rave about how much better he's become than ordinary humans.

"She'll see how pathetic you are!" our hero screams. "How you can't make love!" Um, okay.... But this is only worsened by the monster's response: "Perhaps you'd be willing to teach me." He lunges after Schizo, who takes flight. Being chased by a Lovecraftian Horror like this thing would be horrifying in any circumstances. But being chased by an Unspeakable Lovecraftian Horror From Beyond who's just suggested that you might be willing to teach it how to make love is, in my opinion, an experience that would plunge even the most jaded minds of our time into the deepist pits of pure horror.

Unspeakable Lovecraftian Horror chases Schizo down a staircase. How does this thing move around so fast, anyway? Is it sitting in a little wagon that it drags itself around in? Schizo, reaching the bottom of the stairs considerably faster, screams up to the thing. "Come and get me!" Sprouting wings and mutating into a stranger being yet, it does.

Meanwhile, some of the little flying barracuda-like fish, one of which bit Schizo in the first scene, drift in to Scientist Lady's room. Apparently they aren't so bad, because rather than biting any of the other 98% of her body that's available and vulnerable, two of them cleanly bite off the cuffs that hold her. She pulls out a book of matches, ignites it, and throws it aside to distract the creatures, then runs. Since she doesn't smoke or anything like that, why she had these matches is beyond me.

Running down the stairs, she is horrified to stumble across......A HEADLESS DUMMY THAT WE'RE SUPPOSED TO THINK IS SCHIZO'S BODY! EEEEEEK! With a scream of terror, rather than running out the door which is no more than two yards away, she instead sprints up the stairs, narrowly avoiding being smashed by a tentacle flung by the Lovecraftian Horror. She reaches the machine's chamber. The monsterous thing shows up (now for some reason having forsaken the form of the misshapen bird that killed Schizo) and advances on her. Suddenly its mouth begins to come open, and Schizo pries himself out. He screams for her to leave and then is dragged back into the writhing mass. If they aimed to make this part grotesque, they succeeded. But apparently Schizo somehow fights the thing from inside, preventing it from just out and killing her. Why it doesn't just stop to disable the dynamite is another inexplicability. For further confusion still, how is it that Schizo is fighting this thing? He's downstairs. Headless. The only explanation I can venture is this: Perhaps the Mad Scientist's head was devoured by some other strange being, which absorbed him and, in a way, made him a part of it. Now Schizo, his head eaten, has also become part of the creature.

The timer on the bomb is down to seconds. With a scream, Scientist Lady leaps out of the window as the house explodes. Some townsfolk gather around, one stooping down to ask if she's all right.

"He ate him," she wails. "It...it ate him." She then breaks down into laughter. Maybe she's finally gone mad. Or maybe she's finally realized how funny this all really is.

I'm sorry to say that I haven't done this movie justice at all. I've gotten, most likely, more than a few things incorrect. There's lots of bad factors I neglected. But you don't need me for that. They stand on their own. Mostly, what's funny is how things are delivered. The actors are mediocre at best. But somehow, just the way the lines, actions, and events are presented is unaccountably hilarious.

Rating: 4.5 turkeys.

Scene to watch for: Scientist Lady considers life as a dominatrix.

Best line: (the first line spoken when the Mad Scientist shows up, completely naked) "You have me at a disadvantage." Well, no kidding.

Things that make you go "Huh?": The leather gear. And the fact that, apparently, being able to see things in ways other humans can't makes eating bodily organs seem like a great idea.